hello from greenwich park in london. now, while we all keep dreaming of the travel we will be doing when things get back to normal, today we are taking a look back at some of our best trips to south asia. over the years, we have had plenty of adventures there and for me, personally, one of the highlights was a trip to the beautiful country of sri lanka in 2020. on the streets of its bustling capital city colombo, the tuk—tuk is king of the road. and with its numbers have jumped eightfold in 15 years, i went there to see what impact it is having on the city and how tourists are now jumping in the driving seat too. so there is actually over a million tuk—tuks here in sri lanka and it definitely shows, because these things are everywhere. chuckles. that's a pretty high number for a country ofjust over 20 million people. the prospect of good money has prompted many young people and it is notjust the pros — driving a rented tuk—tuk is increasingly popular with tourists too. argh! tourists need a local driving licence to drive a tuk—tuk here, but also some practice. ok, this definitely is not as straightforward as i thought it would be. i think i need some assistance! thushari has been a tuk—tuk driver for four years. female drivers remain a rare sight in sri lanka but times are slowly changing. so stay in neutral before i got forward? got you. so the horn is my friend? friend, yes. all right. so they are your top tips. i think i am ready for the road. thank you. thanks, madam. you really feel that lack of suspension. and there are so many potholes here. once you reach that level of comfort with driving, the best thing about driving a tuk—tuk is that you can just take in all the gorgeous scenery and on my left is the beautiful ocean. but the gentle ocean breeze is not enough to disperse the emissions produced by the millions of vehicles on sri lanka's roads. air pollution in its capital city regularly exceeds the levels recommended by the world health organization. ten years ago, the government banned the import of the most polluting rickshaws, the 2—stroke engines, but several hundreds of thousands remain on the roads. so the pollution definitely is not as bad as i thought it would be, but it is definitely palpable. chokes. in fact, i think ijust ate some. as part of the global fight against climate change, sri lanka has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030. sasiranga de silva won a un award for creating a simple kit which converts petrol tuk—tuk engines to electric. as you can see, sri lanka is a beautiful country. yes, it is. but recently we noticed the pollution levels are going high and so the level of diseases are going high there so i thought, you know, as an engineer, i would do my best to sort of contribute to bringing emissions down in sri lanka. what do you think it would take to get your conversion kit up and running, you know, produced on a mass scale? because it is quite high and tuk—tuk is a low—cost product, so the conversion price has to be as low as possible for the drivers to afford it. so i have been doing so many research so i can downsize the battery, so that will reduce the cost. yeah. the issue of affordability will decide whether electric tuk—tuks are ever developed on a mass scale. but who knows? the spirit of innovation and a smattering of political will might be just enough to clear the air in colombo. definitely fun but one thing that i will be happy to leave to the professionals in the future. and that might also be what henry was thinking back in 2016 in india's coastal state of kerala, when he got to find out the hard wayjust what goes into picking coconuts — something which is still done there mostly by hand. that was unbelievable! you are so strong! that was so good! how high is this? 30 metres. and he did it like it was a sunday stroll. he's been doing it 30 years, this one. he's 52 years old. 52 years old. so you are half, pretty much, or more of my age so i should be able to do this quicker than you, but i don't think that will be the case. how many coconuts does he normally collect a day? a0 coconuts a day. some homestays in kerala are now teaching tourists the art of coconut tree climbing, so let's see if i am up to the challenge. laughs. i want to hoist myself up, but my arms, theyjust will not obey. i think i am going to rip my pants! this is tough! the numbers of climbers like prasalan have fallen dramatically as the younger generation have gradually moved away from manual jobs. very strong, indeed! it is a bit of a marathon. you need to think of it as a marathon. you have about 20 good metres to climb. if you run out of strength halfway, it is not going to be pretty. oh, i think that is it for me! pants. how does he do it?! my feet, i tell you, i think it is because i have soft — soft everything. i am a wimp. you are much stronger than i am. the coconut industry is worth billions of dollars, so the decline of manual climbers has called for modernisation of sorts. that looks so much easier than what i was doing. the state government has tried everything from competitions to prize money to find a machine that can entice people back into the job. this one, invented by a local farmer, has proved relatively simple to operate. just right there? right. 