LONELY PLANET: ROADS LESS TRAVELED

Witness one of the greatest bridge-building booms of all time. Three ultimate bridges call China their home: The Lupu is the longest arch bridge in the world; the Runyang is the largest suspension bridge in China (third longest in the world) and the Sutong is soon to be the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. Tall enough to straddle huge cargo ships and strong enough to withstand powerful earthquakes and typhoon-force winds, these bridges aren't anything but mega. But to build these structures engineers have to overcome enormous challenges. They battle floods, unstable soil, strong currents, and potential ship collision. See the amazing solutions they must devise to construct three of the world's most astonishing Mega Bridges.

Lonely Planet send intrepid photojournalist Dominic Bonuccelli on assignment down the road less travelled in Colombia. Setting out for the Caribbean Coast from the once-notorious city of Medellin, Dominic braves army roadblocks, kidnap warnings and gunslinging cowboys as he explores the glaciers of the Andes, gets his soul cleansed in a remote Indian village and puts on his dancing shoes for the world's second-biggest Carnival.

Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler practises what he preaches as he ventures down the road less travelled in Southeast Asia's most enigmatic nation - Laos. Thirty-five years since he wrote the seminal backpacker guide to South East Asia, one of the godfathers of independent travel is back on the road, taking in elephant beauty contests, tribal love huts, underground rivers and the enigmatic 'indigo people' as he treks, kayaks, caves and motorbikes the backblocks of northwest Laos.

Lonely Planet travel writer Amelia Thomas discovers there are two sides to every story as she explores the road less travelled through Israel and the West Bank: the one you read long-distance in the headlines and the one up close and personal that you experience on the ground. From ancient spice trails through the Negev Desert to the heady thermals of the Golan Heights, Amelia rides, ziplines, machine guns and paraglides her way through the troubled Holy Land. Along the way she takes in Mohammad's birthday, Jesus' birthplace, life in the West Bank and an 'illegal' Bedouin encampment caught between a rock and a hard place.

Lonely Planet puts budding writer and raw recruit Tamara Sheward through her paces on a journey down the road less travelled in South-East Asia's latest travel hotspot - Cambodia. Tamara earns her sea legs looking for trouble among Cambodia's remote islands, blazes a motorbike trail to remember through the heart of the Cardamom Mountains, manhandles a boat the hard way across Tonle Sap Lake and discovers what you have to go through to get an Angkor temple all to yourself these days. It's Tamara's first assignment and her chance to prove she's got what it takes to be a Lonely Planet foot soldier. The only problem is - she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Travel writer John Vlahides explores the road less travelled in Morocco on assignment for guidebook publisher Lonely Planet. On a journey down the spine of central Morroco, he steps back hundreds of years in the labyrinthine medina of Fez, roadtests skiing African style in the rugged Atlas Mountains, explores the crumbling kasbah of a despised Moroccan despot, and joins a family of Berber nomads in the dunes of the Sahara.

In this episode of Roads Less Travelled, Lonely Planet photographer Dominic Bonuccelli heads into the wilds of northern Mexico to chart a course through the rugged Sierra Madre mountains. Ignoring the headlines proclaiming drug wars and violence, Dominic goes looking for adventure among the Raramuri Indians, rodeo cowboys, Mennonites, shaman and bootleggers who call this isolated part of Mexico home. He finds it in spades at an Easter celebration to end all Easter celebrations, in the vertical rock canyons of the Basaseachi National Park and on the back of a horse in the middle of a Mexican rodeo.

Lonely Planet writer Katharina Kane blazes a trail through Ethiopia, a country more well-known for its droughts and desolation than its awesome tourist drawcards. Her journey begins in Harar with a drug-fuelled all-night trance vigil in the holiest Islamic city in Africa, and ends among thousands of Orthodox pilgrims on the shores of Lake Tana paying homage to a woman who tried to save the soul of the devil. Along the way she gets an insight into the courting rituals of the fearsome Afar nomads, goes in search of a three million year old ancestor and meets a septuagenarian gent carving a church out of rock armed with nothing but a pickaxe.

Lonely Planet photojournalist Dominic Bonuccelli blazes a new trail through the far north of Spain, from the rugged coastal province of Galicia with its rich Celtic history, to the mysterious country of the Basques. He runs with bulls, hunts for barnacles, wrestles wild horses and sets fire to his clothes, all in the name of putting the spotlight on a region that has fiercely protected its custom and identity.

In this episode of Roads Less Travelled, Lonely Planet send travel writer and archaeologist Iain Shearer down the old Silk Road and into Kazakhstan. Two decades after achieving independence from Mother Russia, Kazakhstan is still an unknown quantity. As Iain blazes a trail through one of Asia's most enigmatic countries, he learns the ancient art of hunting with eagles, sandboards 'singing' dunes with gnarly Kazakh snowboarders, and helps a nomad family build their summer camp. Heading west across the rolling steppe, Iain discovers a fishing fleet left stranded in the desert, takes the controls of a spaceship in the birthplace of the space race, and joins a moving ritual with Kazakhstan's incredible singing Sufis.

In its first series, the new Lonely Planet show explores thirteen countries in the company of charismatic Lonely Planet authors who are determined to blaze a new trail, experience new things and encounter new people by venturing forth on roads less travelled. In each country, the Lonely Planet author explores half a dozen destinations that are either under-appreciated, yet to register, or only just appearing on travellers radars. Each destination harbours something extraordinary or reveals something unique about the character of the country; none requires anything more tricksy to get to than basic information and a bit of imagination. FROM TREATMENT