Top Gear Tonight: Burma Road Trip – yes, it’s Top Gear Christmas in March

Wet in Burma in part 1 of the Top Gear Christmas Special

Top Gear tonight – episode 6 of series 21 – isn’t actually part of the regular series twenty one (that was done and dusted with last week’s Porsche 918 Spyder episode) but is the first part of a two part Christmas Special Road Trip. Yes, March is a bit late for a Christmas Special, but it’s becoming the Top Gear norm.

What isn’t normal is the fact that there are no cars for Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May to drive, instead they’re all in beaten up trucks bought sight unseen from the internet for a road trip across Burma to the River Kwai.

Burma, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, lurks in South East Asia and has a huge coastline along the Bay of Bengal and has been pretty much closed to the West under the Military Junta which took control in the early 1960s.

But Myanmar is starting to open up after the military ceded some control to a ‘democratically’ elected civilian Government in 2011 and its most famous political dissident, the charismatic Aung San Suu Kyi, was released.

So it’s a place we don’t really know or understand, so it’s going to be fascinating to see Burma’s glory as the boys play silly buggers in lorries; let’s just hope they let Burma shine through the silliness.

The aim of the Road Trip is to reach the River Kwai in Thailand where the boys are to build a bridge.

They’re playing with a sensitive bit of history here, with British prisoners of war constructing the Burma railway as slave labour for their Japanese captors, although there are some inspiring stories around the River Kwai Bridge which we hope will be part of the road trip story.

The first part of the Top Gear Christmas Special – Episde 6 of Series 21 – is on BBC2 at 8pm.

By Cars UK