Top Gear - Middle East Special ((link)) Full Episode (Quick ✮)

The Top Gear Middle East Special (Season 16, Episode 2) remains one of the show's most iconic adventures, famously tracing the journey of the Three Wise Men across 1,200 miles from Iraq to Bethlehem. 🎬 Recommended Post Drafts

Turkey & Syria: The route took them through southern Turkey and the deserts of pre-civil war Syria .

Starting Point: Erbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were dropped off via a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane. top gear - middle east special full episode

The stage was set in the humid chaos of Erbil, Iraq. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May stood around three "sports" cars that had seen better decades, tasked with following the path of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem.

Watch the Full Episode

The answer is yes, but for different reasons. The Grand Tour on Amazon had a Hollywood budget. The Middle East Special had a pub-crawl budget. The former is a blockbuster; the latter is a documentary about three men having a nervous breakdown in a desert. The Middle East Special captures a moment in time (post-Iraq War, pre-Arab Spring) that cannot be remade. The genuine fear in their eyes when they see a military checkpoint is not acting.

The Curious Absence of Borders

One of the most fascinating aspects of watching this episode in retrospect is the geopolitical snapshot it provides. At the time of filming, the borders between Northern Iraq, Syria, and Turkey were porous enough for a BBC film crew to navigate with relative ease (and a lot of paperwork). The Top Gear Middle East Special (Season 16,

The trio chose three vastly different machines for the desert terrain:

Which part of the Top Gear history are you most interested in? The stage was set in the humid chaos of Erbil, Iraq