In the world's highest mountains
are roads only the best can survive...
- You see this BLEEP you send us to?
Where the road averages a death
every 4 1/2 minutes...
I'm scared out of my mind.
And three truckers are risking everything...
- We got no protection whatsoever.
In trucks built on wood frames.
- You get hit, it's just gonna be sticks everywhere.
The world's deadliest roads
have already taken out the King of the Ice Roads.
- Well, I guess you could say India's got the best of me.
Now a new trucker takes on the Himalayas.
Brain-dead stupid.
And two veterans drive higher into the mountains,
past the Freefall Freeway and the Cutouts
to haul oversized loads on a narrow side road
called the Ledge.
- I don't want to go anywhere. I'm done.
Three truckers.
- See bodies laying on the road like suitcases.
Two months.
- This is survival of the fittest at its best.
A race at the top of the world.
- This is way different than anything I've seen back home.
Think I'd rather sit here and watch these guys all day
than go out on the road and...
BLEEP, no minds.
Look at this. Damn near head-on.
You see this BLEEP you send us to?
I know I'm going into a day of stress,
but this makes the trip to India kind of cool.
Unfortunately, I got to go back and deal with buses,
so we'll let these guys get on with their day.
Across the road is veteran Lisa Kelly.
Tires are good.
Nothing stuck in between here.
I don't hear anything leaking.
First day just terrified me.
I mean, absolutely petrified.
I've never been so scared in my life.
This is very extremely scary.
I think I'll get better and faster
and more comfortable with it.
I hope.
- There's a bunch of jackasses all over the road.
That just makes our job hard here.
It's like driving a big rig through a petting zoo.
Hey, buddy boy.
Skin and bones.
- I'm a softy when it comes to dogs.
This is the biggest thing that bothers me over here.
I'll take him if you don't.
All right, buddy, here we go.
- Gonna get him? - Yeah.
- Gonna take him? - Hell, yeah.
Pick 'em right up.
Hey, little buddy.
Want to lay down?
On a soft bed instead of the dirt
for the first time in your life?
It's so hard for us to see all these animals out here
just starving to death, you know?
And I wanted to pick a puppy that needed my help.
And back home in Alaska,
Lisa's already got a full house.
- Thing I miss most about home is all my animals.
- Taking little guy off the streets
and giving him a good home.
Bunch of softies.
The hardcore truckers.
Okay, let's crack on.
Unlike back home,
every trucker here rides with a spotter.
Let's go.
- I won't focus on the dog. Don't worry.
I'll only look when I feel safe.
Rick and Lisa
are headed off the Freefall Freeway
up a narrow side road called the Ledge
with sheer cliffs on one side,
an unstable rock face on the other,
and tight clearances overhead.
At the Jaypee Corporation Kuppa Dam site,
they'll pick up oversized steel grates
before squeezing back down the Ledge
to the Karcham Dam site, all in a single day.
You're such a good dog.
Oh.
Please...
Okay? - Okay.
He's just making sure I don't crash.
That'd be bad.
220 miles to the south,
there's a truck without a driver.
After two accidents in one day,
Alex Debogorski, King of the North American Ice Roads,
packed it in.
- Well, I guess you could say India's got the best of me
at this point.
But waiting in the wings
and looking for a challenge is Alabama trucker Dave Redmon.
- I'm on a person-powered rickshaw,
and we're gonna go pick the truck up today,
and it's going to be a hands-on experience learning,
and I hope instinct, you know, just really kicks in quick
and everything just goes real smooth.
Dave's been trucking for 24 years.
- I've hauled everything with the exception of live cattle
and and swinging meat.
But he's never seen anything like this.
- They claim to be the most dangerous.
It's my goal is to conquer those roads and come home safely.
Appreciate it.
Looks like we found the truck.
My first impression, this thing's pretty colorful.
I guess they're meant to be seen.
How you doing?
Sanjeeb?
Sanjeev.
All right. Dave Redmon.
Dave will be working with the same spotter as Alex.
You speak any English?
Little? A little English?
I'll look the truck over while they're working.
You got to crawl underneath it, look it over, check the brakes,
check the frame, check all the bolts,
look for rust trails.
If it's got tires and a transmission,
I can drive it.
Just that simple.
220 miles north...
- It's getting a little narrower here
and a little more rustic, you could say.
Is maverick trucker Rick Yemm.
- Wow, man. Intense.
Look at this. Look at this.
What did I get myself into?
Rick's over 6,000 feet above sea level
and slowly climbing the Ledge.
That's got to be 3,000 feet.
Oh, BLEEP.
