Day 20

After watching the Man U - Chelsea game in a drive in cinema the previous night, we got up early having been woken during the night by a triple shooting, (of cats). Apparently the locals don't take kindly to been woken during the night.

We had yet another random collection of food for breakfast in our hotel, swiss roll and prune juice anyone? For the first time on our leg we successfully navigated ourselves out of town only to be stopped yet again at the check point on the edge of town. Of course now we're in Kazakhstan this involves a lot of shaking of hands and chatting and a little bit of bureaucracy. Rumour had it we had been stopped as Karl had an illegal number of buttons undone on his shirt. In contrast to yesterdays roads the road out of town was a 2 lane highway and billiard smooth. Sometimes its nice not to off-road even in a Defender.

After driving for 2 Hrs we're stopped again for not having our lights on. It was nice to stop.

From the cars you don't realise how much wild life is out there on what appears to be a barren plain. At midday we cross 60 degrees latitude 1/6 of the way round the world we turn off the M5 and onto the M32 and things get a lot worse! The speed drops and you really begin to understand the sentiments behind the the Good-luck banner as we'd left Ural'sk on day 4. After several hours despite the early pace our average speed has dropped to 30mph and it becomes apparent just what a task we have ahead of ourselves to reach Aral'sk by dusk. After several hours we pass a group of surveyors looking like a geography field trip. My hopes were raised that the road would soon improve but sadly I was wrong apparently they would rather stare into the holes than fill them. I guess at least they weren't on a tea break.

The wildlife has been great today with many eagles and our second sighting of Camels, one even seemed to wear a deranged smile as we passed. The cars got a wash of sorts with our first rain fall since arriving in Kazakhstan.

In the spirit of "Sharing our world" we pick up a truck driver who is hitching back to his truck with a bodged hose for his Camaz truck. These things are amazing but no match for a Disco and he is genuinely impressed with the speed the Disco can travel over rough ground. In exchange for the ride we get two cabbages from his load. The other 2000 don't look to be going anywhere fast as most of the truck is spread across the carriage way.

As the sun began to fall it became apparent we would not reach our destination and we pitch camp behind a grassy knoll. (Well actually lavendery,it smells amazing!).