Top Gear Tonight: African Road Trip to find the source of the Nile (Part 1)

Top Gear tonight – Series 19, episode 6 – is what should have been the Christmas Special with a road trip across Africa in cheap estates to find the source of the Nile.

We’ve only had five episodes of series 19 of Top Gear, and it’s all but finished. All that’s left is to air what should have been the 2012 Christmas special.

Taking a leaf out of the Harry Potter School of making the most of what you’ve got, Top Gear has decided that the Christmas Special should actually air over two episodes in March – the first one tonight, the second next Sunday.

The brief is to travel across Africa to find the source of the Nile – the first TG trip back to Africa since the Botswana outing – and do it in a trio of estate cars costing under £1500.

Jeremy Clarkson opts for a BMW 5 Series Touring, Richard Hammond goes with the Subaru Impreza WRX Estate and James May picks the Volvo 850 R Estate, all of which seem like quite sensible choices. And it must have taken a while as James and Richard are sporting beards.

The mission – to travel the length of the Nile and reach its source – is one that should be genuinely challenging, with the Nile flowing from Egypt through to Lake Victoria, which was always considered the source of the Nile and lies between Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

But in recent years explorers have decided that one of the many tributaries that flow in to Lake Victoria is actually the Nile too, so it’s reckoned that the actual source of the Nile lies in Rwanda’s Nyungwe Forest. But you can probably bank on the boys deciding it’s actually a running tap in Kigali.

The Top Gear Christmas Special (part 1) – which is actually episode 6 of series 19 – airs tonight on BBC2 at 8pm.

By Cars UK