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.
After three weeks,
the North American truckers have experienced success...
Yeah!
- Boyo and the Parrot get their load in first.
And failure.
- I just don't think we're gonna make it.
- I don't want to go anywhere. I'm done.
Now Rick and Lisa continue to struggle
with a narrow cliff side road called the Ledge.
- Mother Nature always gets the last laugh.
- Every time I think I'm prepared for it,
it's like, man, this is 100 times scarier
than I remember it.
We're dead.
While Dave heads up this notorious stretch
for the first time.
- Words can't describe that drop-off.
It's like standing on top of the Sears Tower.
There's just nowhere to go.
And here, each driver will stare death in the face.
- A truck went off the road, so I'm a little bit concerned
with Lisa maybe being involved.
They're risking everything
In trucks with wood frames.
Three truckers...
- It's not getting easier for me,
and I don't think it's going to.
Two months...
- There's no room for error, absolutely none.
A race at the top of the world.
Today's toughest drivers
take on history's deadliest roads.
No, no, no, no! No!
Boy, I tell you what.
These screwed-up hand signals
are just gonna be the death of me.
Go, go!
Park. Okay.
- We've made it after one hell of a journey.
It's taken us three days to get here.
It's absolute, total darkness.
This needs to be set on this rim better.
Drive this truck across that bridge?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We just blew a tire.
We're gonna be late now, ain't we?
Going up north here,
I hear that the roads are gonna just
progressively get worse and worse and worse
and we're just gonna have to be
on our toes today.
Every day out here
is a potentially dangerous and deadly day.
You could be driving down the road,
come around a corner, and the whole lane is gone.
It just washed away.
Thank you. - Thank you.
- Have a nice day. - Thank you.
Let's go.
- Yes, let's get the hell out of here.
If you're not looking down the road,
paying attention to traffic,
you might not go home.
Now, Dave's headed higher into the Himalayas
to pick up his next load,
up a truck-eating set of switchbacks
called the Ledge.
- Now we're fixing to head up over this mountain
to go pick up a steel box.
The main thing is, you know,
when you... when you drive these roads is,
don't look down.
You'll get all dizzy and lightheaded, you know,
like when that roller coaster goes over the top.
You've got to be here,
put your feet on the edge of that concrete wall
and look down,
because it's like standing on top of the Sears Tower.
In fact, I got to take a break with the talking.
I've got to pay attention to what I'm doing.
19 miles south of Dave Redmon...
I BLEEPing see you!
Is maverick trucker Rick Yemm.
Ugh!
I'm tired, man.
Rick's run began 100 miles to the south,
in Chandigarh,
where he picked up nine tons of flour
for delivery at the Jaypee hydroelectric facility
at Tapri.
Look at this guy!
I should just turn that mirror.
Then I don't see everybody trying to...
trying to kill me.
And this Himalayan long haul
is taking its toll.
Joys of being a spotter.
I shouldn't even be driving like this,
but compare fatigued driving to impaired driving,
you're pretty much exactly the same, so...
That's a cop.
A cop passing me on a blind corner.
BLEEP you!
Within two minutes of driving, your patience is tested.
Go, you retard.
BLEEP funny.
This guy's turning around, I think, on a blind corner.
Crack smoker.
Buddy here is just running up the wrong side of the road.
I'm kind of burning out a little bit.
Got to get some rest.
30 miles to the northeast,
Lisa is at the Jaypee corporation's Kuppa dam site.
- Yesterday, for some reason, I just had a blast.
I'm still terrified of the road, but I still had fun.
So I'm hoping today will be the same.
She's loading an oversized four-ton steel duct.
- I get to listen to Tashi scream
as I come within inches of rocks with the duct.
It'll be fun.
Are we ready to go? - Yeah.
All right.
And now she's squeezing
back down this narrow side road to deliver the duct
to the Jaypee Corporation Karcham dam site.
- Anyhow, you are going fast, so make slow.
I'm going fast, so go slow?
I got this dialed, baby.
You can actually sightsee a little bit now.
Ooh, that waterfall is really pretty.
All the way down.
I must be getting better at this.
I can look off the edge now.
After overcoming her fears...
- The people that are bravest, they have the fear,
and they work through it, and they do it anyway.
Lisa is now overconfident.
I'm not gonna go like this.
Slow, slow, slow, very slow.
Okay, slow, slow, slow.
Slow.
Keeping left.
Keeping right. Keeping left.
I mean, going fast.
Slow, slow, slow, very slow.
Did you hear that?
