Episode list

Every year in January, the old imperial city of Gondar literally bursts at the seams. Millions of pilgrims flock to the former amusement pool of the city founder Kaiser Fasil and press for public baptism. A scene of truly biblical proportions. It must have looked similar at the Jordan 2000 years ago. We are in the highlands of Ethiopia at the time of "Timkat", the feast of the baptism of Jesus. The "chosen people", for whom Ethiopian Christians still hold themselves today, still guard the "Tabot", the biblical ark of the covenant with the ten commandments of God, in the old imperial city of Gondar. At the time of Timkat mass processions burst the narrowness of all streets of the old town. Trombonists blow their lungs out, as if to tear down the walls of Jericho again. "Christmas" on the roof of Africa: a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the most shrill festivals of the black continent.

Varanasi - The City of Light Bathing in the Ganges is one of the life goals of every devout Hindu. If this happens in Kashi, the mythical place of the Hindus, the "turntable between heaven and earth", then it is, so to speak, an express lift from the eternal cycle of rebirth. We are in India, in Varanasi, the old holy city on the Ganges, about which Mark Twain once wrote: "It is older than history, older than tradition, and even older than any legend. Varanasi is the "beginning and end" of the Hindu circle of life. Old souls are born here for the last time. Those who let themselves be burned here go the "one-way street" into the Olympus of the Hindu world of gods. Sadhus, self-proclaimed mendicant monks, descendants of all Maharajas and masters of ceremonies belong to the everyday street scene of the city at the Ganges. Varanasi is the "mother of all rivers". When she is no longer, according to legend, the gods lose their strength.

Bushido - "The way of the warrior" - has been leading through the land of the rising sun for more than twelve hundred years. But the traces of the once powerful warrior caste of the samurai have been lost, on the data highways of modern Japan, are often only cinema spectacles for trendsetters. The paths of today's warriors lead to Kyoto. The city is considered a small Hollywood. Even today, the blockbuster "Samurai" is still flushing tens of millions of yen into the pockets of resourceful film producers. One of the last enclaves of ancient Japan is GION, the Geisha quarter of Kyoto. Even today, the professionals of upscale entertainment can be trained here for up to ten years. Dance, singing and conversation - heavy food in light industry. Some consider her to be a noble prostitute, others a noble solo entertainer who plays plucked instruments, sings and more or less witty chatter in between. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Businessmen in Tokyo are worth up to 1500 dollars for their presence at a dinner: per evening and person. According to Nippon's press, the warriors of today's Japan are the Sumotori, modern "demigods in fat". And everyone really knows them, because Sumo is a national sport. Her temple is located in the middle of Tokyo and is called Kokugikan. Since the Hawaiian Jesse Kuhaulua invaded the Sumo phalanx in 1964, a spectre has been circulating: a non-Japanese could become a grandmaster, in Japan's weighty pastime, which the Shinto gods themselves are said to have prescribed for humans. Unthinkable.

Once, at the time of the great Genghis, half the world trembled before the slaughtering men from the meadow. His descendants make the ground tremble at feasts at most. Every year in July the wild riders of the Mongolian steppe people meet for the "Naadam" in the nowhere of the high plateau between the foothills of the Gobi desert and the Russian border in the north. The tradition of the festival goes back to Genghis Khan, is a symbol of freedom, homage to the gods of the "horse people" and a kind of perseverance slogan for one of the most backward regions of the world. "The Mongols," wrote Marco Polo about 700 years ago, "can live without supplies for a whole month. Of all the people in the world, they are most able to endure great efforts and hardships. The wasteland of the Mongolian plateaus has always been a forbidden, lost land for the Russian tsars as well as for the red dragons in the south, and it's ruled by demons and evil spirits. The film is an insight into the world of the descendants of the wild horde, who once marauded with fire and sword to the gates of Vienna, where almost half of the world known at that time had been ruled.

Saxophone and trumpet sounds rip the harbour dwellers of a small Peruvian coastal town from their sleep. The first fish stalls are set up. Hardly an hour later a huge procession is formed to the fishing port. It is San Pedro Day and thus national holiday for all fishermen in Peru. San Pedro, the wooden patron saint is supposed to bless villages and fishing grounds and avert all trouble. The holy Pedro goes by boat from village to village, people scream, fall in powerlessness, fish are consecrated and to all abundance: a cheeky shot of Peruvian brass music - "holy jazz in Peru". The film provides insights into one of the craziest festivals along the South American Pacific coast.

