Story of a good old-fashioned treasure hunt.

Travel writer Tahir Shah admits that the search to find the source of King Solomon's treasures is a family obsession. Both his father and his grandfather before him looked for the mines in Yemen and Sudan.

Shah has become convinced that that the place to look is Ethiopia but his search, as this engrossing To The End Of The Earth documentary demonstrated, proved an endurance test at best and a wild goose chase at worst.

His journey began with laughter in the dark - the sound of hyenas, which are reckoned to hold the key to Solomon's wealth, one of the ancient world's greatest mysteries. These hyenas are said to guard the golden treasure. We saw them in a feeding frenzy, snatching pieces of raw meat from sticks held in the mouths of local people.

This, like most of Shah's trip, proved a dead end. With Samson, an ex-gold miner as his guide, he travelled on to Ethiopia's illegal mines to gather clues.

He tried to penetrate the world of the Ethiopian church, clearly getting annoyed with greedy priests who took money but failed to provide the information they'd promised.

He made a perilous climb up a sheer rock face to see a book linked to the location of Solomon's mines, only to be met by a holy man reneging on his promise.

Another local claimed to know the location of a cave, identified by English adventurer Frank Hayter in the 1930s as a link to the mines. With the man leading, Shah set off into what Hayter called "the forest of death" towards the mountain supposedly holding Solomon's secret. The going became so rough and tough that mules and donkeys carrying supplies had to be left behind.

The expedition trudged through thick mud, rocky terrain and persistent rain for days as the so-called guide constantly contradicted himself as where they were heading. Shah found himself without food, equipment and mules miles from anywhere as he fell out with both Samson and the old man leading them.

This made for a dramatic film, and a refreshing documentary in which everything didn't go according to plan as Shah became more and more frustrated at his lack of progress.