That's steep, man.
And it's straight down.
One BLEEP-up and you're dead.
There's no hope.
Always like an adventure.
I definitely got an adventure now.
And the higher he goes,
the tighter the road gets.
- Slow, though. Slow.
Tight squeeze there.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes.
- It's literally a one-truck road.
You see that BLEEP?
Thousands of feet.
We're that far from the edge.
I really don't want to end up down there.
Stop.
A few miles ahead of Rick...
Pick them up now.
All the way going up, up, up, up.
I don't know about this road.
Lisa's taking it slower
as the road gets steeper and more narrow.
Now you can see down there.
- Yeah, a parachute, that's a good idea.
Parachute.
- This is such a narrow road that I am, like, literally
staring over the cliff.
Stop.
Holy...
Wow.
Oh, another one.
Guess it ain't over when you pass one.
And every time Lisa passes a vehicle,
she's forced right to the edge.
- Scary parts are just, like, coming around a corner
and there's someone there.
Oh.
Go, go, go, go.
Come, come.
No.
Okay.
- I thought that it wasn't supposed to get any worse
than what we just did.
This is way worse.
Yeah, don't tell me this is nothing.
Oh, gosh.
Now I'm scared.
This is scary.
There is no room for any other car.
BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP BLEEP.
Uh-uh. I don't want to.
I don't want to go anywhere. I'm done.
In the unforgiving Himalayas,
trucker Lisa Kelly's stopped on the edge of a cliff
in a face-off with a bus.
- Uh-uh. I don't want to.
I don't want to go anywhere. I'm done.
You drive.
With Lisa unable to go on,
her spotter Tashi moves the truck off the road.
Scared out of my mind.
Yeah.
You're reading my face fine.
No.
Let's go.
High in the Himalayas on a road called the Ledge,
another North American trucker may be finished.
Five miles back, Rick's also in a cliffside standoff.
Stop.
Stop. No.
- Not the best place in the world for a traffic jam.
You see that BLEEP?
Thousands of feet.
I don't get scared real easy,
but I've never been on a road like this.
I know a lot of people that'd quit, though.
If I couldn't do this nerve-wise,
I wouldn't come back.
I'm an off-road trucker.
This is what I do.
An hour later, Rick arrives
at the Jaypee Corporation Kuppa Dam site,
and tomorrow he'll load the massive steel grate
and head back down the Ledge.
Now we're done.
Finished.
Ah, finished.
You actually drive that?
That was awesome.
I hated it.
That was sweet.
I loved every second of that ride.
- Yeah, the first few turns were fine.
And we started getting higher.
I was like, "Okay".
I just love it.
I'm in the driver's seat
looking straight down over the edge.
I'm like, "This ain't right".
Oh, that was awesome.
- Jeez, I don't have a death wish.
It's a road.
You have control of the truck.
- I've never been that scared driving a truck before.
After today...
I don't know how I'm gonna do another six weeks, so...
I'm just gonna sleep on it
and see how I feel about it tomorrow.
One day at a time.
What do you need, honey?
Come here.
230 miles to the south,
Alabama trucker Dave Redmon's learning
how they load trucks in India.
We're getting all that.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- That whole load. Okay.
No forklift?
No lift? These are the lifts?
Look at this guy here.
I think OSHA would have a fit here.
- 50 KG. - 50 KG.
- One bag, 50 KG. - Okay.
50 KG is about 110 pounds.
Let's go. - Let's go.
I got 180 bags of cement.
Dave's first haul is nine tons of cement
that'll take him deep into the Himalayas
on the Freefall Freeway, the Cutouts,
and finally to the Jaypee hydroelectric facility
at Tapri.
- Oh, yeah. Right.
Go, go.
- I almost screwed up right from the start.
I almost went down the wrong side of the road,
drove into oncoming traffic.
My biggest concern about driving in India
is driving on the wrong side of the road
and shifting with my left hand.
Those are things I've never done in my life before.
Never.
I'm gonna try and do, you know, the absolute best I can here
to prove a point that the American truck drivers
can just about do anything.
It doesn't matter where you drop us off.
You know, we're gonna get the job done.
You know, if these people driving out here
knew who they were passing, I think maybe they'd, uh,
give it a little bit of second thought.
- I have no idea what he just said.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Yep, just got busted for running a red light.
It's gonna be a long, miserable day, I think.
220 miles to the north,
Lisa's at Jaypee's Kuppa Dam site.
Yesterday was rough.
She's decided to face the road
that defeated her yesterday.
- I'm gonna try again today, see how she goes.
