Meet The Stans With Simon Reeve

Kazakhstan, a country whose oil deposits are thought to rival those of Saudi Arabia. In Kazakhstan, Reeve discovers a poorly secured former biological weapons factories with a hundred types of plague stored there. He also finds a shrinking sea that is now home to camel farmers, and the region's best Beatles tribute band.

Kyrgyzstan, the only country in the world with both an American and a Russian military base. While there, Reeve meets a member of a banned radical Islamic group, and he visits one of the world's most highly radioactive sites.

Simon Reeve goes to Uzbekistan

Sharing an 800-mile border with Afghanistan, which provides 90% of Europe's heroin, Tajikistan is one of the world's biggest drug trafficking routes. Reeve joins a drugs raid, visits a warehouse with £100 million worth of heroin, and gets drunk with the conscripts who patrol the Afghan border.