I think I just hit on the rocks there.
Yeah.
So be slow.
Oops.
Jeez Louise.
This crate ain't fragile, is it?
- Two, three times we dash the rocks,
two, three times, "dum, dum," big noise.
This road's a game.
We'll see who wins.
17 miles south...
This is the dam project.
Rick's pulling into
the Tapri hydroelectric facility.
It's a huge project.
- Please come. - Oh, okay.
- Please come. Have a seat.
Thank you.
Have a seat.
I don't like the traffic.
I don't mind the mountains, but I don't like the traffic.
Well, I just got the news that a truck went off the road.
Um, Lisa left not very long ago
and that's the road she was going on,
so I hope that she wasn't involved in that
in any way whatsoever.
She had a lot of problems with her first run there,
so I'm a little bit concerned.
There's a good possibility she could have made a mistake.
Oh, damn!
A truck is down there in the trees.
The road is gone.
A policeman.
He's dead?
Okay.
Sobering.
I'm just not wanting to drive this road.
It's not getting easier for me.
And I don't think it's going to.
And I just don't feel safe doing it.
In Delhi.
So...
I can pray for him. That's all.
Nothing we can do.
Ten miles down the road,
Dave Redmon's making his way up the Ledge.
- The cliff is right at my window.
I mean, if I hang my arm out, my hand is over the drop-off,
literally.
That's why I try not to look out the window.
It just makes you too nervous, and it's just too hard to focus.
You've got too much other BLEEP to worry about.
Words can't describe that drop-off,
and I mean that.
You know how you creep up to the edge of your roof
on your house?
Yeah, that's a joke.
This road here is just pathetic.
I mean, we're five, ten miles an hour.
They're just miserable.
See, that truck's behind me again.
Come on.
It's hard to talk and concentrate
and listen to him.
Being on this road, you know, for the first time,
I'm just gonna leave these guys, you know, run the front door
and just kind of lead the way, I guess.
You know, they know all the little tips and tricks,
you know, to get over this mountain.
Dave can follow the trucks
up the switchbacks if he can keep up.
He'll move.
BLEEP damn it.
Let's go!
Let's go.
Go, go.
In Hinduism,
cows have been sacred for thousands of years...
And are allowed to roam free.
I'm worried about a cow.
Falling off this cliff, hitting this rock wall,
the traffic...
I mean, there's no room for error.
Absolutely none.
On, on, let's go.
- I got a concrete wall on my right.
It's just a sheer drop-off.
I'm trying to squeak by this damn truck.
I don't know what they're thinking,
leaving it right there.
It must have broke down on them.
With every delay,
Dave slips further behind.
- Basically go blind up this hill now.
22 miles to the south
is Rick Yemm.
Hello.
His spotter, Boyo, is talking to Tashi,
Lisa's spotter.
Okay.
The good news is, is that she's fine, so...
I shouldn't even be thinking about that.
I should be thinking about just what I gotta do
on this stupid road.
Now Rick's also headed up the Ledge
to load a steel duct at the Kuppa dam site.
- First time I've been up since that fatal accident
that was on this road.
So it's kind of on the brain.
Hopefully I can get it washed out
before I get into the real nasty stuff here.
The road gave out from underneath the driver.
Mother Nature is the one that BLEEPed him over,
and I don't want it to happen to me too.
Mother Nature always gets the last laugh.
And where am I supposed to go?
What the BLEEP?
- This guy seen me pulling up and still came down anyway.
I don't understand that.
What?
Just go, back.
- I'm as... I'm over as far as I can go,
so I don't know what we're gonna do.
This is an Indian standoff.
That's a long way down.
Ooh, Boyo's gonna try and solve the problem.
- I don't understand anything they're saying.
All's I know is,
I'm 12 inches from the edge of a very long fall.
And the weight of an idling truck
on an unstable edge is exactly what caused
the road to give way in the fatal crash,
an occurrence so common here,
it was recently captured by an onlooker.
- I'll back up if I've got to back up,
but what the BLEEP?
Someone make up their BLEEP mind.
Hello!
You want... back up? - Yeah, back.
Back up.
Back, back, back.
All right.
Holy BLEEP.
The Tata 1613 is equipped with air brakes.
The engine runs a small compressor
that fills a tank with pressurized air
that powers the system.
But when the brakes are repeatedly pressed,
the compressor can't keep up, and the brakes fail.
Screw it.
Get the hell out of the way. I'm going.
- No, don't move. Don't move!
No!
