We’ve been in Kazakhstan for about a week now, none of us are too sure how long, or what day it is. In fact we’re not one hundred percent sure what time zone we’re in, but more on that later.

The day issue caught us out when we rocked up in the town of Qandyagash looking for shops and internet on Sunday. What we did get was a friendly local guide called ‘Ken’, who after exhausting all the possibilities of his home town hopped on board with us for the two hour journey to the next town where some further rooting around with his friends proved equally fruitless!

Still, he did give us some useful tips about which roads were good, and pointed out a town that we should avoid because it was full of terrorists who would attack us with grenades, but we’ll come back to that one. As we left him we asked the time and his watch was two hours different to what we’d been told at the border, we’re still not sure what we’re on, so any ideas - please text us!

The next day things got fruity. We finally left the steppe behind for a brief excursion through some hills (very exciting!) and then stopped in a village to get some water and got invited in for lunch by a lovely Kazakh couple. The conversation was a little stilted, but the food was awesome, and they seemed very happy with the photos we printed out for them. Back on the road we got to Ken’s ‘terrorist town’ which we weren’t too keen on lingering in, but sadly the road on the other side vanished. We rooted around in sand dunes for a while (to Pete’s utter delight) before deciding we should head back to town to look somewhere else for the road. That’s when we got stuck.

We were crossing a salt flat, and it suddenly got very soft, and I didn’t have diff lock engaged. Oops. Remembering all our training we got some tea brewing and assessed our options, all while ankle deep in sludgy mud. First we tried to get more traction using sticks - nothing. Then we dug out the high lift jack to get properly under the wheels, but it just slipped away in the mud. With nothing left for it we got out a sand ladder and dug it into the ground as a land anchor to winch off, and finally we were out with several more kilos of mud and the sun rapidly setting. Still a bit nervous about the town we decided to get some miles away before camping, which of course is when the police stopped us.

Our usual tactics of playing it dumb didn’t quite work this time around as we had an officer determined to find a gift, and not shy about searching the vehicle for it. They invited us to accompany them to the station, which of course we chose not to understand, accused Pete of being drunk (which he may have been giving the fumes coming from the officer’s breath!) and asked us repeatedly where our gun was! He eventually left us minus some beer and cigarettes, but we were still on the edge of town and it was dark - not exactly ideal!

Thankfully we’d spent our last day in England down at the Guy Salmon land rover dealership getting spotlights wired up and so made good progress through some sandy tracks, and despite scaring some guys by appearing from a field into their back yard we found a good spot to camp and got some much needed sleep.

The quest for the road resumed in the morning, and for a good two hours was equally frustrating, but after another village visit and more fantastic hospitality we established that there wasn’t really a road to be found and set out back into the dunes. So much fun! It felt like we were on the Paris-Dakar! We didn’t cover that much ground in the end after grounding Roxanne on top of dunes a couple of times, but set up a good camp where we’re sitting now round a fire fuelled by camel turds.

Thanks for all the text messages, they’re keeping us very entertained! If you don’t know how to send us one click on ‘contact’ to the right…

David

Police check count: 16

On the iPod: At the River by Groove Armada