Season 1
Episode: 1x01 | Airdate: Jun 26, 2007
The boys' first challenge sees them heading deep into the Brazilian rainforest to prove themselves as Kalapalo Warriors – aiming to become the first Westerners ever to fight in the Festival of Death.
Episode: 1x02 | Airdate: Jul 3, 2007
In South Africa, the athletes take on Zulus in the deadly sport of stick fighting, an event where bloodshed and death are never far away. The athletes have to go through initiation ceremonies and take magic potions before fighting at a Zulu royal wedding.
Episode: 1x03 | Airdate: Jul 10, 2007
In the mountains of west Mexico, the group run a marathon-length race against Tarahumara Indians, some of the greatest natural endurance runners in the world. They must wear local sandals and learn to kick a small wooden ball over a snake-infested canyon course.
Episode: 1x04 | Airdate: Jul 17, 2007
The athletes take on the Sumi, a tribe of former head-hunters in Nagaland in northern India. Their goal is to become Aki Kiti fighters, a vicious martial art where the soles of your feet are your only weapons and your only defence.
Episode: 1x05 | Airdate: Jul 24, 2007
The group live as Mongolian nomads, where relentless training for a professional wrestling tournament is only broken up with some of the unpleasant tasks involved in managing the local herd of goats.
Episode: 1x06 | Airdate: Jul 31, 2007
The athletes go and live with Pacific Islanders at festival time to take part in a game of cricket. But they soon discover that this isn't cricket as we know it, but a game of taunts, intimidation, magic and war.
Episode: 1x07 | Airdate: Aug 7, 2007
The athletes are thrown into a wrestling boot camp in a Senegalese village with the aim of competing with the locals at their national sport. But first they have to avoid serious injury - no mean feat in itself.
Episode: 1x08 | Airdate: Aug 14, 2007
The athletes go to live with the Sepik, a jungle tribe of Papua New Guinea, where they'll compete in the biggest canoe race of the year. But to succeed they also have to learn to sleep in snake-ridden shelters and survive crocodile-infested waters.
Season 2
Episode: 2x01 | Airdate: Oct 14, 2008
In southern Ethiopia the athletes take on the deadly sport of Suri stick-fighting, but before they can enter the ring they must learn to live with a tribe whose way of life has barely changed for hundreds of years. This means a spot of tribal scarring and some internal cleansing known as the Dokai.
Episode: 2x02 | Airdate: Oct 21, 2008
The athletes head to a harvest festival in Burkina Faso, a tiny land-locked country in West Africa. There they must ask for help from sacred crocodiles and ancestral masks before taking part in a brutal inter-village wrestling contest involving some of the country's top fighters.
Episode: 2x03 | Airdate: Oct 28, 2008
In the Himalayas, the athletes are living with Nepalese Sherpas and learning to train at extreme altitude in freezing conditions. Their goal is a punishing race up a mountain in the shadow of Everest, carrying a slab of sacred rock on their backs for the construction of a Buddhist prayer wall.
Episode: 2x04 | Airdate: Nov 4, 2008
The athletes are in central Brazil at the height of the rainy season to race canoes against the Wauja tribe. However, they have more than just a fast-flowing river to contend with, as they face the ever-present piranhas, a bloody initiation ceremony and the wrath of some very angry village women.
Episode: 2x05 | Airdate: Nov 11, 2008
The athletes are in Bhutan to learn the national sport of archery. They have to fire arrows more than twice the Olympic distance, over the heads spectators, to hit a target the size of a dinner plate. It is so difficult that even the experts have a special dance when anyone scores a hit, and the lads are right at the centre of a serious grudge match between two villages.
Episode: 2x06 | Airdate: Nov 18, 2008
The athletes head for Kamchatka in north-east Asia to live with Koriyak nomads in temperatures that can drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius. After acclimatising, training to run in snow and helping with the spring reindeer corralling, they travel to the Koriyak spring festival to race the locals in their annual endurance race.
Episode: 2x07 | Airdate: Nov 25, 2008
The athletes take on the sport of sikaran, a brutal form of kick-fighting where the hands and arms may only be used for defence. After being put through their paces in a tough training regime, they must prove themselves worthy of wearing the prized red pants of a sikaranista before fighting in an open contest.
Episode: 2x08 | Airdate: Dec 2, 2008
The athletes are in Indonesia, facing the prospect of driving pairs of racing buffalo on a waterlogged drag track while hanging on to a special racing plough. To have any chance of success they need to get their animals to trust them, but bonding sessions with semi-tamed buffalo are not easy.
Episode: 2x09 | Airdate: Dec 9, 2008
The athletes take on the ancient Indian art of Kushti wrestling - sweaty, hand to hand combat in a concrete sand pit. If they survive intensive training in a Kushti guru's school, they will be rewarded with a chance to take on the local professionals in front of 15,000 fight fans, who have a reputation for cutting up rough if they don't like what they see.
Episode: 2x10 | Airdate: Dec 16, 2008
In their final challenge, the athletes take part in an ocean-going race between islands off Papua New Guinea. It is two days of paddling outrigger canoes over shark-infested waters against some of the world's greatest canoe experts - the Titans, a tribe of sea nomads who have lived on these waters for centuries.