In the world's highest mountains...
are roads only the best can survive.
- The possibility of getting killed on this job is very good.
- You got no protection whatsoever.
There's no room for error.
- I've never been so scared in my life.
Where the road averages a death
every 4 1/2 minutes.
He's dead?
After surviving four weeks
on the Freefall Freeway...
the Cutouts, and the Ledge,
Rick, Lisa, and Dave are taking on the Rohtang Pass...
Rohtang Pass, baby.
Climbing to over 13,000 feet.
- You're literally going to the top of the world.
This road's the only lifeline
for the mountain outpost of Keylong
and the rest of northern India.
Now the air is thinner.
I can't breathe.
- Move out, move out. - Oh, my gosh.
The storms are deadly.
Look at the clouds moving in.
This is getting uglier by the minute.
The roads are falling apart.
Totally washed out road.
- Turn a corner, and the road's completely gone.
And they're driving trucks with wood frames.
I don't welcome death,
but I sure tempt it once in a while.
Three truckers...
You got something for me?
Two months...
I'm gonna fall off the edge.
A race at the top of the world.
Today's toughest drivers take on history's deadliest roads.
- I gotta say, this is really cool.
It's just another one of these culture shocks
on the trip out here.
This one's really cool.
They're right out of the kung fu David Carradine kind of stuff.
At this Buddhist monastery,
trucker Rick Yemm is picking up his next load.
- It's holy, and nothing can happen to it.
Well, there it is.
Come, come, come.
What is this statue?
Lord Buddha statue.
- Lord Buddha? - Yeah.
That's a statue of your god?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
No pressure, no pressure, no pressure, I got her.
In addition to the sitting Buddha statue,
Rick's carrying over 100 boxes of Buddhist scrolls
and prayer flags.
- Thank you very much. - Thank you.
Nice meeting you.
Let's go.
- I have no real clue what to expect on this one.
From the mountain city of Manali,
Rick's headed north over the Rohtang Pass.
Dating back thousands of years,
the countless switchbacks are the oldest trading route
in the region.
And translated from Tibetan,
"Rohtang" literally means "pile of corpses,"
not because of the cliffs or crumbling roads,
but due to the unpredictable weather at the summit.
On the north side of the pass,
the road drops into the Lahaul Valley,
heading toward the town of Keylong,
where Rick will turn up a narrow side road
to deliver his load at the Tupchilling Monastery.
- Probably something really bad will happen to me,
if something bad happens to this load.
So we just gotta get there in one piece.
20 miles ahead of Rick...
are truckers Dave Redmon and Lisa Kelly.
Tires are good.
- We're getting packed full of sugar and all kinds of food,
stuff like that, so if we get stuck in the snow
or we run off the mountain, at least if we survive,
we'll have food to eat.
Dave's loading ten tons of rations for Keylong,
a town that's been cut off all winter
while the Rohtang Pass was closed.
- It's windy as BLEEP out here.
Feels like a hurricane.
Wind's blowing about 50 miles an hour.
I can't breathe.
But Lisa's already loaded with ten tons of cement,
and she's the first one risking her life on the Rohtang Pass.
I was just thinking the winds,
how they'd affect the side of the truck.
- I wouldn't worry about getting blown over.
You'd probably need 80-, 90-mile-an-hour winds...
- Just like... big gusts will, like, steer you into somebody
who's cutting you off.
- Just remember, if it starts to go over,
run it into the wall.
Brakes quit, somebody hits you,
smash them into the wall.
Don't ever go the other way.
You go over the edge...
- You ain't walking away from there.
- There ain't no walking away. - No, we've seen that.
- They'll send you home in a lunch box.
- Well, I'll see you up there. - All right.
Well, too bad for you.
Let's lead the pack today.
Just behind Lisa...
Rohtang Pass, baby.
See, I'm used to the cold.
I like it.
- I'm gonna get into my zen mode, here.
Pull over, let some people through.
'cause I gotta go slow.
Hey, if these Buddhists can make a four-year commitment
to what they do, I can make a commitment
to not get angry today.
I got a little bit of precious cargo on board.
Buddhism is the world's fourth largest religion
and follows the teachings of Buddha,
also known as Siddhartha Gautam,
who lived and taught about 2,400 years ago
in what's now Nepal.
- I'm gonna let some more people through.
I don't let...
Get to me.
I'm still a hothead,
but I'm gonna be running this pass a lot.
There's a lot of honking, a lot of stupidity.