I don't know how I'm gonna feel once I get up there,
but I'm gonna get in there and give it a shot.
Keeps going and going.
I am gonna eventually conquer this.
I already got butterflies in my stomach.
My stomach seriously just did a flip.
- Just gonna give a quick look at my truck,
make sure I got air in the tires
and make sure my springs aren't cracked or anything.
It's a pretty rough ride.
Lisa and Rick are headed back down the Ledge:
miles of deadly switchbacks, thousand-foot sheer cliffs,
and low clearances.
And they're each carrying an oversized, four-ton steel grate.
- We didn't have weight yesterday.
We had to come here to do the pickup,
so now we have weight this time,
and it was already scary yesterday.
The steel not only adds weight
but another foot of height,
making the tight squeezes on this road even tighter.
- Sticks out over the tops, it's so big.
I'm gonna try not to crack.
Let's get 'er done.
I won't focus on the dog. Don't worry.
I'll only look when I feel it's safe.
All right. Here we go.
More careful?
Man, that's not good when birds are flying level with you,
soaring on updrafts.
How's my tires on that side?
Okay.
No problem.
- No, I don't want you to get out.
Just stay right there and tell me how to go.
Okay, okay.
- We're all gonna die, and puppy doesn't even care.
He's just sleeping.
Loads always make it more difficult because it's weight.
And if I don't have the weight, I can stop faster,
so slow is the key for me
because I don't want to stop fast.
Well, even if the guard rail isn't doing anything,
it at least helps mentally.
I mean, it's, like, the best thing to do
is, like, not think about what could happen.
I just have to think of it like a video game.
Except I don't got any lives.
Just one.
Deep in the Himalayas, 20 miles from the Tibet border,
Rick's loading an oversized four-ton steel grate.
- It's a long descent down that road,
so you have the danger of obviously
burning your brakes out and running out of brakes.
Then you're really going for a ride.
That's when... what they say...
Let her go.
Jump, man, jump.
- All good. - Okay. Good.
Okay.
Here we go.
Back to the road.
Rick's ten miles behind Lisa
and headed back down the Ledge,
a 10-foot-wide road with a 1,000-foot drop on one side
and a landslide-prone rock face on the other.
- Doesn't matter how narrow the road is or whatever.
You drive on the road that's there.
You don't want to go down there.
You drive off it once,
and you don't have to worry about
driving off it any more times.
Oh. Hey, here we go.
Landslide that happened there.
Well, looks like that one's pretty fresh.
I don't recall seeing it when I came up yesterday.
Yeah, I wouldn't even call that one a rock.
It's a boulder.
We're lucky, 'cause if that boulder had have slid down
while we were driving by,
it would have knocked us clean off the road.
Right off the cliff.
That's Mother Nature. Can't predict her.
We're used to Mother Nature of up north and stuff.
She'll send snowstorms at us and stuff.
Here it can be a landslide.
You just got to react quickly.
I'm not taking any chances of running down the hill
in second gear, and that's it.
Better to be safe than sorry up here.
You lose the brakes, you're pretty much done.
There's no runaway lanes. There's no nothing.
BLEEP off.
But as Rick takes it slow...
BLEEP off.
Pain in my ass.
Traffic backs up behind him.
- Yes, there's a BLEEP forming a little bit.
You idiot.
And oncoming traffic is making it even worse.
You're in a car!
Yeah, I know.
People in cars in this country are BLEEP in the head, man.
I know you're there. Honked once.
I know.
Finally Rick gives in.
Oh, gosh.
BLEEP.
Yeah, I know. You're impatient.
Yeah, yeah.
Love to push one of them right off the cliff.
Just getting into the groove of everything today, I guess.
Little things like that
that get the morning started off just perfect.
230 miles to the south...
- I was driving. - Driver?
Yes, I'm driver.
Dave Redmon's been pulled over
for running a red light.
Yep, yep, yep.
Red light.
Yes, it turned yellow,
and I didn't want to slam on the brakes
and let somebody hit me, so I just went through.
Go.
- Go ahead? Thank you.
Go. - No?
Yeah, come on.
But this Alabama trucker's Southern charm
got him out of hot water.
- You don't stick around to ask him
why you're telling him to leave.
If he says leave, leave before he changes his mind.
When I got out of this truck and I walked back there to the cops,
as soon as that guy turned around and saw me,
he's like, "You're the driver?"
Maybe he was just so dumbfounded.
You know, if he wrote the ticket,
nobody back at the police station would believe him.
Now they're gonna be on the radio telling all their buddies.
Be looking out for a gringo.
Been a bad start to my first day here.
