James Norton | Witnessing a Buddhist Sky Burial in Tibet

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow travelers.

0:09Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them. I would just like to say thank you to Mason Rose, the sales and communication agency that represents some of the finest hotels around the world for partnering with Travel Secrets, the podcast. Today, my guest is the brilliant and gorgeous actor, James Norton, famed for so many roles that I'm not even going to go into them, but I suppose I have to mention Tommy Lee, the most terrifying man on the television, Happy Valley.

0:48I loved Grantchester. There are just so many wonderful things, McMafia, really, honestly, the list goes on and on. And as I said to you at the beginning, I came to see you last year in A Little Life, which was one of the most brilliant plays that I have ever sat through three hours and 40 minutes. Yeah, it was a big one. I said to you before, I always feel like I should thank people who sat through the whole thing because it was grueling for you. It was grueling for me, but the audience. I just don't know how you did it, you know, night after night, but also matinees as well. Yeah, it was a very strange experience.

1:18And the weirdest thing about it, throughout the whole thing, every morning I'd wake up and I'd feel rage. I'd feel like, why did I put myself through this? And then there's this strange amnesia which sets in a theatre, which friends of mine who have had have kids they say it's the same thing where you go I'm never doing this again and then about three four months later the evolutionary kind of thing kicks in you go do you know what I will theater for some weird reason three or four months after I finished Little Life I you know initially I was like I'm never ever doing anything like that again and now I'm kind of craving it oh are you it's a theater is a very strange drug it's a very addictive kind of you know that presence of mind and and yeah the hyper aware sort of flow state that you reach is exhausting and it takes everything from you but it is so gratifying well we're delighted that you do so much and so much tv and film when you did war and peace i think you filmed in russia yeah i mean this is the beauty of my job is that i get to travel we were talking about holidays recently and i was saying how i haven't been on many holidays in the last years few years because i've got my work-life balance completely kaput but that's that doesn't mean that i haven't traveled the beauty of my job is that i get to you know whisked off around the world and and i and also So when you're making a movie or a TV show, you get a certain kind of access, which you wouldn't otherwise get as a tourist.

2:30And when you did Mr. Jones, weren't you in Ukraine? We were in Ukraine. We shot in Kiev in a place called Doch in Kharkiv. We were actually kicked out of Kharkiv because the mayor at the time was very pro-Russian and he found out that the film was all about the Holodomor. And after a night, after a day of shooting, we meant to do two days, and then we got a very dramatic call from the producers in our hotel saying, we have to leave tonight because the mayor wasn't happy. It was very intense. But that was the only hostility we had in the whole experience. Everyone on that movie, the crew and the cast, the Ukrainians were just the most amazing people to work with.

3:05Yeah, that was a joy. And also bizarrely and sadly very prescient. I was going to say, with what's going on now, it's so prescient. Isn't that extraordinary? And War and Peace, we got to go into Catherine the Great's Summer Palace in the middle of the night where the czar's balls would have taken place and we had to we were allowed to kind of reenact our own czar's ball with the orchestra in the room and I mean that is a privilege I get it is and we're going to go into your travel secrets in a minute but I remember reading about you setting up a production company and going to Nepal and teaching people about drama and things like that so you've done so much travel and I'm sure you'll tell us more about it but But before we actually go into the travel secrets, can you just tell us a bit about yourself and how travel has impacted the person you've become?

3:50I mean, did you travel when you were a child? Just talk about your upbringing a bit and how it's impacted you. I mean, hugely. Travel for me is so important. I mean, it was from the age, from, you know, for the age dot. I remember my mom and dad taking us off on, I mean, like a lot of families, we would start with Cornwall. And we have one of those trailer tents, which we would drive down the A1 and usually we'd have to break the, because I grew up in North Yorkshire. So we'd have to sometimes sleep in a service station car park. We'd put the, I don't think they exist anymore, but the car would have like a trailer attached on it, which would then have a tent.