If I can manage to not let it get the better of me,
then I'm leaving India with a new gift.
I'm gonna let a bunch of people go.
No rush.
I'm just chillin'. I'm just enjoying this.
I'm in a good mood.
I don't need to get all pissed off
'cause some guy's trying to run me off the road.
If this had been a week ago, I'd have been flipping out
because of all these guys honking at me.
Look at this BLEEP sucker.
Smash his BLEEP skull in.
It's a solid stream of traffic.
If this guys not honking, it's the guy behind him honking.
He's held it for, like, three minutes solid.
Beep!
Oh, you must have been honking at me.
I didn't realize that.
Sorry, that wasn't very zen.
Well, I am human.
I'm not going to make a complete change in one hour of driving.
A few miles behind Rick...
- Let's get the hell out of here.
You ready to go? - Yes.
Let's go.
Dave's finally finished loading.
- Let's get the hell out of here.
What the hell?
Yeah, we've moved about 80 feet,
and now we're just sitting in gridlock.
The Rohtang Pass is only open a few months a year.
And the bottom of the mountain is packed with tourists,
escaping the oppressive summer heat
and heading to the snow line.
- But now they've just all piled up on top of us,
and now we've got traffic backed up,
and none of them are too happy.
I can't move over and let 100 people go by.
They'll never let me back out.
This guy right behind me is just laying on that horn.
I mean, he is just hammering that thing to death.
All that's gonna do is just make me not give.
I don't care.
They're just gonna have to sit back there and enjoy the view.
I could let him over right now.
Nah.
He'll BLEEP sit back there.
It's just the way it's gonna be today.
See?
This moron just run me off the side of the road.
Now he's gonna stop like a BLEEPhead.
See?
What? What?
You got something for me? You got something for me?
Do you have something for me?
I didn't think so.
Ain't nobody getting out of that truck.
There was eight or nine of 'em in that truck.
You know what I mean?
If we'd have got out and got nose-to-nose,
and we may have got kind of ugly.
Hell, you just got to deal with it.
If you can't handle pressure and drive,
this is absolutely no place for you.
And I think I do pretty well under pressure.
Further up the mountain,
Lisa's climbing switchback after switchback.
That's the way to do it, man.
Hmm. Now what?
- I don't know if we're gonna fit by.
He's gonna have to move over more.
- There's no room for me to get by over there.
Whoa.
Slow, slow.
- That's Lisa right in front of us.
Okay, well, we got a little bit of a traffic jam.
- We got a traffic jam or something.
Look at this moron.
What? What?
Where you going?
Where you gonna go?
Where the BLEEP are you gonna go?
Where?
Now you can go sit behind these motherBLEEP.
Oh, my gosh.
I'm right on the edge.
I can't get any closer.
Come. Come. Come.
I'm, like, seriously right...
my, like, tire's hanging off.
I don't want to go any further,
or we will fall over.
Dude, I can't get over any more,
so you're gonna have to get over it.
I don't know what happened.
We're all stopped right here in the road.
Something's going on.
Go ahead and honk.
Can't you see there's a BLEEP traffic jam?
- You got room. Go, bud.
He's got room.
In the heart of the Himalayas...
- Dude, I can't get over any more,
so you're gonna have to get over it.
Come. Come. Come.
Trucker Lisa Kelly is stuck between a passing truck
and a deadly fall.
I'm, like, seriously right...
my, like, tire's hanging off,
so I don't want to go any further,
or we will fall over.
And the traffic keeps backing up.
You can go ahead and honk.
Can't you see there's a BLEEP traffic jam?
- You got room. Go, bud.
He's got room.
Yeah, he can totally move over more.
All right.
Lisa's finally free to go.
BLEEP.
We're too heavy for this.
But the ten tons of cement, heavy clutch,
and steep grades are making it tough
to get the truck rolling.
We're too heavy, dude.
BLEEP.
Man!
- Well, Lisa having a little problems
running the clutch there.
Oh, he got it moving.
So we're fixing to take off here in just a second.
Holy crap.
- See? And then they're back to that BLEEP horn.
Oh, not this BLEEP again.
See? I mean, just another one of these dumb BLEEP.
See? Now, what... what is that?
What is that, you goofy BLEEP?
They think just stopping us in the middle of this road
is gonna accomplish something.
All that does is piss everybody else off behind us.
They should come up here, run him down, and beat his ass.
As the truckers climb higher,
the road gets worse.
- The road's just crumbling away.
Out the window is about a 7,000-foot drop-off
that is real unnerving when you look out the window.