Bloodthirsty piranhas are said to be swarming here, tabletop-sized rays with poisonous back spines and tremor eels. Caimans and anacondas lurk in the murky water for their victims. We are at the upper reaches of the Amazon, in the dense Peruvian jungle of the Amazon rainforest. Until recently, humans played no significant role here, were still space for mysterious stories and legends. Only the call of the jungle gold, rubber, attracted thousands of adventurers and buccaneers, almost 4000 kilometres of torture through swamps and mangroves from the mouth of the longest river in the world to Iquitos, the city of the rubber barons. Here, deep in the rainforest, they still live, the "Ayahuasqueros", shamans, revered by local jungle dwellers as "miracle men". But also their time is running out, oil and ore deposits in the jungle have called an armada of western investors on the plan.

More than 120 years ago the legendary Zulu king Cetshwayo was exiled to Cape Town by British colonial troops after the Battle of Rorke's Drift. English and Burmese "Voortrekker" divided the land of the Zulu. The resistance of the proud warriors seemed finally broken. But the proud Zulu could not be reduced. The last "king of the lions", Chief Buthelezi, played an important role alongside Nelson Mandela's ANC during apartheid at the Cape. Today the Zulus celebrate their "brave ancestors" at every opportunity, but especially at tribal weddings. If the bridegroom is the immediate descendant of one of the legendary lion kings Cetshwayo or Shaka, his wedding day resembles a witch's cauldron: war and fertility dances, spear contests and battle songs make the dusty soil of the Zulu homeland between Greytown and Nongoma tremble.

Actually, they are only a small people of hack farmers like others in Africa. But the first pictures of them in the West made the Nuba famous. Black heroes were there to be seen, people who strengthen their bodies in wrestling, decorate themselves with relish. We are in the Kordofan, the high mountain country of Sudan. In pre-Islamic times various smaller peoples had retreated here, fleeing from slave hunters and Arab settlers. It was the Arabs who coined the term "Nuba" for this group. Today the Nuba are still fighting: at the tournaments in their villages - but also for their survival. Forty years of civil war broke the once flourishing land on the Nile. Even today, suspicion still determines the fragile coexistence of the Islamic North and the Christian South.

Before the dawn of human memory, the legend of one of the most enigmatic peoples on Earth tells us that their ancestors came from the stars to Earth in celestial ships. We are with the Toraja people on Sulawesi, an island somewhere between Borneo and the Moluccas. Sulawesi, the old Celebes, was long regarded as the "island of the infamous" and was a pirate base in the South Pacific for almost 300 years. Feared bounty hunters were the Toraja until 200 years ago and still today "aluk todolo", the old religion, determines the life of the jungle people. If a tribe member dies, so the belief, he sees the light of the stars, the home of his ancestors. Everyone wants to go back there, but only the souls of the dead find admission to "Puya", the realm of the blessed. "Pasta Mati" begins, a centuries-old ritual of the "Star People," a kind of "ascension" of the Toraja soul into the kingdom of light.

In the beginning of the rainy season in the eighth month of the moon it is the time of Khao Pansa, the beginning of Buddhist Lent. We are in Ubon Ratchathani, a jungle area in the northeast of Thailand. In countless jungle camps wax fires burn for weeks, improvised melting kitchens for tons of beeswax. Wax sculptors, Buddhist Thais, cast and burn huge figures at the time of Khao Pansa. They symbolize the life stations of Buddha. The whole northeast of Thailand is on its feet during kilometre-long processions through the cities and villages. The monks are doing exceptionally well at this time. Thousands of Thais pilgrim to the jungle monasteries and carry tons of edibles and other jewels to the bald jungle inhabitants. From now on the monks are not allowed to leave the monasteries for three months. The film is an insight into the rites and legends of the natives of Thailand.

They spend their lives on the water, feeding on fish and their "floating gardens", pressed mats of water hyacinths, which they anchor to the bottom of the lake with bamboo pipes. We are with the Intha people on the Inle Lake in the heart of Myanmar, former Burma. The islanders are Buddhists and celebrate every year in September the great "Phaung-Daw-U" festival, the beginning of Buddhist Lent. The film shows insights into the unique culture of the Burmese island people of the Intha.

Once a year the Caodai pay homage to their master Ngo Minh Chieu, a mystic who was born 120 years ago north of today's Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Many of the nearly 2 million followers of the "Caodai Order" meet annually in Tay Ninh, the holy place of the Order in southern Vietnam. The bareheaded monks of the Caodai pay homage to several gods and spirits. They have elevated the French writer Victor Hugo to their chief spirit. He is supported either by Jeanne d'Arc, William Shakespeare or Lenin. The temple of the Order - the "Holy See" - is considered the eighth wonder of the world. In seances that are in no way inferior to the African Voodoo cult of mysticism and mystery, the chief Caodai receive messages from the afterlife. Senders are Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucius, even Jesus is very popular. The "shining eye", symbol of the Caodai, sees everything. To the western visitor, however, this seems more than Spanish. Americans, who came here during the Vietnam War, looked into the "shining eye" and reported, "they copied the back of our one-dollar bill for it".