4:24And you'd sort of make a home out of this kind of shanky little trailer. So we were quite sort of, you know, gung ho about the whole thing. camping lots of trips to France south of France again kind of camping but my mum and dad I think one of the things I'm most grateful to them for is that they have instilled in me this inquisitiveness and a trust as well you know I never thought of travel or foreign countries or foreign food those kind of those experiences where you're diving into the unknown I never felt that they were in some way threatening or I should I mean I'm careful or probably not quite careful enough and I'm sure my mom and dad would have liked to have instilled in me a little bit more care maybe but um they have definitely given my sister and I a very healthy attitude towards um travel and appetite for it and so yeah we they took us around the world we went to Sri Lanka when we were in our early teens and that was a really big moment for me I remember kind of diving in south asia and then i went back there when i was 18 for about eight months on my own so i that was a very sort of important trip but um actually in terms of where i've come from in my sort of arrival into adulthood i think the most important year for me and i know it's a bit of a cliche but when you have that year away after school the gap year for me it was huge because i had i'd had a strange time at school.

5:52I went to one, you know, one of these old big boarding schools and I loved theatre and music and I wasn't so good at rugby and I went through puberty really late. So it's, you know, it wasn't the most rewarding period for me, the years of sort of teenage years at school. And then when I left school, I decided to take a year in between then and university. and I again I guess thanks to my mom and dad I was really gung-ho about it I did three months working multiple bar jobs one in a golf club one in a hotel earned about three and a half thousand pounds and then I just packed a bag and went on a trip for eight months around South Asia on my own at 18 yeah it was crazy I think back to my as a photo I brought a photo actually relating to that trip I can't quite believe how brazen I was I went to like Nepal and Tibet and India and I just I didn't see a single person I knew for eight months that is very brave I know it's mad but but I realize now how important that trip was for me in so many ways my relationship with the world and travel and myself mostly myself mostly the fact that it just gave me confidence after having you know teenage years are complicated for lots of people they were really complicated for me I I just, I didn't have the greatest time.

7:09And I think I really needed to sort of like shed that period in my life. And it was nothing to do with anyone or anyone's fault. It just was an angsty period. Well, you were at Ampleforth, weren't you? I was at Ampleforth. Which is a big rugby school as well, isn't it? It was rugby, orientates, lots of testosterone, lots of sort of, you know, one-upmanship. And it's quite competitive. And I did well there. I knuckled down and I worked hard. And I did, you know, later on, I found my footing in things like the theatre. but it wasn't the happiest few years. And then when I traveled, I went on these eight months.

7:41I think now in hindsight, I realized how much I needed to just get away from everything, be on my own. And it really was the making of me. Like I came back and I felt like I had arrived in adult life. And you were ready for Cambridge. I was ready for sort of, yeah. Yeah, I was. And actually since then, I'm definitely a bit of a, I guess, that traditional extrovert quality of needing people to fuel me with my energy that I think I'm an introverted extrovert I think possibly I don't love to stand up in front of a room of people and give a speech that's like I hate that ironically everyone thinks actors love that but I do love to be surrounded by people my favorite place in the world is to be in the kitchen cooking for people but not having to talk to them so you chop away instead yeah well you can welcome everyone and give them a drink I'm so sorry I've got to go and do the potatoes and then you can go you know I mean you can be amongst your loved ones but not necessarily getting all the attention, which is I think probably the classic introverted extrovert thing.

8:36Oh, that's hilarious. So when I travel, that trip was a real challenge for me because I was on my own. And I remember having some really confronting moments where I was like, you know, crying my eyes out. It was pre-smartphones. I had a Nokia. Yeah, I had a Nokia at the bottom of my bag. So I didn't call anyone. I had a weekly internet cafe chat with my parents, which I would email them and say, we're going to six o 'clock, let's do an internet chat or whatever um and so yeah it was it was challenging but since then i've realized the importance so i use travel now as a as a time both to see the world and to um and to kind of you know learn the beauty of travel is learning but i also use it as a sort of time to challenge myself and and spend time on my own which isn't natural for me and it's not always that easy it's i find i find that the sum of the places i go now when i travel on my own it's challenging and confronting in all the right ways.