There is no road in the U.S. that compares to anything here.
You screw up out here...
end of story.
- It's narrow. It's all chopped up.
We don't have the sheer drops of the Freefall Freeway
or anything like that, but you go down here,
you're still dying.
We're in the rolling casket.
We got a river down the road here.
Kind of sucks 'cause when those puddles are like that,
you don't know if there's a sharp pothole in it
and jostle that Buddha statue around.
Look at that.
He's close, man.
He's close.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Whaa!
Ooh!
Well, that was sheer stupidity.
He don't fear the reaper.
That's where Mr. Green Bus driver just about drove into,
right there, right on the edge.
People in cars in this country are BLEEP in the head, man.
Look at how much room this guy's got.
He's got a BLEEPload of room. The horse could get around him.
This guy's gonna need his hand held
to get through here, I think.
Go!
You got a ton of room! Go!
Oh, his handlebar moustaches are poking him in the eyes.
That's why.
You shouldn't drive up here if you can't.
- Oh, stop, stop, stop, stop.
- Oh, no. What is going on?
Rock?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't use that. You'll pop the tire using that.
He doesn't listen to me,
jumps out of the truck with a bar.
This you could pop the tire with.
Listen.
You pop that tire, I'm kicking you out of the truck for good.
Relax.
- Watch the guy pop my BLEEP tire up here
and then we got to wait for BLEEP two days
to get a tire up here.
After just a few hours heading up the Rohtang Pass,
Rick's already losing his zen.
Stupid.
- Oh, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Don't use that. You'll pop the tire using that.
At 11,000 feet,
maverick trucker Rick Yemm's losing his cool.
Listen.
You pop that tire, I'm kicking you out of the truck for good.
And his spotter's feeling the heat.
Stupid.
Better ways.
I show you. You'll never pop a tire.
But no, you don't listen. You think you know all.
You have to list... you learn...
I learn from you; you learn from me.
Okay.
Just up the road is Lisa Kelly.
- Just this windy little road and high altitude,
and... snowy mountains.
And it's definitely not warm here.
Lisa's the first North American trucker
to hit the 13,000-foot Rohtang Pass.
Oh, that is so gorgeous.
They are pissed off there, no? - Yeah.
Now the descent down the ragged north face
to the valley floor...
- Slow, slow. Slow.
Is a lot tougher than the climb.
- Being loaded on this road is almost ridiculous.
Keep left.
- How's the tires look on that side?
Am I gonna hit anything?
I just feel like we're so close to the edge.
I don't want to.
Ah! Oh, my gosh.
Okay, I'd rather hit the rock than go off the edge.
- If it starts to go over, run it into the wall.
- Ooh. What was that?
Oh, ah.
Here.
And now...
have to get inside the...
We are looking for a crack here.
BLEEP.
Okay, show me.
See, you can see here.
Yes, you're right.
That is a big deal.
We got a broken leaf spring, which is a big deal.
The leaf spring supports the truck's weight,
absorbs impact, and keeps the tires in contact
with the crumbling road.
But a damaged spring can lead to catastrophe.
- It's gotta last us all the way to Keylong
and back to Manali 'cause we can't fix it till Manali.
I'm gonna be going slow, so I wanna get going.
- But now it's going to be very slow.
Let's go!
And slow!
A few miles back, Rick's cleared the Rohtang Pass
and is descending the north face.
Everything's melting up here.
Springtime's a-comin' for them.
So... how stable or how well-built is the road?
Who knows?
You add water to any dirt road,
it's gonna soften it up.
You go to turn a corner, and the road's completely gone.
This is pretty crazy.
This is true mountain driving now.
Whitewater rafting down this one side of the road here.
Trying to hug the inside bank and just take her slow and easy.
I can't speed up.
This is it, or that Buddha's going to pieces.
Just behind Rick...
- This old road ain't worth a BLEEP, is it?
Alabama trucker Dave Redmond's also headed
down the mountain.
- It's a whole different country over here.
I mean, it's actually a river we're driving in.
Gonna get a mud bath here in a minute.
Boy, is this a mess.
Yep, yeah, I see where we're going there.
Holy BLEEP.
What a mess.
Holy BLEEP.
You know, you're afraid to drive in that running water.
Hell, that could be a foot deep.
And it's real nerve-racking.
We're dropping probably 500 feet every switchback.
Getting so close to that edge.
That's Rick right there in front of us.
Camper one to camper two.
