British extreme cameraman Stan Gaskell recounts perilous globe-trotting and life on the road

Stan Gaskell is a British extreme cameraman whose work has taken him to remote and sometimes dangerous corners of the globe. He has logged 39 countries, worked 20-hour days, and lived in a van he calls Nelly while filming the adrenaline-filled journeys of real-life explorers. At just 24 years old, the North Yorkshire native has documented moments that range from colorfully chaotic to life-threatening, including experiences at a Hindu festival that only occurs every 144 years in Prayagraj, India, and a military census curfew in Iraq. His travels have also taken him across the world’s most pirated waters as part of a broader mission to capture human endurance on camera.

Gaskell began freelancing as a camera operator at 16 and earned his break on Project Africa in March 2023. He described to the Daily Mail how he spent 352 days traversing Africa to document Russell Cook, known as the Hardest Geezer, and his bid to become the first person to run the entire 10,000-mile route. The project offered a mix of spectacular landscapes and intense, sometimes dangerous, moments that tested his resolve and his crew’s tolerance for risk. Over two expeditions, Gaskell has filmed in 39 countries, chronicling hardships and hospitality alike as he pursued dramatic storytelling rather than pristine production values alone.

The most perilous chapters, though, came from the sea and the road. During Project Africa, his team attempted to transport their 4.5-tonne van across the Gulf of Guinea by loading it onto an aging cargo vessel. The plan involved a crane and a rickety wooden boat, a process that took two days of tense negotiations with a fixer whose reputation still unsettles the crew. Once aboard, the voyage was engulfed by a violent storm as the vessel pitched and rolled, driving home the sense that the team could be swallowed by the sea. The crew recalls a moment when a main support beam cracked under the stress, a crisis that by all rights should have ended their expedition. Yet they pressed on, choosing to endure rather than abandon the mission. The experience underscored a hard-edged truth Gaskell has carried with him: when the risk rises, the line between documentary photography and raw survival narrows to a single decision to persevere.

On another troubled leg of the journey, a breakdown in the Mauritanian Sahara forced Gaskell and his colleague to split from the others in a roadless stretch far from civilization. They moved forward with no satellite phone, following barely used tracks that zigzagged toward the Algerian border. A sandstorm that followed halted progress for a day, then a second day of engine trouble threatened to strand them indefinitely. With the Sahara emphasizing its vast emptiness, the crew sought help near a distant military outpost and were eventually guided to a mechanic. The story took another sharp turn when the mechanic could not repair the van; instead, Algerian truckers agreed to tow them 250 kilometers out of the roadless desert. The journey then required improvisation and coaxing from strangers, as the willing truckers shared food, stories, and a rough sense of camaraderie that helped the team survive. The journey’s pinnacle moment was the decision to ride a perilous route that, in hindsight, could have cost them their lives. The truckers’ intervention and the crew’s resolve kept them from a fatal outcome, reinforcing Gaskell’s belief that danger is a constant in their line of work and that preparation, trust, and nerve are essential.

When reflecting on what runs through his mind during moments of high peril, Gaskell says he has learned to expect that things will go wrong. The day-to-day reality of filming in extreme conditions has shaped a practical mindset: the plan may fail, but the story will endure. After returning from Africa in April 2024, he continued his work on Project Limitless, a different challenge that extended his field of view. Beginning in September 2024 and spanning eight months, he documented British adventurer Mitchell Hutchcraft’s attempt to set a record for the longest climb of Mount Everest in history. The project covered 19 countries and roughly 13,000 kilometers, testing endurance in a variety of climates and terrains while cataloguing the human drama that accompanies a world-class ascent.

Algeria, in particular, remains a standout for Gaskell. He notes that the country had only recently begun to open to Western tourists, and the team’s crossing through a remote desert area marked a rare moment of connection with a culture that welcomed visitors despite limited infrastructure. The hospitality encountered across the travels stood in contrast to the constant reminder of danger that accompanied the work. In recounting the most intense experiences, Gaskell describes how the team’s resilience, and the willingness of local people to extend help, shaped the narrative and the morale of the crew. The practical lessons of such journeys—how to navigate uncertainty, how to communicate across language barriers, and how to adapt a plan when the environment changes—form the backbone of his approach to storytelling.

Beyond the adrenaline and edge-of-your-seat moments, Gaskell emphasizes a core message for aspiring filmmakers and travelers: great travel video is not about fancy cameras or big budgets. The heart of the work, he says, lies in the story and the people encountered along the way. Even a phone camera or a GoPro can capture a compelling narrative if the filmmaker is attuned to the local context and invested in the personal arc of those who share their daily life. The emphasis is on observation, empathy, and the ability to translate chaotic moments into human-scale storytelling that resonates with audiences back home.

Gaskell’s career bears out the value of perseverance and curiosity. His two Africa expeditions, his later work on Project Limitless, and his reflections on Algeria’s openness and hospitality illustrate how travel can be both a professional vocation and a test of resolve. At 24, he has carved out a niche that many aspiring documentary filmmakers chase: the ability to thread dramatic real-world events into coherent, compelling narratives while navigating the logistical and ethical complexities of filming in locations where safety, access, and reliability can shift without warning. He remains committed to documenting the human side of exploration, even as the world around him shifts—from political upheavals to the unpredictable weather that shapes every shoot.

As the field of culture and entertainment coverage continues to broaden in the digital age, stories like Gaskell’s offer a window into the realities behind travel journalism and expedition filmmaking. They remind audiences that the most powerful travel narratives often arise not from polished landscapes alone, but from the people who inhabit those places and the precarious moments in which their lives intersect with the camera. Gaskell’s work demonstrates that adventure, while glamorous in retrospect, is built on long days, careful planning, quick improvisation, and a willingness to face fear in pursuit of a story that might otherwise go untold.