Well I am home in one piece... more or less! (The ends of my fingers in my left hand and the tips of my toes in my right foot are still tingling and a bit numb from some frostnip which is annoying.)
But Siberia was definitely the hardest show I have ever filmed, with daytime temperatures of -30o and at night time it dropped down as low as -40o.
We did some great stuff, from jumping onto Trans-Siberian trains, to swimming under the ice in a frozen lake. We did sub-zero river crossings, big ice and snow climbs, and a heli jump from 40ft into a snow cornice. I ate frozen yak eye balls, made a toboggan from its fur & skin, and skydived into the Taiga Siberian snow buried forest!
Man Vs Wild is staying suitably extreme!
But it was all fun and the crew really worked hard, and in such environments as these this show works because the team works. I feel very proud of how everyone coped in such conditions.
Pieces of news: Discovery have some new top management who want me to stick with pure Man Vs Wild rather than branch out into the pre-proposed extra shows where I might have taken a couple of applicants with me into the wild. Shame but maybe one day this will re-surface. But ultimately I'm not the paymaster!
I now have a bit of a break for Christmas with my family, (heaven!) then I leave for Namibia, Zambia then Sumatra in the New Year for more programmes.
Have a lovely Christmas, God bless and go wild at New Year!
Bear x
ps pic is of me and the crew at the end of the Siberian programme - we are all exhausted...and it shows! (left to right: Simon, Dan, Dave, and me.)