I can see why this damn little town
we're going to is so damn remote.
There ain't no way in, no way out.
- That's it; I hear you get stuck
in that little town for days when this thing snows in.
- Oh, yeah, a couple feet at a time's about all you can do
on this bumpy bitch.
- Yeah, you'd get there quicker if we were walking.
- When you drive on the most dangerous roads on the planet,
that's just the nature of the beast.
- I got a statue in here, man. I gotta crawl.
It can only get jostled around so much before it breaks.
- What kind of statue you got in the back of that thing?
Yeah, I got a Buddha statue.
I think something real bad will happen to me
if that statue don't make it alive.
Look at all those damn switchbacks down below us here.
This side of the mountain here,
we don't get enough time for a prayer.
This here's more of a tumbling,
rolling-to-your-death kind of thing,
as splinters of wood poke you like a pincushion.
- Can you imagine dropping a drive shaft on this road?
If you so much as even lose a fan belt up here,
you'd be screwed.
- Well, what did we get into here?
- BLEEP Man, we can go whitewater rafting
down this son of a bitch.
- You could be like Alex and quit.
Oh, no, that ain't happening.
Well, I better let you go here and pay attention
so I don't break Buddha here.
Would you like to get by me?
Oh, yeah.
My bags of flour and sugar
aren't quite as delicate as his Buddha statue.
Good luck delivering that Buddha.
I'll see you tonight.
Have a good trip.
- This is, like, a constant river just, like, on the road.
On one of the most notorious roads on the planet...
trucker Lisa Kelly's crawling through the Lahaul Valley
on a broken leaf spring and damaged tire.
- Ah! Oh, my gosh.
We got a broken leaf spring, which is a big deal.
- Well, the road just got rough, bumpy, and rivers and streams,
and all kinds of crazy stuff.
I would like to do this a lot less loaded than we have been.
Hauling ten tons of cement and a 16-ton truck
with a failing suspension means any jolt could lead to disaster.
- It ain't about speed on this thing, obviously.
Now, ten miles ahead of Lisa...
It's been a long day.
Is Alabama trucker Dave Redmond.
You're sore and stiff,
this thing hammering you to death...
it just, you know, beats down your body.
Whew.
So much for our road.
Totally washed out road.
Totally washed out.
In northern India,
these creeks are called pagal naala,
translating to "crazy stream,"
because they seem to start and stop at random.
Hope that ain't deep.
That's the bad thing is, you don't know how deep they are
when you... you know, you dive off into them.
It could be six feet deep.
Boy, is this a BLEEP mess.
Holy BLEEP.
And what they're doing is,
they're breaking big rocks into little rocks,
basically making gravel to fill it in.
You can't get any harder labor.
I mean, I don't think prison workers have a harder job
than these guys out here.
I mean, that's gotta be miserable work.
In these remote mountains,
it's a never-ending battle to keep the roads passable.
And most laborers use tools
that were designed over 1,000 years ago.
- Sitting there with a little hammer,
tapping on boulders, trying to make gravel.
When I know I got five minutes left,
I don't let my guard down
because that's when you get close,
you get kinda complacent and think, "Well, I've made it".
And that's when bad things happen.
You just gotta be on your guard.
Really watch what's going on.
Like this one here.
This could get a little tight right here.
Right, right.
- I can't go much farther right.
I'm right on this BLEEP edge over here.
Good?
Yes, okay.
Okay.
Hold, stop!
- Ugh! BLEEP.
I just banged into the back of that damn dump truck.
I'm over here looking in this mirror,
trying not to run off the road.
Ugh! BLEEP.
I don't think we did much damage,
but we'll stop and look at it when we get unloaded.
I'm telling you it happens every time.
You let your guard down, you get, you know, within a mile
away from where you need to be,
and you bump into vehicles on accident.
After surviving his initial run
over the Rohtang Pass...
Dave's the first to arrive in Keylong.
Unloading?
Banged it in?
Let me look at it.
Yeah, we hit the pipe.
Yeah.
Well, that's what the pipes are there for.
Oh, yeah, we got right here too.
Busted the turn signal in
and got it right here.
I had a lapse in judgment.
Couple more stickers will cover that up.
We'll be good to go.
That was scary.
Hours of abuse on the crumbling, washed-out roads
have Lisa limping into Keylong on a busted suspension.
- I don't know how I got through it.
I would say this road is extremely dangerous.
Finish this road now.
- I have no interest in getting out.
I have very much interest in laying down.
