T O D A Y Would you rather walk? Discuss your travels by foot in Table Talk. Full Circle By Michael Palin An excerpt that traces five days in his 245-day odyssey (11/18/97) R E C E N T L Y Road Warrior Chris Gulker (11/17/97) The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Dinner and a video with a tasty trout recipe (11/14/97) The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Dinner and a video with a tasty trout recipe (11/14/97) Mondo Weirdo By Andrew Brown A charming -- and cheap! -- French château (11/14/97) Open Lands By Mark Taplin Travels through Russia's once-forbidden places (11/13/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		____________michael palin: ____________From Python to Pacific ____________THE ACTOR/WRITER TRACES THE ROOTS ____________OF HIS NEW PACIFIC RIM SERIES TO ____________HIS MONTY PYTHON IMPROVISATIONS. BY DON GEORGE | Michael Palin was in Southern California recently, promoting his new book and PBS series, "Full Circle." Palin has starred in half a dozen movies, including "A Fish Called Wanda" and "Fierce Creatures," but he is probably best known for his role in the Monty Python films and TV series, beginning with "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the mind-juicing show that endearingly skewed the best minds of my generation. I have been a Palin fan since the early days of Monty Python, so when the opportunity arose, I hopped on the S.F.-L.A. shuttle and taxied to the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. We met in the lobby, then moved to the gracious garden behind the hotel for our interview. We brought two chairs onto the lawn. I moved my chair so Palin wouldn't be looking into the sun. He moved his chair so he'd be closer to the mike. I moved my chair so I could look at his face more directly. He moved his chair so his legs wouldn't hit my legs. Suddenly we looked at each other: "This is a Python skit!" he laughed. Palin was dressed in bone-colored khakis and an unbuttoned button-down shirt, gray socks he kept pulling up and the kind of comfortable walking shoes you would expect a world-wanderer to wear. He was cheerful and relaxed, reflective at times and impish at others, easy to laugh and so entirely un-obsessed with himself and curious about the world that sometimes it seemed as if he were interviewing me -- qualities that obviously serve him well in his journeys. "Full Circle" is the third in Palin's series of travel specials, following "Around the World in 80 Days" and "Pole to Pole," and is currently airing on PBS stations. The accompanying book, which we excerpt in today's Wanderlust, is available in bookstores around the country. What got you started as a traveler? Was there something in your childhood? I was a trainspotter when I was young, as they call them in England. I used to stand on the station in my hometown of Sheffield and look at the train and see these people come in from Edinburgh who were going to London! What sophistication! Some of them were sitting there at the second sitting of dinner, and I, who was fairly trapped in my hometown, just said, this is extraordinary -- oh, what a life! To be conveyed across the country from Scotland's capital to England's capital, whilst having your dinner! I was very excited by it all. Do you remember your first trip? One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle. Suddenly, I was free to travel without my parents. It wasn't very far to start with, but after a while I was covering 10, 15, 20 miles. Sheffield was a grimy industrial city, but within an hour you could get out to absolutely unspoiled, rather wild, desolate, Heathcliff-type, moorland country. I remember feeling, "This is terrific, I can do this myself." I must have been 9 or 10 years old and I would go off for two hours! Sometimes I would imagine that these journeys were longer than they were. I would imagine that I was going up to Scotland on a train, you see, and I would stop at these various places by the roadside, and they would represent the stations on the way up to Scotland. What do you get from traveling? I get an excitement, a buzz from being somewhere different. I am going to different places, with different languages, different climates and I don't know what I am going to find there. In a sense, it is that odd feeling of facing up to something that I have never encountered before. I feel as though it is as close to changing your life utterly as you can get while still remaining sane. I suppose that is why I became an actor. I am interested in putting myself in another situation. To me, traveling is part of drama; it is a very dramatic thing, the people you meet, and things that are new. It is refreshing and revitalizing and exciting. You really seem to get inside the world in a way that a high-profile traveler usually can't. I think there must be something about your humbleness when you meet people, or ... I just enjoy learning from other people. I have no real qualifications other than a history degree at Oxford. I am not particularly good at anything. I am not particularly practical. I am not particularly good at languages. What I am quite good at is getting people to trust me fairly quickly. I don't say, "You've got to fit in with the way I am." I just try and say, "Look, tell me what's going on here." Another very important ingredient in travel is to be able to be aware of how ridiculous you may seem to people sometimes. You also have got to have a sense of wonder, which I think I probably do have. I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art and I love food, so I am the perfect traveler -- on the cultural scrounge. N E X T+P A G E +| Monty Python's do-it-yourself comedy ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE STREETER