Out here at basecamp, it is the small moments that leave a mark. Although we are here to live a memorable moment, the small ones, the ones that won’t make it to the final film or the glossy campaign, are those that count the most; it is the small moments of connection that bind us and this expedition together.

The colour of the sky this morning is a soft, dusty blue, a tone you see just before the sun clears the ridge. I crawl out of my sleeping bag, and carefully slide through the zipped opening of my tent, keen not to brush its wet outer skin, which drips with condensation; one clumsy movement and I will be soaked. 

It is seven fifteen, and the valley is just waking up. With a flask of coffee, I sit outside the mess tent, my journal on my knees. Across from me, Ed Jackson, his eyes closed, tilts his head back, to have the early sun warm his face.  The scene - the rising light and steam twisting from his mug - begs to be photographed, but for now, I leave my camera on the table. The effects of caffeine hit me; my shoulders soften, my morning mood dissipates and I breathe in this small moment. 

I am here in Kyrgyzstan with Ed, to climb a virgin peak, the summit of which would be the first by a person with a disability. Our core team is small but tight. I am on stills and video, Jake doubles as on-location director and cameraman, Ade is lead guide, Paul, second guide dedicated to supervising the camera crew (Jake and myself), in the event that we fall into a crevasse when seeking a shot, Aishaand and her young son Orozbek fuel us with their cooking, and further up the valley Rayisbek, a local shepherd and his family, are the hospitable people who initially welcomed us to this remote place. Ed is the man at the centre of the story.  

The significance of our two-day journey by truck to reach this valley, is eclipsed by the encounter with a place untouched by time, whose nearest town is a day’s drive away.

Basecamp is a broad bowl of grass and stone where horses graze freely beyond our tents, and the rush of the river, milky from glacial melt, fills in the lulls between conversations. Moments here feel elastic; the morning ones are busy with charging batteries from solar panels, cleaning camera kit, or editing footage, whilst afternoon ones pass lazily, sprawled on the grass finding animals in drifting clouds, working-out by the river, or throwing stones at rocks, a basecamp version of Boules, but a lot more complex, with thousands of rocks at which to aim. At night, the valley turns black, lit only by stars, which spill out from the heavens, like glitter, and Jake and I rush to capture the hazy path of the Milky Way across the sky.

Between the chores and the waiting, basecamp life teaches patience. There are moments when lightning storms roll quickly in and we run around securing equipment and zipping up tents; there are moments of unsettling silence when we feel the dull ache of homesickness, and moments of pure euphoria, when our laughter echoes down the valley.

After completing our climb, the expedition truck, scheduled to pick us up from basecamp at nine in the morning, is delayed by six hours; a delay that would normally frustrate us, but here, it prompts the launch of our post-expedition-party.

Supplied by our fixers, we find in the truck a red metal petrol can of homemade Russian Moonshine. This, we quickly finish and move onto the plastic bottles of beer. Ed opens his third, takes a swig and spits it out straight away.

‘What the hell is that?’ he splutters, having unwittingly slugged a mouthful of engine oil, a precautionary reserve stored in all the old Russian GAZ-66 trucks, which frequently break down.

For a celebratory meal, we are invited to the hut of Rayisbek’s brother, filled with the sweet smell of baking dough, and warmth from a stove fuelled by dried animal dung.

Welcoming and attentive, they offer us endless cups of tea, bowls of beetroot salad and loaves of warm crusty bread straight from the fire, thickly spread with yak butter and homemade jam.

After eating, their children, who are playing a game which we name ‘knuckle bones’, invite us to join them. Each player lines up a row of polished animal bones, then takes turns to flick their bones at the other’s, aiming to knock them down one by one - the winner being the first to do so. Despite our best efforts, neither Jake, Ed nor I can defeat the reigning champion, our host’s young son; everyone is laughing, and although we share no language, there is no mistaking the joy elicited from the small yet simple moments of this simple human connection.