0k. left there and here? 0k. on my way up. it is definitely a lot easier. i may have spoken too soon. it is a lot tougher than it looks. do the right one and the left one then just relax. you have got a lot less stress on your toes and your hands themselves, but getting this motion right is... just makes me a little nervous, so... woo! ah! it does make it a little bit easier, i must say. but i would like to put it to the test — the old method versus this new one. what do you think? we try it? all right. over here, we have the traditional coconut tree climbers that are going to be using their ropes that they have around their legs and whatnot. on this side, we have the mechanically assisted. and we're going to find out who is fastest. so, three, two, one, go! they are pretty much neck and neck at the moment. actually, mechanically assisted are going a little bit faster. actually, he has caught up on the time, he has caught up on the time! there we go. and they are switching. up, up, up, up! he is not tired. he is doing well. yeah! applause. coconuts for you! to the winners go the spoils! is it good? how does victory taste, boys? henry in southern india, back in 2016. now, we're heading to pakistan where, two years ago, we heard from two adventurers who had been to the country's mountainous northernmost region to experience this part of the country in a whole new way. and it was quite the journey. i am john rider. and i'm edmund le brun. and in 2018, we set out to raft down the length of the hunza valley in northern pakistan and as far as we can tell, nobody�*s done this before. the river passes through a really interesting part of pakistan, right up near the border of china. it is a very ancient trade corridor that passes north to south, the old silk road. a combination of mountains, people, history, culture. it is a fascinating place. the trouble with rafting a river for the first time is that you really have to scout every hundred metres because you really don't know what's around the corner. there were many moments going down the river where we encountered sections that we knew that we couldn't navigate. we actually found out that they were too difficult to raft the hard way. that was quite scary, actually. once it's upturned, there was nothing for him to catch hold of. i lost my raft, just pfft! went all the way downriver, sped away. been tipped out of the boat. and the weird — current — the currents are doing really weird things. ok, i'm going to go chase it. soon as i set off injohn�*s raft in pursuit of my own, i realised that that was a bad decision. the water was getting rougher and, sure enough, i hit a corner... 0h! ..losing the second raft. so i managed to swim to the bank and suddenly assess the situation and there we are, northern pakistan, and we have lost both our rafts, all our bags. i then didn't know wherejohn was. ok, this feels quite serious now. i haven't seen ed for almost 2.5 hours. i don't know what condition he is in. so i've just got to the road. i've got — what's your name again? azerdine. is helping me. but there's no sign ofjohn. people often assume that, you know, we felt was a security concern there? and actually, security was the furthest things from our mind. the key is always doing research before you go because some areas are incredibly dangerous and just five kilometres away, it is completely safe. so after i'd lost my raft, i did not find john for five hours. yeah, a very tired john on the other side of the river. we found the rafts eventually. it took us — i think it was about four days in total. everyone we spoke to offered — offered to walk up and down the river or offered their car. it was really quite overwhelming, the amount of generosity that we received. but what the rafts did give us was the sense of adventure and through that, we actually uncovered a side to pakistan which we really never see on the news. what an experience! now, still to come on the programme — ade tries his hands at conservation in the maldives. and rajan tests out his aim in india. get out the way, everyone. here we go. wow! now we're getting there! now, backjust before the pandemic last year, ade went to visit the stunning maldives. officially the lowest nation on earth, its beautiful beaches are constantly under threat from climate change and the effects from tourism. ade went there to find out what the local people, and some tourists, are doing to protect the natural world there. coral reefs do notjust look great in holiday photos, they also contain more biodiversity than any other ecosystem on the planet, so it is essential that they don't disappear. even though they cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, they are home to over a quarter of all the world's fish species. so here in the maldives, there is an ongoing programme to restock damaged reefs. so actually, coral is an animal. an animal? exactly. not a plant? no, actually it's related to jellyfish and anemones in the oceans. so what we have — what we see here is a colony. it's many individuals called polyps, that they live all together and they help each other to build this skeleton. what we actually do, we pick up some corals that are broken, because of any reason, and they are on the sand, so they will die because they will covered with sand. so what we will do is just keep this healthy part from the coral and put them back on our nursery. our nursery is around 5—6m depth and with a sandy bottom, the best method is to use these ropes, hanging on metalframes. ok, i want to try to attach a piece then. so let's see. i will put it through here. hold, like this, and then fasten it? yep, as much as you can, so it will not fall. this mustjust take hours to do. well, no, actually the process is quite fast. and actually, we need to do it faster as well, because they need to be underwater. so basically, what you are doing here is replicating nature? exactly, we just help to make this progress faster. so not mother nature, sandra nature! exactly! it is heartening to know that tourists are engaging with these conservation projects. and even if i never come back here again, it is good to know i have left a mark — hopefully in a positive way. wow, you're looking like a proper action woman, sandra. you're ready to go? yeah, everything is ready now. cool so what are you going to do, exactly? now i am bringing this rope onto the nursery. i will attach it over there and it is perfect conditions for them to grow properly, so we don't need to do much more. cool and i've noticed it says bbc travel show. yes, this will be your baby corals, your effort to help the