However, he chose documentary filmmaking, and investigative journalism as his career. As a BBC Special Correspondent to the former USSR, he reported news events such as the first cosmonauts' homecoming and Fidel Castro's state visit, and was the first person from west of the Iron Curtain since the Russian Revolution of 1917 to travel voluntarily among the nomadic reindeer tribes of Arctic Siberia and the Gulag. Botting went on to make documentary films for organisations including National Geographic, the BBC, Time Life and Royal Geographical Society.