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By Sara Douglas, Producer / Director

May 30th 2023 is a day that I won’t forget for a while. It was a day when, after one of the most frightening experiences of my career, I found myself trapped in a dense forest in the mountains of northern Thailand.

Whilst making the “Above the Clouds” episode of Asia, myself and my team travelled across the continent to some of the world’s most iconic mountain ranges. We also ventured to some of the lesser-known peaks in search of new and surprising stories.

One of the locations we visited was the Daen Lao mountain range in the remote far-north of Thailand. Although not as dizzyingly high as the Himalaya, or as cold as the Hindu Kush in Pakistan, the humid, densely-forested peaks presented our team with their own set of challenges. Our goal was to film a huge population of swifts, thought to be the largest found anywhere in the world. These remarkable birds roost inside a vast cave, and to get there, we had to hike with all our filming gear through the tropical forest.

The first clues that we were close to the cave were not visual. Once the acrid smell from the faeces of countless thousands of birds hit us, we knew we were nearing our destination.

As we rounded a corner, and the cavernous opening of the cave came into sight, the next thing that attacked our senses was the noise. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been around something so unrelentingly loud! The final assault came when we actually got inside the cave and into the thick of the action. Perhaps unsurprisingly, hundreds of thousands of birds (and bats) eating, sleeping, nesting and flying above equates to a constant rain of poo.

All this said, these were daily challenges that we had planned for. As well as wearing face masks throughout our time inside the cave, we also came armed with more entertaining protection for our heads – rainbow-patterned umbrella hats! It’s amazing how quickly we got used to conducting serious planning conversations while dressed like characters from a kids’ TV show!

Our other major challenge was how to actually capture the dramatic lives of these fast-moving birds in the near-darkness of the cave. Most cameras need a lot of light in order to capture the high-quality imagery that we require. And if you want to film things in slow motion, you need even more light than usual. We’d armed ourselves with some of the very latest in low-light camera technology, and also some lights, so that we could sensitively illuminate sections of the cave. We also brought a large crane to get the camera close to our subjects in hard-to-reach places, plus multiple drones, ultra small ‘spy’ cameras and even underwater cameras to place in the river that ran along the cave floor.

Moving all this equipment around in the heat and humidity of the cave, combined with its overwhelming smells and sounds, not to mention all the faeces constantly raining down from above, meant we had to take regular breaks and rotate the crew so that everyone got a frequent break from being inside the cave. However, after a few days, we got into a routine and, as well as capturing some great imagery, we also were managing to document behaviour that had never been filmed before. All was going well.

However, not all challenges we face on location are always possible to plan for. One afternoon, I was inside the cave filming with Cinematographer Steven McGee-Callender. Assistant Producer Joe Russell was outside of the cave filming scenery shots with Cinematographer Alex Vail and our Thai fixer, Poom.

All of a sudden, there was a shockingly loud cracking sound. My heart stopped and my first thought was that the cave was collapsing with us inside. I quickly realised this wasn’t the case (this was very unlikely due to the stable nature of the cave) and ran round a corner so that I could see the mouth of the cave and the outside world.

The whole entrance appeared to be a mass of white cloud. It took my brain a good few seconds to realise what I was looking at - the entrance was obscured by a cloud of extremely heavy rain, dust and debris.

I radioed Joe, Alex and Poom, to see if they were okay.

There was no answer.

I descended the wooden steps to the cave mouth and held my breath as I radioed again. Still no answer. Just as I was considering dashing out to look for them, the radio crackled “We’re okay, we’re okay.” I let out a long breath and as the dust cleared and the rain stopped, I helped the bedraggled crew bring their gear back into the safety of the cave. Alex said the storm had sounded like a freight train charging down the valley, and all he could do was hang on to the camera and look out for falling trees.

It turned out that a freak violent storm had materialised out of nowhere and unleashed its full force right outside the cave. The brief tempest had transformed the area, with fallen trees and debris everywhere, as well as large boulders that had come loose from above the cave mouth. Huge trees from the slopes of the surrounding valley had fallen in all directions. Myself and Poom hiked out along the forest trail to check the situation and, to our surprise, it was even worse than it was around the cave. Some of the forest's biggest trees had been felled by the ferocious winds and now, our route out was completely blocked by a wall of flattened trunks and branches.

Fortunately, Poom was able to get word to a nearby temple and, much to our relief, the resident monks came to our aid - armed with chainsaws to clear the way.

Unscathed, relieved and tired, we finally got back to our camp after nightfall and had a chance to reflect on what had happened. It was certainly a savage reminder of both nature’s power and unpredictability. Fortunately, no-one was hurt, and the swifts seemed remarkably unaffected; we were able to carry on with the rest of the shoot, capturing a story that we’re all extremely excited to be able to share with the world.