The new series of Celebrity Race Across the World drops four famous pairs into Kuching, on the Malaysian side of Borneo, and asks them to reach Melbourne using nothing but local transport, a paper map and a budget of just £26 a day per person. The route covers 4,660 miles, three countries and two continents.
The line-up mixes musicians with broadcasting royalty: Ella Eyre is racing with childhood friend Nana, Eurovision star Sam Ryder has teamed up with his tour manager Kaz, former Soccer Saturday presenter Jeff Stelling competes with his son Matt, and siblings Princess and Junior Andre — children of Katie Price and Peter Andre — complete the field. The show airs on BBC One and iPlayer on Wednesday nights at 8pm.
The start city alone is worth a trip. Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, is nicknamed cat city — 'kuching' is the Malay word for cat — and cat statues pop up all over town. Highlights include the S-shaped Darul Hana bridge over the Sarawak River, the mosque that appears to float on water, and the Kuching Waterfront promenade with its stalls and museums. Food-wise, Sarawak laksa and kolo mee noodles are the local signatures, and the city works as a gateway to Bako National Park, home to proboscis monkeys and strange rock formations.
The first checkpoint is Pangkalan Bun in Indonesian Borneo, roughly 1,000km south. It's a scattered riverside city on the Arut River with no real centre — most visitors come for Tanjung Puting National Park nearby, one of the best places on Earth to see orangutans. Boat tours reach Camp Leakey, the famous research centre founded in the 1970s, and an Orangutan Care Centre that rehabilitates injured primates. On the way there, the teams passed Indigenous Dayak longhouse communities, the hiking base of Sematan and Pontianak, a port city sitting exactly on the equator.
The finish line is Melbourne, Australia's cultural capital, where laneway street art, a serious coffee scene and the National Gallery of Victoria — the country's oldest gallery — await, alongside big-ticket sporting fixtures like the Australian Open and the F1 Grand Prix.
For travellers, the route is a ready-made inspiration: overland Borneo by boat and bus, with wild rainforest, orangutans and Indigenous cultures in between, is very doable independently, and far cheaper than the usual Southeast Asia beach circuit.
