Day 29

After a pleasant night sleep we arose around 8:00am for a refreshing breakfast of muesli mixed with yoghurt as supplies are getting low! A team effort saw the camp site next to the mountain river in Žeti Oguz cleaned to perfection with the campfire lit to burn off the remaining rubbish. Just as the tents were being packed away a herd of cows decided to wander around the campsite to reclaim their land. Succeeding this we managed our first successful key check after nearly two weeks much to Ian's relief! Passing down the valley following the river we passed numerous camps of tents, yurts and makeshift huts. There were seven wooden bridges to traverse all of various qualities. We were blessed again with glorious weather today peaking in the mid thirty's. About half way down the valley we suddenly came across a LR Defender 110 with an erect roof tent and the URL WWW.NESSIESADVENTURES.COM around the wheel cover. The owners were a Scottish couple Rose and Dave from Perth who had been on their travels for over a year and had seen them cover Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China and now Kyrgyzstan with the intention of continuing until they get to Argentina. Amazing - 'Go Beyond Rose and Dave' respect is due!

At the bottom of the valley we also spied a Mk 1 Freelander with Kyrg plates on in fairly good condition. We set off on the road to Karakol avoiding numerous cattle, horses,sheep, goats and donkeys straying continuously into our path. Andy Fairgrieve nearly terminated a cow that rushed into the path of Defender One, using great skill to avoid it.

Karakol is probably the largest town around Lake Ysyk-Kol and was very busy when we stopped to stock up on food, drink and diesel. The guys who fuelled up had an interesting experience and believed they had been ripped off amongst all the confusion of filling up 5 cars at once. The food shoppers stocked up with enough supplies to keep us going until Alamaty. Getting back onto the main road out of Karakol proved adventurous with a trip through the local slums and several five car 3-point turns. We were also lucky to see a farrier shoeing a horse. Finally out of town we hit a long straight tree lined road littered with dead kamikaze crow skilled by cars. For some reason they just seemed to fly out of the trees straight at the cars. We pulled up at a small stagnant looking pond for a quick make shift sandwich and fruit lunch in the intense heat with noisy crows in the trees above which luckily left our food alone.

We headed off on the way to the border crossing back in to Kazakhstan at Karkürn. It was the dustiest road yet encountered requiring fog lights and a large distance between the vehicles especially given the amount of animals that were being herded up the mountains for the summer. I recalled a conversation with Jonathan and Erin back in Kochkor about this whereby all the animals in the villages are rounded up by herdsmen at the beginning of the summer and taken up the mountains to the lush pastures. Each animal is branded with its owner's insignia. They then return them before the winter snowfall back to their owners hopefully with several offspring. Continuing on Joe had the unfortunate experience of cutting short the life of a hen that decided to fly bomb directly at the front of Defender One - luckily the bull bars ensured no damage was done and a further course for evening meal had been found!

The border crossing was the easiest one yet requiring only a presentation of vehicle documents, passports and the quick filling in of a piece of paper. We then went in to the customs office where two Borat looking like men greeted us with handshakes and hugs. Ian left them feeling happy after giving them both a Land Rover pen. It all took only 35 minutes - a record sofar! It was a shame to leave Kyrgyzstan and all those 'smiley,happy people everywhere' - great memories.

Back again on to another dusty road which was great fun given it was flat and there was no traffic and the only animals we saw were a few snakes and marmots running around. This took us to our final destination of the day the Charin Canyon apparently the second largest canyon in the world.

At the edge of the canyon we spied another LR Defender 110 coming towards us. It was occupied by a French couple Bruno & Sylviane from Vichy in France. They were on there way to Mongolia in a Defender 110 station wagon with a damaged shock absorber and a broken spring that had been limiting their progress. Ben a fluent French speaker given his mothers origins engaged in conversation with them and exchanged details as they planned to visit England in the near future and would like a tour of the Solihull plant.

We continued driving along the canyon and sampling the breathtaking views. It was a mass of huge sandstone formed about 25 million years ago. We paid about £2.50 for each car to enter and for the privilege of camping the night. The track down to the bottom of the canyon was the most perilous yet requiring low ratio gears and acute attention to negotiating the rocks on the track. At one point the vehicles had to be manoeuvred thru a very tricky right handed turn thru a hole in one of the rocks. They only just made it given the jerry cans on the roofs of the vehicles. We found a suitable pitch for a camp site at the bottom of the canyon next to a river again and setup camp and reflected on what we had experienced so far on Leg 2. Most of the team retired early after an arduous day and Karl once again slept on the roof of Defender 2 amongst all the midges and mozzies.

Today will go down as the day of the Land Rover Defender given the two couples we met in them afterdriving for many days with out seeing a single Land Rover vehicle.