On a narrow mountain road,
trucker Rick Yemm's on the edge of a cliff.
BLEEP it, I'm going.
And his brakes are failing.
Screw it.
Get the hell out of the way. I'm going.
Don't move! No!
By revving his engine, Rick builds up brake pressure.
Get out of my way!
And he's got to keep moving.
- Slow down! Slow down!
Back, back, back!
- Ooh, that's a BLEEP tight one.
Whoa-ho-ho!
- Stop, stop! Come back.
Left, left, left!
You can make it. You can make it.
Holy BLEEP.
This is gonna be close.
Come on, baby.
Well, we just made that one.
Holy BLEEP. That was like...
Good!
Very good.
Just... and touch.
BLEEP!
That was so close.
- Ah. - Oh!
Yee-haw, motherBLEEP!
At the Jaypee Corporation Karcham dam site,
Lisa's arriving with the four-ton steel duct.
I hate this road.
I'm hoping I might be able to survive it.
I don't know how to prepare for it.
I really don't.
It just... every time I think I'm prepared for it,
it's like, man, this is 100 times scarier
than I remember it.
This road isn't forgiving at all.
I want to go home to the Dalton, where it's safe.
At home, I love that road,
and I know it's dangerous and people die on it,
but usually, you can narrow it down
to a mistake that the driver made.
BLEEP!
And if you go off the road, you're in the ditch.
Fine, you just wait for someone to come by
and pull you out.
But here, there are no ditches.
Your ditch is a mile and a half below you.
You can't even make a little mistake.
Here, if you go in the "ditch," you're dead.
Despite the risks on the Ledge,
Lisa's loaded up six tons of concrete pipes
and is heading back up this deadly road.
Let's go!
Let's go.
What was that?
- Wait. Wait. Oh!
BLEEP!
What'd he do that for?
Well, he broke our mirror.
Are you all right?
Yeah, yeah.
Jeez.
- So can we get out and argue now?
No, no.
No?
- I didn't know that he was saying, "Wait".
I thought he was pointing.
What's going on here?
Just a few miles up the Ledge,
Lisa witnesses her second accident today.
- Am I gonna clear it? Tashi?
- Slow, very slow, go, go, go.
Is this where he went off?
'Cause what?
Carrying passengers in an open truck bed
is illegal here,
and the driver fled the scene before he could be caught.
What if they catch him?
They'll catch him?
And then what?
19 miles up the road,
Dave Redmon's almost completed his first run on the Ledge.
And so far, nothing's gone wrong.
- I'm using my horn to... when I come up to the corners,
the blind curves,
to let somebody that's coming down the hill at me,
head on, to let them know
that I'm, you know, coming around the corner.
And then, if they blow their horn back,
you know, then we slow down and,
you know, try and either move over
or, you know, let each other by.
BLEEP!
No, no, no, no.
- This is a very tight squeeze right here.
Am I clear?
Look up there.
Don't worry about BLEEPing chatting with this guy.
- Okay, okay, back, back to the right.
I can't go right.
I'm already on his truck.
Stay, stay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Go slow, slow, go slow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
- Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Um, he's on my BLEEP, damn it.
BLEEP!
MotherBLEEP!
Gonna go back and talk to him, I guess.
- I don't understand a thing they're saying.
I mean, I don't.
- I'm sure he's trying to blame this on us, but...
Let's move out of the way and let these guys by.
You know, it just basically forming into a mob scene.
Three weeks ago...
- When they get really upset here,
they tend to burn the truck down and, uh, kill the people.
Concerns about mob violence were too much
for veteran ice road trucker Alex Debogorski.
- Hey, everybody knows. Everybody knows.
There's nowhere to go.
Just chill out.
Huh?
It could get kind of ugly here
if we don't get this taken care of quick.
On a narrow mountain road called the Ledge,
trucker Dave Redmon blew out the windows of a local bus.
MotherBLEEP!
Now his spotter Sanjeev
is dealing with the aftermath.
- It could get kind of ugly here.
I'm gonna go pay this guy, and maybe we can get this...
get this taken care of, and...
500.
500?
Will that take care of it?
I'm sorry. Okay?
All righty, I appreciate it.
Let's get out of here.
Come on.
$10 for a piece of door glass.
Let's get out of here before we get in more trouble.
It looks like somebody ran off this cliff,
busted through the wall.
You get the cold chills, looking down there.
No, no, right, right, right.
Right, right, right, right, right, right, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- BLEEP okay? - Go, go, go.
- I just bumped the side of the truck
on another one of these damn rocks.
