Expedition: Search for the Nile: Season 1, Episode 2

1 - 2: Episode 2

As Victorian rivalries peaked and feuds intensified over the true source of the Nile, Adventurers Ben and Dwayne set out with a train of Ox Carts heading for the shore of Lake Victoria, hoping to find the answer.

They discover a complex history of conflicting opinions, claims, counter claims and backstabbing. They face their own perils, heading deep into impenetrable and deadly jungles, struggling across disease ridden swamps and experiencing firsthand the struggles that the great Victorian explorers, such as Livingstone, Speke and Stanley faced over 150 years ago, deep in the heart of Africa. Struggles that led to failure for many, death for some and victory for one.

When Livingstone disappears for nearly a decade, a young Welshman by the name of Stanley is dispatched to track him down. He hears of an old white-haired man living in a small village, in central Africa. In one of the world's most famous meetings he finds the missing, presumed dead Livingstone, uttering the immortal words "Dr Livingstone I presume?", second only to Neil Armstrong's famous phrase when he landed on the moon.

Together Livingstone and Stanley go onto disprove Burton's Lake Tanganyika theory, leaving only two other possible sources up for grabs. But tragedy overtakes Livingstone and one of the World's greatest explorers dies in Central Africa, his embalmed body is carried thousands of miles back to Westminster Abbey for a state funeral.

But the Source of the Nile is still unsolved and Stanley, now a seasoned African explorer sets out to reveal the source once and for all. Our modern-day adventurers Ben and Dwyane cross scorched African Savannah, bash through thick tropical jungles, wade through deep swamps to eventually reach the mighty Nile, the world's greatest river, seeing for themselves just how spectacular it is. Finally, years after the Victorian race for the Nile began, they arrive at the location which would eventually be proven and accepted as its source, solving one of the world's greatest geographical puzzles though one of the greatest yet deadliest feats of exploration.

The legacy of what these men achieved, not necessarily heroes but men who performed heroic deeds, is summed up as Ben and Dwayne set sail down the world's greatest River, the Nile.