Impossible Roads

240 kilometers long, the Lowari Pass is the only crossing point through the mountain. Taking this road is far from being a piece of cake: it winds through the mountain and its vertiginous cornices. Usually it takes a day to get to the end of the trip, but that's rarely the case. We made the trip with Dawood, responsible for two trucks. at 23, he travels back and forth all the time - the more trips he makes, the more hazard rewards he accumulates. In the extreme cold and heat, the blows of fatigue arrive without warning, the concentration is at its maximum, because the slightest error can be fatal.

Our cameras focused on Katanga, a province located in the south of the DRC, which concentrates three quarters of the country's wealth. We accompany Eugène, a trader who has a truck loaded with goods and who has to leave Lubumbashi, the economic capital of the country, to reach his hometown, Bukama, 650 kilometers further north. Here, the train only works once in ten; the truck remains the only way to transport the goods, because there is no airport. The journey from Lubumbashi to Bukama takes four days. At the wheel: Domingo, the prince of the road, assisted by three conveyors: they hang on the outside of the truck and are the eyes and ears of the driver.

Sometimes it takes more than five days to complete the trip. On the mountainside, carved into the rock, this road allows the populations of this poor region of Nepal to stock up on all kinds of products. For several weeks, the cameras follow those who dare to take this road. Despite the danger, the Karnali Highway is the fastest way for them to get around this mountainous region.

A paved road for the first thirty kilometers which quickly becomes a very dangerous track. It is considered in China as the most dangerous of roads. Rockslides, difficult passages where any crossing of vehicles is impossible, mud, too narrow tunnel, nothing spares the drivers. The road requires extreme concentration. The cliffs are vertiginous. The slightest swerve can be fatal. And when the threat doesn't come from below, it can come from the walls of the road. On this track, there is no room for error. We take the road in an overloaded collective taxi. At the wheel, Tcheng. He's been using it once a week for 6 years. In the car, there is Fong who must reach his village lost in the mountains. Together, they will take more than 7 hours to travel less than a hundred kilometers. From the start of the trip, the troubles begin.

In Colombia, pilots risk their lives to connect Indian communities scattered throughout the Amazon rainforest and cut off from the rest of the world. On board a DC3 - old propeller planes built before the war - they regularly take an air route considered one of the most dangerous on the planet... These planes are the only ones in the world able to land on very short dirt airstrips, often ending in a ravine. Elsewhere in this country, other pilots risk their lives every day. This is the case of Jose Gutuierez, the pilot of the great plains of Colombia. His job, fly less than a meter above the ground to spray pesticides or fertilizers in the fields. The slightest inattention can be fatal to him.

In Siberia they call it the highway of life and also the highway of hell. This is the M56, a 1200 km road route that crosses this region in the far Eastern part of the Russian Federation. The M56 is an indispensable link for the people of the North of Siberia. Summer and winter long, thousands of trucks and hundreds of cars take this road to ensure supplies of food, drink and materials.