Behind the journey

Most of a mission is email. Identifying which organizations are worth approaching, working out who to write to, writing to them, and then waiting. Most do not reply. Some reply and decline. A few say yes, and those few determine what the mission can actually cover.

Site access takes longer than expected almost everywhere. Permission to photograph takes longer still, and permission to film is a separate conversation again, often with a different person entirely.

None of that is a complaint. It is the reason the research plan is published in advance and revised in public: a mission that reaches four organizations instead of nine is a smaller mission, not a failed one, and the page should say which happened.