9:31So that all stemmed from that year away. Well, let's get into your travel secret. Sorry, I'm going therapy already. No, it's fantastic. What is your number one destination that you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime? Okay, so I would have said Tibet, but I don't know if Tibet is the same as it was when I was there. I went there when I was on that trip when I was 18 and I've never been anywhere like it since um and had some of the most profound experiences i've ever had if i could say to people go to tibet 20 years ago and it is now nearly 20 no it's more than 20 years ago gosh i know time goes very fast i know i know i can always say oh my my gap year those few years ago it's nearly over 20 years ago tibet two decades ago was very different to what it is now so i don't know if i should say to people go there but in maybe instead of that i would say the Himalaya.

10:24For me, I've been back there. I spent four months there when I was 18 and, and then I couldn't stay away. And I've gone walking and I took a theater company, as you say, a company called Backpacked from university. And we went and taught, um, we went and did theater workshops and schools across the Himalaya and India and Nepal. Um, so I think for me, there's something very special about, um, the Kathmandu Valley, um, you know, lay under Dak and all, You know, the north, the Derudun, the sort of northern Indian Himalayan towns. Also, there's something undoubtedly special and magical. My sister actually got married, not in Derudun, but you got to Derudun and then you went up into the Himalayas.

11:08I think it was called, not Lambertville, but something like that. Anyway, it was the most beautiful place up in the Himalayas. Nothing around. It's breathtaking. It was amazing. And you've got, and I, you know, I studied theology at university. And so I'm, you know, I think probably partly my degree or the direction my degree took was down Hinduism and Buddhism. And that was a lot to do with the fact that I traveled in South Asia that year and then since. And there's something magical about the kind of Tibetan Buddhism coming from the north and then Hinduism coming from the south. And as a result, particularly Nepal is just full of religious festivals.

11:43and every single weekend there seems to be this parade, colour and dance and music. You know when you arrive in a town or you might be on a holiday and you just happen upon a jazz festival or something, you think you're so lucky. In Nepal and Kathmandu, every weekend there's something magical and alive and you just feel constantly immersed and surrounded by the religious sort of components but just a general mess of life. So yeah, I love. Did you, have you ever met the Dalai Lama? I have not met the Dalai Lama. I mean, I know he doesn't live in Tibet because he's not allowed to, is he? No, he's been ousted from Tibet.

12:21I think he'd be an amazing person to meet. Incredible, yeah. And it's very interesting the question what's going to happen next after. I think possibly they're not going to have a Dalai Lama, I think I read. But there were many, many other llamas, Panchen Llama and others. So yeah, I would like to go back. Although when I was there in Tibet, I could see these big Chinese structures being built behind the old Tibetan buildings. And I think obviously that was 20 years ago. And I was there. I was very fortunate to be there just before they built the railway from Beijing to Lhasa. So it was still, it was Chinese or officially in Chinese territory.

12:57But the Tibet of old still existed. And we went out into the hills and stayed with monks in the monasteries out there. I tell you where I would like to go, which sounds similar, is Bhutan. Yes. I think that would be a really, I mean, I know they have more sort of luxurious places to stay now. But I think that would be a really interesting place to go to. And is it Bhutan where you can only visit a certain number of months a year? Yes, and also you have to have a special visa. And it's really, I mean, they are keeping the numbers smaller, which is nice, I think. I think anywhere in the Himalaya, there's something otherworldly.

13:29You know, I went walking in the Annapurna's. I had this bizarre experience traveling again on my own and I went for 10 days and I would be walking past these groups who spent thousands of pounds on these big tour guides you know like Sherpas and tents and one family with like four a family of four with sort of 12 guides and Louis Vuitton trunks on their back yeah yeah yeah sometimes the actual Sherpas would be carrying the family themselves because they had these baskets and they would have bare feet which is I I mean, if you've seen the Himalayan, those guys who kind of curry up and down the paths are just insane.

14:05But I was so, yeah, again, I just so naive and confident at 18. I remember I arrived in Pokhara, which is the town feeding into the Himalaya, because I'd heard that there's some really great hiking around the area. Bought a map, like a paper map, hired some boots from a local hiking shop. Didn't think I couldn't afford to pay for my own boots. So I hired some and a rucksack and a tent. No, I didn't do a tent. I stayed in lodges. And I just, I got a taxi or a bus, I think, because I couldn't afford a taxi, to the bottom of the path. And I just walked and it was 10 days. Yeah. And I would pass these families with like 15 guides.

