'Human Planet: Deserts - Part 2' airs Thursday, April 24 on GMA

BBC’S “HUMAN PLANET: Deserts – Part 2”

AIRS ON GMA, APRIL 24, THURSDAY, 11:30PM

 

We can survive for weeks without food, but only days without water: it is the essential element of life. Yet many millions of us live in parched deserts around the world.

 

This Thursday on GMA, BBC’s “Human Planet” discovers how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges - and ingenious solutions - in the driest places on Earth.

 

Some areas in the Chilean Atacama Desert are as desolate as the surface of Mars. Here, people have found a way to conjure water from thin air.  

 

In Ba’arma, central Algeria, men dig connecting shafts and tunnels deep into the desert rock, channelling water trapped beneath the desert floor for thousands of years to a village that otherwise would not exist.

 

And in Niger, when the rain finally arrives, it's a time for flowering and jubilation - and love. The Wodaabe men put on make-up for an intoxicating courtship dance and beauty contest.

 

Narrated in Filipino by multi-awarded documentarist Kara David, the second part of Human Planet’s “Deserts – Life in the Furnace” airs Thursday, April 24 after Saksi on GMA.