maldives. let's go for it. let's go! see you later! yeah, take care. good luck! what a beautiful place! finally, we are heading back to india where in 2017, rajan went to shillong in meghalaya to try his hand at a traditional local sport and see if he could hit the target. this is called teer, derived from the hindu word for �*arrow�*. a target is mounted and 50 archers have just a few minutes to hit it as many times as possible. the significance of the sport dates back to the early 1800s when khasi warriors defended their homelands not with guns or swords, but with bows and arrows. i am aiming for the target, obviously, which is, which one of them? the small one. the small one there, ok. now, why is it going to the ground like that? show me. get out the way, everyone. here we go. don't move! wow! now we are getting there! spectators get involved by taking bets on the number of arrows that hit the target. and crucially, it is only the last two numbers of the total score that matter. meghalaya became one of the few states to legalise gambling in 1982. people here are very superstitious? they'll dream about their dead family, a dog, a cat, and they will try to make it into numbers. so i have 200 rupees of my hard—earned money here. i want to go and gamble. can you show me how to do it? yeah. come on then. so let's go to one of these counters. namaste, hello. hello to you, sir. i want to gamble on a lucky number, yeah? yeah. two digits, lucky number. i want to go for 39. 39? yeah. and i'm going to put... 100. ..100 rupees on 39. can you fix it so i win? all chuckle. it depends on your fortune number. it depends on my fortune? i had a dream last night. i had a dream that... you can dream anything. that a strange dog walked past me and that dog had the number 39 on it. is it the kind of dreams people have? oh, who knows. wish me luck! it's a tense moment as the numbers are counted... 310, 320... ..and my dream turns out to be a shaggy dog story. seven... 97 was the result. still, two of my lucky numbers — nine and seven. rajan in india, back in 2017. well, that's all for this week, but here's what's coming up next week. mike is off the coast of tanzania, exploring a coral reef that scientists say could be a game—changer for some endangered species. underwater was a magnificent. it was like a fantasy movie. do join us for that if you can. but for now, keep safe and keep inspired by following us in all the usual places on social media. so from me and the rest of the team here in london, it's goodbye. hello there. there always seems to be something to talk about with the weather across the uk. we started the week with heavy rain, particularly in the far north and west. then wednesday brought the warmest day of the year so far with temperatures peaking at 18 celsius. a little bit fresher for thursday, yes, but still highs of 12 or 13 degrees — that's above average for late february. all the warmth, however, has moved its way over to the near continent and a change of wind direction — a fresher westerly — meant that fresher feel to thursday's weather but again, those temperatures are still pretty good for late february. it does, however, mean that clear skies by day will lead to clear skies through the night, so we are going to see quite a chilly start to our friday morning. at dawn, those temperatures will be hovering around orjust below freezing in a few places. the only exception, the far north and west. a weak weather front toppling across high pressure will introduce a little more in the way of cloud, but it's all going to be about this high over the next few days, keeping the story relatively quiet. so yes, we will pretty much have some sunshine from dawn to dusk across the country, with the exception of north—west, the great glen. here, a little bit more of a breeze and maybe a little more in the way of cloud. but in terms of the feel of things, pretty decent temperatures once again — 10—12 celsius the high. now, as we move out of friday into the start of the weekend, the high pressure is going to firmly establish itself across the country. we'll have a weak weather front toppling across that high again in the far north—west. it will introduce more in the way of cloud and some light, patchy rain across central and southern scotland first thing in the morning, but a very weak affair, and either side of that frontal system to north—west scotland and central and southern england, there'll be decent slices of sunshine to be found and temperatures, well, 10—12 degrees in the north, 1a in the south—east. maybe just that little bit cooler and disappointing where the cloud will linger. but the high stays with us for the second half of the weekend and so, again, that means a relatively dry, settled story, but plenty of sunshine by day is going to lead to some clear nights and if you're a gardener or grower, it's worth bearing in mind that we could see a return to some frost and some fog, which may well be slow to lift away. but there will be some dry, sunny weather in the forecast — not only for the weekend but, as you can see, for much of next week as well. take care. this is bbc news. i'm james reynolds. our top stories: president biden holds his first telephone conversation with king salman of saudi arabia ahead of the us releasing an intelligence report about the murder of saudi journalist jamal khashoggi. in a video call, the queen urges people to be selfless and have the jab. it is obviously difficult for people if they have never had a vaccine but they ought to think about other people, rather than themselves. one of the world's biggest bands, k—pop�*s blackpink, urge their fans to take action on climate change after being inspired by a david attenborough documentary. and the pop superstar lady gaga offers a $500,000 reward to get her two french bulldogs back after a gunman shoots her dog walker and steals the animals.

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