The book follows the journey he undertook for the BBC series. It consists of text by Palin and many photographs, most of them taken by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was part of the expedition team.
The book chronicles the journey in five chapters:
The North Pole to Tallinn The Arctic, Greenland, Norway, Finland, USSR
Tallinn to Port Said USSR, Turkey, Rhodes, Cyprus, Egypt
Port Said to Nairobi Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya
Nairobi to Cape Town Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa
Cape Town to the South Pole South Africa, Chile, Antarctica
The demonstration of the Coriolis effect in Kenya was, apparently, a clever hoax.