After the delay, Dave won't be making up any time
in this chaotic traffic.
- I was just kind of brushed up and thrown to the wolves.
Got a cow pulling out in front of me.
Bison, cow, double cheeseburger.
I don't know what to call that thing.
Trying to navigate your way through this controlled chaos
is, you know, gonna be a challenge
for an outsider like me.
- Slow down, slow down. Slow, slow, slow.
BLEEP damn.
- Sanjeev is kind of like my right-hand man,
my extra set of eyes.
Kind of to help me get through this traffic
and, you know, not hit anything on my left.
BLEEP.
Flying.
The traffic out here is just amazing.
It looks like L.A. on a Friday, 4:00 in the afternoon,
and everybody's drunk.
Slow?
Okay.
Oh, yep.
Yeah, yeah, just come down.
Just come down.
Now Dave won't be going anywhere.
- Couple minutes? Five minutes?
Indian railway, huh?
No time.
Okay, got a whole bunch of room.
Move over.
200 miles to the north,
oncoming traffic forces Rick to back down... again.
Yes, yes, yes.
- This is definitely a one-way traffic road.
And then when you get civilian vehicles
and they don't cooperate with you...
Back up.
We can't BLEEP... we can sit here all day.
Back up.
That BLEEP.
That guy's in a truck, and he wants me to back up?
BLEEP it.
I'm gonna give him the finger as he goes by too.
BLEEP moron.
Boyo went out and was arguing with the guy,
so I tried to back up on my own,
and I got over a couple more inches.
That was about it.
And just over a mile later...
- What the BLEEP are you thinking?
Back up.
Go!
What am I gonna do?
BLEEP it. I'm going.
Push 'em, is what I'll do.
On a narrow cliffside road
called the Ledge,
trucker Rick Yemm's in another standoff.
Push 'em, is what I'll do.
Idiots in these cars.
What a idiot.
He's in a pickup truck.
Can you fit?
Ugh.
BLEEP moron.
Yes, yes, yes, go.
Go.
You're on a narrow road,
and they want a truck to back up.
Swear, I wish I didn't have the language barrier
so I could yell at 'em,
but they don't understand a word I'm saying.
Can't even insult 'em.
Nothing.
I should have put it in park,
got back there, and punched him in the face.
Ten miles ahead of Rick,
Lisa's still fighting the road that defeated her yesterday.
Slow.
Oh, yeah.
- Keep left, keep left, keep left.
No problem.
Oh, don't get out, Tashi.
Please don't get out.
16 hours ago, Lisa was in the same position...
- Uh-huh. I don't want to.
And she quit.
- I don't want to go anywhere. I'm done.
This time, she stays behind the wheel.
- I don't want to go anywhere. - Come, come, come.
- No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to go.
Please don't make me do BLEEP I don't want to do.
Come, come, come.
Yes.
But the traffic has her pinned along the edge,
going nowhere.
- I don't think it would be half as bad
if I wasn't being pressured to do stuff
that I don't want to do, for one,
and for two, opposing traffic.
Finally, a break allows her an escape.
But Tashi continues to lead her.
- That rock's really low right there.
My load sticks up over the truck,
so I'm just, like, expecting to hear this scraping noise
at any moment.
Let's hear a crunch.
Ready for a crunch?
Oh, and I didn't hear a crunch.
I'd rather get out and run the whole way.
Are we getting blessed?
On the deadly stretch of road,
a Hindu holy man blesses passing drivers.
This northern India state's called Himachal Pradesh,
meaning "region of snowy mountains,"
but it's also called "land of the gods,"
and thousands of temples cling to its cliffside roads.
- Hi. - Hi.
How are you?
Good.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you.
I feel better now I got blessed.
Where is the train?
200 miles south,
Dave Redmon's still waiting for a train that's on India time.
I don't see 'em.
Standing here waiting for the 4:00 Amtrak
that's never gonna come.
Hey, as you can see over there, it's just a total mob scene.
You know, they just swarmed up there.
like ants on a doughnut on the ground, you know?
Let's get back to the truck,
so we get the hell out of here, yeah.
Man, look at this mess.
Mass confusion.
Now if this ain't nerve-racking...
- Yeah, go, go, go, go. Go.
- I mean, these people are oblivious.
Oh, look at this. A head-on collision.
I'm surprised those accidents don't happen more frequently.
You know, with the way they drive,
it's just amazing that you don't see bodies
laying on the road like suitcases.
Nope.
180 miles to the north...
Lisa's still on the Ledge.
Getting big old raindrops now.
And Rick's gaining fast,
despite the weather.
