Interview: Simon Reeve tells TNT about his travels for new BBC show

For his latest TV series, the adventurer meets Somalian pirates, braves Mogadishu – one of the most dangerous places on the planet – dives with sharks and patrols with the Special Forces. But all this he takes in his stride, concerned instead about day-to-day practicalities. “Flipping seatbelts!“ he says, incredulously. “It’s amazing how many people go abroad and start behaving as if they’re in a bumper car.

“I’m more nervous when I’m driving or being driven down some dodgy road with cars coming out of the darkness than
I am walking into a drug den. I think it’s safer.

“You have to get these things into perspective – generally, people don’t want to chop off your head. As travellers, these aren’t the risks we have to worry about.”

And, having just finished filming Indian Ocean, his eighth adventure travel TV series for the BBC, following Tropic Of Cancer and Explore, if anyone is qualified to know, it’s Reeve.

Due to be broadcast in April, the six-parter sees the best-selling author and journalist travel 16 countries along the coast of the Indian Ocean, starting in South Africa, heading up the east coast of Africa, around India and back down the western coast of Indonesia to Australia – a journey he’ll be recounting at Saturday’s TNT Travel Show in Earl’s Court.

“It’s a fascinating and beautiful region which people think of as luxurious holiday islands, but there’s much more to it,” he says. “What happens in the Indian Ocean, just as what happens in other remote corners of the world, really has
an effect on people here so they need to know about it.”