At over 10,000 feet above sea level,
Keylong's elevation is taking a toll.
- This is my first day on this road,
going over Rohtang Pass,
and I have a horrible headache.
And I don't know if it's altitude or what,
but it's making me nauseated and weak.
Just trying to take it slow and easy,
try not to break the truck too much.
Poorly built trucks on poorly built roads
are not good matches.
Think I'm taking the horse next time.
A few miles south of Keylong...
Getting a little tired.
Rick's off the main road
and heading to the Buddhist monastery
to drop off his cargo.
Oh, no.
Another one of these bridges
that you don't know if it's gonna hold you or not.
If the roads don't kill you, that will.
Okay.
Narrow, little bridge.
Built these things for motorcycles, not for trucks.
Oh, lookit.
There's only a 30-foot drop that'll kill me.
Deep in Buddhist country...
Truck in the Himalayan.
An idiot.
Maverick trucker Rick Yemm is creeping along
a deteriorating bridge...
to deliver his load at a Buddhist monastery.
Creak, groan, bang, squeal.
Buddha killer.
Held together with haywire.
That's BLEEP up.
Bridge and dying.
I swear to God they take every piece of scrapped steel
and then say they're gonna make a bridge out of it.
And I made it. On to the next challenge.
You can't stop me now.
I'm taking her all the way now, boy.
Tight.
Ooh.
Oh, I see some flags.
That's a good sign.
Doesn't surprise me that a truck
can't fit underneath the wires up here,
'cause it's not a BLEEP truck road.
Watch my language.
Okay, drum roll, please.
It made it.
Without a scratch on it.
That's good.
Nervous.
Hello, hello.
How are you?
- Very good. How are you?
You're very, very welcome.
It was my pleasure. My pleasure.
I can say I'm pretty much done with statues.
They're kind of an anxiety-filled trip.
Imagine if that would've broken in two.
Holy...
The peaceful Buddhist community
would've probably strung me up by the prayer flag.
Hello, sir.
It's in perfect condition.
It doesn't have a mark on it.
That tells me I did something right.
Now I'm burned out, so...
I gotta get some sleep, man.
I'm out.
Well, she got a little chilly today.
After surviving over four weeks
on the Himalayan roads
and their first run over the Rohtang Pass...
- Come back here, light a fire.
The North American drivers
are taking a well-deserved break.
Look at the storm coming in.
- It's snowing up there right now.
- Yeah, our pass goes right over that stuff.
- Right over that? - Yep.
So what do you guys think of this thing that we're traveling?
Yeah, it can be challenging.
It can be a nerve-wracking pain in the ass at times.
It could get hairy quick.
Every corner, every curve.
Words can't describe that drop-off.
There's no barrier.
That's when it starts getting scary.
Probably the most dangerous situation I've ever been in
in my life.
Now you go back home and you hear somebody whining
about how bad they got it.
You say, "Look, you just don't know".
- You have no idea. - Shut the hell up.
- Hey, we're all skilled North American drivers...
all three of us.
But you know what?
Here, it's someone else that causes your accident.
MotherBLEEP!
Go!
This is the most deadly thing I've ever done in my life.
I have to agree.
Ah! Oh, my gosh!
I never been so scared in my life.
- Go, go, go. - I don't wanna go anywhere.
I'm done.
- But, you know, that keeps us safe.
Being that we're new here
and we don't know and we see that ledge,
that's what makes us better drivers.
There's two types of truck drivers in this world.
There's drivers that do it just for a job,
and then there's drivers like us that do it
because we have it in our blood.
This is what we do.
- I do it because I love it, absolutely love it.
- Exactly. Drink to that.
Cheers to that.
And let's all be safe.
Looks like we got this stuff kicking in,
so I'm gonna head out of here.
Maybe stuck here for a week.
- Well, I'm an ice road trucker so I'm gonna push.
This is what we woke up to this morning.
That's where we're going.
And it don't look so good.
I'm an ice road trucker, but we got no tire chains.
We got nothing.
If BLEEP gets hairy, we can't even do nothing about it.
We've been hired on to bring stuff to this community
'cause it's been cut off forever.
Now we're stranded here ourselves.
But despite the storm...
- I'm gonna see they're gonna open that pass today.
I'm gonna go.
The three drivers attempt to escape Keylong
and climb back over the Rohtang Pass.
- Oh, my gosh! Give me a heart attack.
- If one of them hits the truck, she's pretty much game over.
Got no backup plan.
This is not a game.
Go, go, go, go, go!