It is an exciting prospect to have your travels shown on television to a potentially huge and enthusiastic audience. Thanks to the advent of comparatively cheap and light broadcast-quality video cameras, as well as the proliferation of television channels, this is now a real possibility. However, it is still a highly specialised field, and one that is strewn with ghastly difficulties.

Getting your idea commissioned

Let's face it, you are not going to be granted a 'TV spectacular' about your forthcoming round-the-world gypsy caravan odyssey. Why not? Because it all comes down to cost. A standard-length (say 50-minute) travel programme would be budgeted at about £150,000 - this is for a three-week shoot. Surprisingly, the cost of a Video Diary (a format made without a film crew) isn't exactly chicken feed either - here the expense lies in the editing.

This means that your film proposal has to be a very bankable proposition in order to even be considered - you are expected to be notable in your field and to be undertaking a journey that is unique as well as fascinating. And, as if that weren't enough, unlike a writer or a photographer you must be able to communicate your own feelings, even when under pressure - the pressure of, say, working under the constant attention of four bored, moronic members of a film crew - and you must be authoritative, articulate and 'personable'. In short, climbing Everest - even climbing it solo, without oxygen, up the southwest face - nowadays simply isn't good enough.

Still not put off?

An independent production company would consider itself lucky if one in 25 of its programme proposals were to be commissioned by a TV channel - this ratio might be as high as one in ten for the first rank of 'independents'. The process is this: whether through independents or directly, your proposal is submitted on paper (one or two sides of A4, maximum) to a TV channel, and its merits assessed, along with hundreds of other, through the long (up to nine months) selection process. Your proposal might find a slot in a magazine programme - it might become a five-minute item on Blue Peter by a teenager questing after hairy-footed gerbils in the Kalahari. Alternatively, it might end up as a full programme on one of the occasional 'strands' so beloved of TV programmers - examples include Channel 4's Travels with My Camera or the BBC's Great River Journeys.

Of these two options, the magazines are most likely to offer the commissions - they have more slots because they are always looking for 5- or 10-minute items and will probably accept Hi-8 video quality. Although the emergence of digital Hi-8 technology will bring down the cost of foreign filming and open other avenues, at present the only other option is to ask a channel for a whole TV series - and there's fat chance of getting one of those beauties unless you already have a proven track record on telly.

Although the BBC has its own production base, and so can be approached directly with an idea, most channels - including the other two major travel programme outlets, Channel Four in the UK and The Discovery Channel in the US- commission from independents. One way or another, unless you are an experienced operator, with a nose for a marketable storyline, the general rule is that you need a commission, or at least a definite expression of interest, before you set off. The obvious exceptions are regional news programmes, which might welcome a 'local explorer' item, especially if you have potential headline material - which, sadly, means that you'll need to be involved in some kind of disaster story yourself or become a witness to someone else's misery as they succumb to massacre, coup or mudslide.

Behind the camera

Before undertaking this tedious commissioning process, it is as well to consider whether dragging about camera equipment or - horror of horrors - a camera crew is quite your cup of tea in the first place. For many travellers, it suffices simply to have a visual record of the journey - on your return you might want to give a presentation to the worthy businessmen who supported your venture, or wish to use a film clip as an educational tool for the local primary school.

Similarly, footage brought back on a recce trip might raise sponsorship prior to you setting out in earnest, or act as valuable briefing material for the main body of the expedition team. For such purposes it's enough to pack into your rucksack a Hi-8 camcorder, tripod and a stash of batteries.

For those who are prepared to 'go the whole way', and try for that TV commission, there are obvious financial advantages. The income you are likely to accrue from the programme probably will not do more than cover the cost of a modest expedition, but television coverage can have a pleasing effect on those to whom you are indebted. This can mean commercial sponsors - though rules on product placement are now very strict - or even political ones.

A few years ago I applied to the Namibian government to walk up the Namib Desert, something a TV crew had never previously been permitted - not least because diamonds lie scattered in the sands. Armed with a commission, I was in a position to offer the Namibian government worldwide coverage of an exquisitely beautiful portion of the country, which I suggested would be a fillip to its tourist industry; but the master stroke turned out to be that I had also persuaded the BBC to offer free broadcast of the programme on Namibian television, which would allow Namibians to make the journey themselves by watching my rather painful progress across the sand dunes on TV.

So, for the first time, total access was granted by the government to this very special place, while chunks of the delicate desert were still protected from the impact of tourists. However, there was a proviso: I would be filming my progress alone, without a camera crew. And this is where the real problems with telly begin.

The dreadful film crew

There's no escaping the fact that travelling with a film crew is not travelling at all. In bringing a crew, you bring a part of your world with you, and that part happens to be a circus. However hard you try, travelling becomes an act. Forget the lone caver, inching forward through slime on his belly. As likely as not the cameraman, lighting man, soundman and director have got there first.

It's the same for every market scene and every mountain-top soliloquy. In Kenya and Uganda, filming a BBCGreat Railway Journey, I found myself lumbered with a crew that was ten-strong, including the official government minder, two local 'fixers' and two minibus drivers, who served as roadies, ferrying everyone else around along with their kit.

And here we come to the main point: keeping this show on the road costs a fortune, so before you even leave home, an hour-by-hour itinerary has to be worked out - worked out according to the needs of a film crew, not a traveller. 'Chance encounters' are arranged, tribal dances ordered up. Effectively, the film-maker is re-assembling the components of a journey for the enjoyment of others. He or she is not actually making a real journey at all. There may be many justifications for this - for me, watching the film crew scrambling aboard a crowded Kampala train was in itself good for a comedy sequence. But if you say you are doing your trek along the Great Wall of China for your own sake, and it just happens to be filmed, then you are deceiving yourself. The answer is that, like the very best circus act, it's little more than a stunt.

Video - the one-man band

There is another option. Modern technology now enables expeditions to be filmed on video with the help of a small, or no, additional film crew. In addition to the possibilities offered by the somewhat cumbersome Beta video camera, the Hi-8 camcorder, now with digital technology, brings the small camera well up to broadcast standard. While glossy shots and a first-grade soundtrack are still best captured by a crew, these cameras and the tape they use are cheap and robust. For the first time ever, expeditions can now be recorded comprehensively as they unfold. Thus for my three-and-a-half-month Namib trek, I simply strapped solar panels either side of the hump of Nelson (my lead camel) and used them to recharge the batteries for my little Hitachi VM-80. I was totally self-sufficient with the aid of the Hi-8 and tripod, recording whatever befell me (and camel companions) as we plodded hopefully through the dunes.

In the Peruvian Amazon, a camcorder (Sony TR805) again enabled me to record a journey over an extended period. The use of video also helped me in recording the everyday life of my guides. Instead of feeling like a predatory outsider, as I'd always felt before when taking photographs of indigenous people, I was now able to involve them in the process, in this case getting the local Matses Indians to film themselves. The hundred or so hours of tape from the expedition proved to be an invaluable record of life in the jungle - there was footage of drug dealers, and even of an ocelot- type cat, which, rightly or wrongly, the Matses believe often exhibits aggressive behaviour to humans.

A further note of warning. Just when you are congratulating yourself on having survived the film crew, the tangles of the battery charger units, the frogmarch to jail, it's time to begin battling back home in the cutting room. Your producer knows what makes 'good TV'- and that usually means giving your precious journey a 'comic twist'. That said, TV at its best gives the traveller something unique - the chance to pass on to others direct experience of different worlds. This is far more than simple gratification. Travellers must nowadays be able to justify the act of imposing themselves on foreign turf. Sharing their journey with the millions back home who are not privileged to have made it themselves is one way of doing that.