14:41And they go, sorry, they couldn't quite believe it. You're 18 and you're just wandering up the hill. And I would sort of attach myself to groups to keep a bit safe. And I got to the top of, I got to the base camp just below the Annapurna base camp, which is called, it's called within the Nepali name, It's a fishtail mountain. It's an unclimbed mountain. Many people have tried and failed and died trying. And they have a base camp. And there's a walk you can do from that camp to the Annapurna base camp. And I was with a group of Israelis. It was Passover, I remember. And we all decided to wake up in the dark and walk the last like three or four hours in the dark.

15:16So we'd arrive at dawn. And I woke up and one of the Israeli group had had bad altitude sickness throughout the night. and I was standing outside they were in a tent I was standing outside their tent with my pack and my little torch and I was like okay ready to go and they said we're actually not going to do it I was heartbroken so I was like you didn't do it I did it on my own I walked up this hill at the very top and when you get to the top of the Annapurna base camp I think there I think there are eight or nine peaks in the world which are over 8 ,000 meters and I think three or four of them are in that bowl and I walked up and I was on my own as the sun rose It was extraordinary.

15:52I remember seeing these 8 ,000 meter peaks and it looked like there were these huge kind of cones of ice with a single light bulb flickering and I could just sense the outline of these mountains. That's amazing. It was mad. I mean, if I think back now, if I had an 18-year-old son, I'd be like, you dare. You're not going to do that. He won't tell you. He'll just do it anyway. And unfortunately, he will have not a smartphone. He'll have an iPhone. You'll be able to track him. I will. I'll be following the dot. I'll be following the dot. Yes, true. Do not do what I did. Oh, that's brilliant. Let's go on to your next travel secret.

16:23What's your most unexpected? I mean, that sounds very unexpected anyway, but what's your most unexpected travel experience? I mean, there are so many. It's quite an intimidating podcast to come on, especially if you love travel. Because there's so many. Yeah, and I want to do them justice and make sure that I get it right. That's the story of my life. I must get it right. The first one which comes to mind, I'm going to butcher the name of this Mexican town, is called San Juan Chaputa. I think it's it was a uh a trip I was on I was in my early 20s and I was traveling again on my own I took another sort of Easter or summer holidays out and just bought a ticket I never have any plans on these trips I just go and wander yeah I mean for I'm quite a sort of type a control freak personality in life but then when I go traveling I intentionally never plan so I just arrive yeah I usually have a hotel on the first night and then I just disappear.

17:23And that was one of the trips in Mexico, which I did when I was in my early mid-twenties. And I'd just gone from like Huaca in Puerto Escondido and I'd sort of spent a bit of time on the south coast. And I was traveling up. I can't remember where I was even heading. And I arrived at this town and it was the strangest experience because I hadn't read about it. I think probably it probably is on the tourist track. I mean, it didn't feel like any other tourists were there. So maybe it's a completely random. I don't know how I ended up there anyway. With your map. With my map. Yeah, exactly. My little paper map.

17:54And I think this is even pre-smartphones already. So, yeah, again, I just sort of happened upon this place. And it was this church in the middle of this quite nondescript Mexican town. And it was this mixture of indigenous and Catholic customs. And I walked into the church. And this is why it was so surprising. They were sacrificing chickens in the main nave of the church, up and down. So there were bodies of chickens all the way up the church. And then all around were these small statues of all the saints. And they were offering Coca-Cola to the saints. I know. Can you imagine? It blew my mind.