There's rivers of water
running down the road here and stuff.
When you get rain like this, there's always potential
for, like, the landslides, when it's pouring like this.
The rain weighs down and loosens the mountainside,
sending boulders crashing onto the road,
making this stretch a deadly place to stop.
- We've seen chunks of rock on the road
that wasn't there yesterday when we came through,
and BLEEP can come off the side and BLEEP...
then a landslide will wipe you right into the river.
There's a...
looks like a fresh one coming down there.
There's sections of this road where there's no guardrail,
so it's either someone's driven off of it,
or a landslide's happened and taken it out like here.
The sooner we get off this road, the better.
- You can imagine this whole thing is a rock slide area.
Yeah.
It's not good to stop here?
Oh, yeah.
You bet.
Go, go, go.
- Whoa, there's some rocks coming down.
Go, go, go.
- Whoa, there's some rocks coming down.
On a narrow mountain road,
trucker Lisa Kelly stopped exactly where she shouldn't be...
in a landslide zone.
- Oh, my gosh, they're just still coming and coming.
There's so many of 'em.
Look at 'em all.
Let's get out of here.
Almost got 'em all through here.
Oh, we got one straggler who wants to eat
instead of stay with the herd.
There goes the little lamb. Look at him.
He's so cute.
- Slow. Very slow.
Okay, let's go.
That was entertaining.
Is that, uh...
How about I wait?
Are we there yet?
I try to let Tashi give me a new Hindi word every day,
so my phrase of the day is...
And it means, "Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?"
It means, "How far are we?"
Yeah.
Lisa's almost conquered the road
that beat her yesterday.
But there's one last challenge.
- Oh, yeah, yeah. Whoa. Yeah, it is.
Hold on.
- Come, come, come, come, come, come.
Here we go.
Oh, the bridge was fine,
but I actually, like, survived the road.
After yesterday's defeat,
Lisa's made it to the bottom of the Ledge in one piece.
- I almost flat-out wanted to quit, it was so scary.
But we pushed through.
And, I mean, I'm the kind of person
that's like, "Well, I'll get there.
Even if it's, like, one mile an hour, I'll get there".
Oh, wow.
Wow, that's so cool-lookin'.
We are at our drop-off point.
It's right above my head.
Don't really want to get under it, you know?
I survived that road.
I don't want to be flattened by the end.
"Yay, I survived".
A few miles back...
It's kind of ba-a-ad.
Now Rick's stuck in the landslide zone.
- Thousands and thousands of the things.
What a way to herd sheep.
Go.
- This is, like, total wild west of the trucking world.
Can't go right.
- One minute. - Yep.
- Right, right. Right. Right.
Yes, yes, yes.
That's tight.
It's dangerous.
It's the most uncourteous road you'll ever find.
Ah. Get this unloaded.
120 miles south...
Come on, you BLEEP head.
Rookie Dave Redmon's initiation continues
as he winds into the mountains.
Look at this moron.
Look at all these people.
Soon as you get to any kind of civilization, it's just bam.
Come on.
20,000 people.
Standing on one street corner.
Telling you.
Don't anybody go home, watch cable TV?
Play some video games?
Get the BLEEP out of the road.
No sense.
No common sense.
Brain-dead stupid.
It's not like you're out on the interstate with the cruise set,
running 75 miles an hour.
This is very mentally draining on the body.
There's no street lights.
There's no city lights.
It's just absolute, total darkness.
These headlights don't, you know, shine very far,
so it's gonna be a long night
of trying to burn a hole through this darkness,
trying to see something that isn't there
or might be there.
Narrow road.
Drive slow.
And to the right, 7,000 feet straight down.
So, you know, fall off one of these cliffs,
there's no coming back.
Oh, look at that. Look at that.
- Slow drive. - Yeah.
This last couple hours has been pretty nerve-racking.
After taking 14 hours to truck 170 miles...
We're here.
Dave pulls into Shimla.
- This first day of driving is a success.
We made it here alive.
I've been in every state in the United States,
every big city in the United States,
just about every back road, farm road,
and there's nothing, nothing that I have ever seen
that compares to my first day out here.
And it's only gonna get harder
on the Alabama trucker.
- Left? - Yeah, left-hand.
BullBLEEP.
I ain't going across that BLEEP bridge.
Next he'll take on the Freefall Freeway
and the Cutouts for the first time.
- Absolute total blindness coming around these corners.
While Rick and Lisa split up.
And away we go.
Forcing each driver to take on a road
that push them to the edge.
- Go. Green bus, man.
Green bus.
Super BLEEP stressful.