You gotta pay attention to what's in front of you,
not look out the window.
It's just real nerve-racking.
This is a... a temple.
Yeah, I think it's bad karma if we hit the temple.
Anybody want a blessing?
Yes, thank you.
I'll take any help I can get,
uh, you know, being blessed on this road,
even though it's not my cup of tea.
I mean, I'm, like, riding
right on the edge of this thing over here.
There's just nowhere to go.
It's just so tight up here,
and it's just really hard to judge the...
you know, the distance over there.
You know, you can't see anything out these mirrors.
And overall, it's just been a rough BLEEPing ride
up this cliff.
Back there.
What a morning.
It's been a pain in the ass from the start, as usual.
From the start.
- Oh, BLEEP, the truck's still there.
That's BLEEP awful.
Tandem dump truck.
Driving around in a lot safer vehicle than I am.
Yeah.
And it looks like a really good section of road too.
But these are only two of the seven deaths
that occurred on this road today
in a country that lost 131,000 people on the roads last year.
We're all doing a job,
and it's not a good deal when any trucker loses his life.
I feel sorry for his family.
Hello, sir!
At this cliff-side temple,
Rick's blessed and receives prashad...
Thank you.
An edible gift that allows the blessing
to be consumed...
in this case, white, sugary candy...
a tradition first recorded in Sanskrit
over 3,000 years ago.
- A little something for the guy that lost his life.
Makes you realize what you have at home real quick.
Kind of makes me want to phone my wife right now.
Hello.
Welcome.
How are you today?
We just got here at the dam project here,
and we're going to find out where we're going next.
Seven miles to the south,
Lisa is the only one left on the Ledge.
So, this...
That makes sense.
Wow, that's, like, straight down right there.
Keep left, keep left, keep...
- This is where I don't want to keep left.
You told me not to keep left here.
There's not enough room.
I don't want to get too close to the shoulder.
Yeah, this is where the guy just fell off
from moving over for a car.
The shoulder's too soft.
Wait, wait, Lisa, right.
- I don't want to get off the pavement,
but I can't see if I am or not.
It looks like the road's about to give out at any second here.
Oh!
BLEEP!
Wait, wait, Lisa, right.
On a narrow cliff-side road...
- Looks like the road's about to give out at any second here.
Trucker Lisa Kelly
is stuck between a ten-ton dump truck...
And a deadly fall.
Oh!
BLEEP!
Holy crap!
I don't want the shoulder to give away.
We made it.
Yeah!
- The road was caving away right there,
and I didn't want to get off the pavement.
So we had to just tuck in everything we had
to tuck it in and get by that truck.
After an exhausting round trip,
Lisa is finally back at the Kuppa dam site
to drop off her six tons of concrete pipes.
What a drive.
It's more challenging than you ever imagined it could be.
And you never thought you could overcome it.
Now I'm really glad I did it.
30 miles down the road from Kuppa,
Rick's racing back to Shimla after receiving news from home.
- It's just, like, a helpless feeling.
Like, we can play the waiting game
on this thing and just hope that she...
that she pulls through it.
My daughter, her name's Alyssa.
She's got a terminal disease called cystic fibrosis,
and she's got herself pretty sick right now,
and they have her in the hospital.
And they got her on a IV drip.
And it's one of those things that,
when she gets sick like this, she could lose her life.
I just feel like I can't do anything here,
and it... it just shows how BLEEPed-up life can be.
I'm halfway around the world,
and then BLEEP decides to happen.
And I'd BLEEPing kick myself in the ass pretty hard
if she passed away on me while I'm over here.
She's 21.
She hasn't even lived her life yet.
You never think of this happening
when you're away.
I don't know what to do right now.
All's I know is, I've got to get back to Shimla
and figure my BLEEP out up there
and what I'm gonna do.
Hopefully there's news by the time I get back
that she's gonna be okay.
But as it sits right now, I don't know.
It's... we wait it out.
I'm just gonna be on the first plane out of here.
When Rick gets to Shimla,
it could be the end of his season.
- To come here and lose my family
while I'm over here?
I don't think that's an acceptable trade for me.
I gotta do this one on my own here.
And Alabama trucker Dave Redmon
continues to fight the Ledge.
- These are some pretty nasty drop-offs.
A couple of thousand feet straight down.
How nerve-racking is this?
This BLEEPer is fixing to fall.
Holy BLEEP!
It's coming down right now.
- Watch out! Go, go, go, go, go, go.
I want to go home.