18:33I know. I couldn't believe it. I was like, someone has slipped some heavy acid into my drink because I'm tripping out. I'm seeing dead chickens, Coca-Cola and saints. Yeah. it was the weirdest most surprising and just sort of wonderfully um i guess yeah there's something only you would never make it up would you you'd have to actually see that to believe yeah and it was very it was a it was a very sort of alive sort of sacred place it wasn't like gimmicky as it wasn't as i said before it was on the tourist route it definitely actually wasn't because they were really surprised you know when you they were like who's this guy yeah taking photos and and why is he you know he's drinking coca-cola he should be giving that to the saints but it was this it was it was one of those i felt so privileged and and lucky to have like wandered into this very bizarre kind of mess and i think because of again again my my interest in in faith and um religion religion and cult and all those things you know sort of it was this wonderful mixing pot um well that's terribly unexpected what's another one a very sort of um powerful and um it was just unexpectedly poignant uh experience i had was was actually in tibet um i uh had heard i was in larsa and i'd heard about this thing called a sky burial have you heard about these things um so funny because sometimes when you're in a pub and you want to regale your travel stories people roll their eyes but this is great i can just do it i can just do all my lovely my favorite travel story um so i was in larsa and um i met again i was traveling on my own i met this guy who'd said to me do you want to come on this trip we have to leave at 4 a.m in the morning because the authorities don't you're not really meant to watch a sky burial and i remember thinking should i i don't know if this is appropriate because it wasn't it was a tibetan custom in the hills and in a monastery but someone had told me that it was very special and there was a one monastery where you could go and observe if you were respectful and i sort of thought when am i ever going to do this i should and possibly people might frown at that but i did it and apologies to those who are offended by it.

20:35So we had to leave Lhasa in the dark at four in the morning in this Land Rover. And we traveled up probably three hours out up into the hills in the Himalaya above in Tibet to this really remote monastery. And there were, I think, about three or four of us. It was a very small group. And we arrived in this monastery and we were taken by a monk up another path up into the hill to a sort of stone circle, like an altar. It felt very kind of Game of Thrones-y. It just felt otherworldly. And it surrounded by mist, very quiet. And then out of the mist came three monks carrying three bodies, dead bodies.

21:20So in Tibet, there's no trees because you're in the Himalaya and you're very high. And it's very hard to bury any bodies because it's all rock and ice. so the way that they um traditionally get rid of or dispose of the body after having had two or three days of meditation and and various kind of buddhist rituals over the body at a certain point it's it's it's uh seen that the body is that the soul has left or it's not a soul because we're talking buddhism but basically at a certain point the the remains of the human being are just seen as a carcass and to be disposed of. It's not particularly, there's no sort of value attributed to it.

22:00So the way they get rid of it, it is a sacred ritual, but it's not sort of done in this kind of, you know, there's no coffin or, you know. They literally had the bodies. They literally slumped over their shoulders and they arrived on this stone circle and they dumped the bodies on the floor. And then out of their robes, they pulled these really medieval looking instruments, knives and these like hooks. and they started slicing the bodies up yeah and we were and i was standing there with these three other travelers and we were probably five meters away from these monks and they were just slicing like this quite calmly it was not done in any kind of panic at all and then out of the mist i i can't i cannot begin to describe how intense this was the mountains felt like it was moving and and it sounded like there's this weird noise this kind of um collective noise and we realized that there was thousands of vultures all coming off the hill in these waves and they knew what was happening and they and they moved out of the mist i know it was unreal this is dawn as well because we'd have to come in the north it's probably like five or six in the morning and they've got closer and closer and they started to push against that it was almost like a kind of imagine a crowd at a festival like trying to get to the and they were pushing and pushing and the monks would look at i could see them they were looking over their shoulder at the vultures as they approached and they started to cut quicker and quicker and it got more and more sort of dramatic.

23:18And at a certain point, one of the vultures at the front of the queue just jumped and the monks jumped back. And at this point they were doing it really frantically. And they jumped off the stone circle and the vultures all just descended and they gobbled up the bodies. And I remember seeing, I just remember seeing a foot, a human foot go up into the gullet of the vulture. Yeah. Unreal. And then at a certain point, once the flesh had been eaten, the monks pushed the vulture's back scared them away and they went back in with his new instruments and all that were left for the bones and they cut the head off the skull and they removed the skull and they took that away that was going to be reused as a i think as a bowl or something i don't know like maybe a bowl but it was definitely kept the skull the top of the skull and then they crushed the rest of the body up i mean i remember that i literally remember the brain just being popped on the floor it was unreal and then the vultures came back and ate the rest of it that's unbelievable yeah i've never I've never heard a story like that in my life.

