AFTER TAKING ON THE FROZEN ROADS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, HISTORY(TM) SETS ITS SIGHTS ON THE MOST DANGEROUS ROADS IN THE WORLD A Thrilling New Chapter of the ICE ROAD TRUCKERS
Television Phenomenon Begins
IRT: DEADLIEST ROADS Premieres This Fall 2010 on HISTORY(TM)
August 6, 2010, Los Angeles, CA - The intrepid drivers of ICE ROAD TRUCKERS thought they had seen it all while navigating the frozen Alaskan roadways north of the Arctic Circle. But wait until they get behind the wheel on the harrowing, ancient highways of the Himalayas! IRT: DEADLIEST ROADS, a new series premiering in fall 2010 on HISTORY(TM), takes some of the toughest truckers from one of History's most popular programs and challenges them to haul their way through a new kind of hell on earth. The challenges and perils are never ending on IRT: DEADLIEST ROADS. Someone dies on the roads there every 4.5 minutes. If seasoned drivers Rick Yemm, Lisa Kelly and Alex Debogorski aren't careful and lucky, they too might wind up as casualty statistics. IRT: DEADLIEST ROADS will test everything the ice truckers have learned in more than 40 combined years of driving, forcing them to adapt to white-knuckle road and driving conditions unlike anything they have ever faced. From the crowded streets of Delhi to treacherously steep, narrow and congested roads blasted into the mountainside, they're about to embark on an exhilarating, exhausting and terrifying adventure. India's Himalayan roadways are among the most historic on the planet. Dating back to 206 B.C., the Himalayas were an integral part of the famous Silk Routes, connecting Central Asia with South Asia, and creating a bridge between culturally and religiously diverse countries such as India, China, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bhutan. Infrastructure that was once narrow yak trails were turned into roads in the 1800s and today's truckers now follow along these same ancient routes.
However, beneath this rich culture and tradition exists some of India's most treacherous roadways. One stretch of tight, winding road is the notorious "Freefall Freeway," which clings to a cliff 700 feet high - a wall of granite on one side, a perilous drop to certain death on the other. Elsewhere, drivers must master "The Cutouts," where only enough rock has been blasted out of the mountains to allow one vehicle at a time to pass. Not only must drivers here cope with a 1,000-foot cliff, but they also must be wary of scraping the top of their vehicles on the rock ceiling. If that weren't enough, "Breakaway Bend," so named because too much blasting has weakened the mountain from below, leads not only to potholes but also to total roadway failure. Quite literally, the road could give way under their wheels at any moment.
This is a country where traffic jams last all day and road closures drag on for weeks - bad news indeed for a trucker with a load and a deadline to meet. The ever-present danger of avalanches, communication breakdowns with people who speak a different language, wild weather conditions that range from 115 degrees to below freezing and the harder-than-it-sounds task of driving on the other side of the road are additional challenges that will fray nerves and put lives on the line. IRT: DEADLIEST ROADS is produced for HISTORY by Original Productions, a FremantleMedia Company. Executive Producers for Original Productions are Thom Beers and Philip D. Segal. Jeff Conroy and James Patrick Costello II are Co-Executive Producers. Executive Producers for History are David McKillop and Julian P. Hobbs. About History:
HISTORY(TM) and HISTORY HD(TM) are the leading destinations for revealing, award-winning original non-fiction series and event-driven specials that connect history with viewers in an informative, immersive and entertaining manner across multiple platforms. Programming covers a diverse variety of historical genres ranging from military history to contemporary history, technology to natural history, as well as science, archaeology and pop culture. cptfc Among the network's program offerings are hit series such as American Pickers, Ax Men, The Universe, Ice Road Truckers, Chasing Mummies, Top Shot and Pawn Stars, as well as acclaimed specials including America The Story Of Us, WWII In HD, 102 Minutes That Changed America, Moonshot and Life After People. HISTORY has earned four Peabody Awards, seven Primetime Emmy(R) Awards, 12 News & Documentary Emmy(R) Awards and received the prestigious Governor's Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the network's Save Our History(R) campaign dedicated to historic preservation and history education. Take a Veteran to School Day is the network's latest initiative connecting America's schools and communities with veterans from all wars. The HISTORY website, located at www.history.com, is the leading online resource for all things history, featuring over 20,000 videos, images, audio clips, articles and interactive features that allow visitors to dig deeper into a broad range of thousands of historical topics.
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