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If you go trekking in Nepal on holiday, the general advice is to travel light, as with no roads in the depths of the Himalayas, you’ll be carrying everything with you.

Unfortunately, 'travelling light' isn't easy for a TV crew but after some fancy packing we eventually managed to bring down the weight of our equipment from its usual 500kg to nearer 350kg.

We flew from Kathmandu to Phaplu in small Twin Otter planes. Phaplu is a small town with a simple, but well-maintained dirt strip on the side of a mountain, run as a proper airport.

It is from here that people power was required, and we were thankful that we were able to employ about 30 local sherpas to help carry both our filming equipment and our fixer's camping equipment to Pikehop village, a day's trek away at the far end of a valley.

Walking from Phaplu to Pikehop I was immediately aware of the effect of altitude on my body. Climbing just a few steps left me breathless and I found myself constantly thirsty.

The crew (both UK and Nepali) stayed in tents a short walk from the bottom of the village, and we utilised a disused barn as our kit room.

With kerosene for the generator needing to be carried from a town three days trek away (it wasn't allowed to travel by plane), ensuring that it was only run when necessary was of huge importance. With camera and walkie-talkie batteries draining far faster than usual because of the cold, it was a delicate balancing act to ensure that as many batteries as possible was re-charged for use the following day.

During the night it took a while to bring down my breathing to a level where it was possible to sleep, and once asleep dreams were consistently the most vivid and real I've ever experienced. It was also the first time I've had to sleep cocooned in a 4-season sleeping bag, with nothing but my face exposed to the freezing cold… it takes some getting used to!

As does waking up in the morning to find your water bottle has frozen solid.

Filming the race was our biggest challenge.

We managed it using both our main and spare 'proper' cameras operated by specialist cameramen, and 4 smaller cameras operated by the assistant producers, a local Nepali cameraman, and me (as you can see in my picture above).

We spread ourselves out along the route, and then followed particular athletes as they reached us.

We had planned to use a helicopter on the race day to get some aerial footage which would really demonstrate the scale of the challenge. Unfortunately there was too much wind and as a result the helicopter wasn’t able to safely climb high enough to be of any use for filming.

The entire filming period was an amazing but arduous experience.

Everything we did took so much more energy than it would back in the UK, but the landscape and the friendliness of the people we filmed and were working with made the whole experience very rewarding.

Its not a bad day at the office when you get to climb a mountain and get an amazing view of Mt. Everest!

Tim Pyke, Production Co-ordinator

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