24:14So you had to do that. Absolutely. You had to, you will never ever experience anything like that ever again. I won't. And I, and I should add the caveat that I was very aware that I was watching something incredibly sacred. And I, I hope that there aren't people listening to this who, and I'm sure there are, and I should genuinely say like that, that it was done with such respect. And love. Yeah. And we, and we were very, we, we kept our distance and we weren't in any way to, no photographs. I don't have a single, of course, no photographs. The monks were very aware that we were there. It was all done very respectfully.

24:48I do know that there probably will be people listening going, that shouldn't have been observed, and it wasn't right that you were there. And certainly the rules were that you weren't meant to be there. But as I say, it was done with real reverence. And that was the year before I went to study university. And those experiences really informed my journey then into Buddhism and Hinduism. And I now go to Buddhist retreats in the south of France. and I studied a lot of work, focus on Buddhism. So are you a Buddhist? I mean, am I a Buddhist? I go to a retreat called Plum Village, which I love. I've been the last few years.

25:23Where is that? It's in the Dordogne region. Oh, lovely. And it's an amazing, amazing... And you meditate and... Yeah, I don't have a very strict practice the rest of the time, but I know the community there now and I know the abbot and it's a very special place. What's it called? Plum Village. Plum Village. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese, well he was, he died sadly a few years ago, but he set up this incredible movement. And it's a very friendly, very accessible form of Buddhism. If you're like someone like me who is interested and knows the value in it, but just like, yeah, life just always.

25:57Yeah, it's Buddhist light. Buddhist light. And actually I read something about you that you do this cold water plunging that your parents instilled in you, which now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. What do you call it? A P, what is it? we call it pbd yeah we were we were the pre-breakfast dip yeah exactly i'm glad you remember that yeah we were like we were original cold swimmers um and i don't know why yeah i mean obviously we just did it whenever there was a body of water near our family my extended family as well cousins aunts uncles there was always a group most most most of us would always end up jumping in and it would always be a chorus of the cousins every morning going i fucking hate this family we're all adopted you know hey we're all psychopaths yeah and and then there would always be some hearty mom and dad and aunt songs about come on you know you'll feel good afterwards yeah and we'd always get in and of course we always felt great and then there would be this moment afterwards where we'd all be sitting around the table kitchen table like got that guzzling up the sort of the fry up feeling amazing yeah so i've just i've just loved done that for my whole life and now every i swim every morning every day in england yeah and cold i just i get into cold water I love it.

27:05Well, I went to Gordonstone and I had to have a cold shower for five years of my life. And we used to have to jump into the North Sea when we were on our cruise every year. So I feel like I've done it. Even if I go to the hairdresser and they say, would you like a cold rinse after? I say, no, thank you. I've done that. I don't need to do it anymore. I feel like I've got my cold water swimming behind me. Let's go on to your most underrated or overrated. So something that you think was totally overrated and if you think that's too mean then you can do something that's underrated I think this is going to be a strange answer because I think and I know for a fact that the reason I'm saying this is because of where I was in my headspace at the time I think it it was surprised me at the time so basically um to give context this I said that I had had a very busy few years recently and I've been trying to go on holiday for a long time and um at the beginning at the end of last year I had a trip booked to Japan I had two three weeks booked and then work got in the way and I had to push it to January and I had this crazy sort of build up to the end of the year and it got more and more intense with work and life and it was just like I just met the mania kind of took hold and then Christmas happened and suddenly I was like it like it was kind of white noise this is I felt great but also kind of slightly lost because you kind of become addicted to the race I do I love the sort of ferocity of my life yeah I really strive well I I function well when I'm under stress and so when you remove all the stress it's something kind of strange that happens to me which is why I love to kind of extract myself out of that and I have to do it quite forcibly and it's confronting but it's also really healthy for me to do it so that's why I went a new year I went on the retreat after Christmas I went on my own to Plum Village and I had a week and then I had a week in London where I sort of got my head together and then I went to Japan and I've always always always wanted to go to Japan I know that everyone says it's on the top of everyone's list it's particularly I think recently it's suddenly you know culturally the cuisine the clothes I bought so many clothes out there that um You know, I just, everything about that country is beguiling and something so specific and unique about it.

