LAURA CARTLEDGE: It may be great TV, but it is tough out there for so many people ...

Seeing a London cabbie brave the traffic in Mumbai is an eye-opening experience.

It seems The Knowledge doesn’t get you far on roads full of chaos and cows.

If you’ve seen it you’ll know I am talking about the latest series of The Toughest Place to be a... from the BBC.

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If you haven’t, you should: the iPlayer and current weather is made for television like this.

Especially if you add a duvet and a steaming mug of hot chocolate to the equation.

In one word the programmes are fascinating.

Another episode took a dairy farmer from the lush damp surroundings of Devon to the parched mountains of northern Kenya.

Here the cattle are the Samburu tribesmen’s life and just keeping alive is a struggle.

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So much so, the tribe couldn’t believe in Devon you don’t have to trek for months to make sure the herd has enough grass, or sleep out next to them to protect them from lions, leopards and hyenas.

And fire-fighting was taken to a new degree when a West Sussex fireman headed to the Amazon to fight some of the biggest forest fires in the world.

It has certainly done what good television should – it has made me think...Where would be the toughest place to be a journalist?

In some countries, while ‘the pen is mightier than the sword,’ it would also seem it is just as dangerous.

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And arguably it offers less protection for those found to be wielding it against the wishes of those in power.

Writing a ‘sentence’ could have two meanings under China’s censorship for example.

While, closer to home, journalism has changed massively in the last 30 years.

Photographs used to arrive in the office by motorbike and now they come at a click.

It was typewriters, carbon paper and printing plates made by hand.

I don’t think I will ever moan about a jammed printer again.