29:22And stylish and, yeah. Stylish and elegant and, yeah, just intoxicating. I was really excited about going. And then I got a call on the flight over there. I got a text from my agent saying, I'm really sorry, but you've just been offered a Guy Ritchie movie with Anthony Hopkins and Benedict Cumberbatch and Rosamund Pike. Like, would you, can you, she said, I know you're going to hate me, but, and you don't have to come home, but. Please. We think you should, you know, you, me and the American agents. So I had a week, what was meant to be two and a half, three weeks. I had a week and I was potentially going to extend.

29:53And I think it's partly because I was, I knew I was going home and partly because I'd had this crazy end of the year. And then suddenly I was sort of on my own and it was confronting in a slightly the wrong way. I don't know why. I mean, I don't regret the trip at all, but I think what I was surprised about, and this is, I'm not saying that Japan is not in any way underrated. Japan is magical. I think what I was surprised about was how I felt I was kept at arm's length and I felt like the sense I got the whole time was that I was in an incredible museum and the exhibits were so fascinating and I couldn't get enough of them.

30:32But I was always behind a glass case. And the point of traveling alone is that I don't lean on my fellow travelers. I end up going to bars and restaurants and, you know, you're forced to engage, especially if you're a people person like I am. You want to go in and you have to immerse yourself in that culture. And I did have some amazing experiences. I went to a couple of bars in Kyoto and restaurants and I did have some really wonderful chats and experiences. But generally, I felt a little bit held at arm's length. You know, I was in Tokyo and I was trying to find a restaurant. and I walked into two or three places and I get it like I don't speak Japanese and it's just a real faff for them to have to explain the menu and everything else so they would just look at me and I could see there were available seats and they would just look at me and go no I'm sorry mate you know go and find somewhere else and so that was my first night that happened about two or three times I think it was mostly to do with the headspace I was in and and the fact that I my trip was cut short and I wasn't there long enough and I was in this kind of strange January blues anyway but I definitely came back from Japan thinking I need to go back I need to go back with probably a partner or or a friend who knows it someone knows it yeah and for longer yeah maybe a different time of the year it was it was amazing and I definitely had a taste of it but it wasn't the dream that I had I think you need to go but I need to go but I haven't been for 20 years and I used to go on business many many years ago and it was a totally different thing for women in business they were looking at me as if to say why aren't you sitting there taking notes why are you speaking which was very difficult and also every street sign was in Japanese the metro which is very clean was impossible to navigate the food was all live and coming to me and I was thinking and so many people say it's their most favorite place so I really feel like I've got to go back I mean if you're seeking a culture shock which I am always that what's I mean there are there are certain types of travel aren't there there's sort of the escapist holiday great love it I'm all for it but There's also the culture shock, which I seek.

32:24I crave. And that's why I try and go to the weirdest, most wonderful places. And Japan, the reason it was at the top of my list is because I knew it was going to offer that. And it did offer that. But there was this other part of the experience which felt like the culture shock I was sort of watching rather than experiencing. And I kind of wanted to, like, get lost in a way which I was used to in South Asia and other places. Well, you'll have to go back. And what was the film that you did or the TV show with Guy Ritchie? Oh, it's called Wife and Dog. and it's uh it's not you know we just finished shooting it um it was magical i mean to be honest as well you know it was hard to cut my trip short but then the the first day i was on a set with anthony hopkins and going toe-to-toe with him in a scene and i was like this is worth it definitely worth it let's go on to food and drink food and drink is so important in travel um your best meal your best cocktail how you like eating what you like eating what you don't like eating let's just talk about food and drink i mean i'll eat everything and anything i'm i'm definitely one for trying everything and probably to a fault i've probably ended up with some yeah yeah for sure i remember i ate a full i was older to goat brain masala in india and it was just a goat's brain covered in masala sauce just wobbling like a jelly i ate it and it was kind of foul but i chowed it down i was in it was in um cambodia and i was so hung over on one of those like long distance buses again I was 18 and someone walked down the bus with um a big plastic bowl full of deep fried spiders the size of your hand like huge big black insects and I was with a traveler and I think the other person was like absolutely no hell no way in hell that I'm gonna do that and I was like you're starving no I wasn't it's not to do with hunger it's just because I I have this thing's like I've got to try it yeah I'm just a yes person and I'll do it and I did and I ate it and it was, yeah, I mean, the legs and the, that was fine.