Chapter 4
Ladaland

Tuesday 11 July, Apartment on Samal 2, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, we love you

Yesterday was without doubt one of the most surreal and extraordinary days of my life. After all the sleepless nights, the worry, the ‘will we ever make it?’ fears, Jo, TT and I made it safe and sound to Kazakhstan, the land of milk and honey we have been dreaming of throughout our Chinese tukathon. And now here I am, sitting in our rented apartment, looking out on the Tien Shan Mountains, with China already slipping into the confines of my memory.

The day started early, before sunrise. As we hauled our luggage out of the yurt and into Ting Tong, the sun was just beginning to stain the horizon orange and cast her golden cloak over the lake and mountains. The odd herdsman cantered past and a group of Chinese tourists looked on curiously as we pulled off TT’s cover to reveal the pink lady herself. But Ting Tong dug in her heels. She didn’t want to leave China, either. Or, more likely, she didn’t like the cold dawn air. For half an hour we tried to start her, but she stubbornly refused. A couple of times the engine wheezed into life for a few seconds and then died again. The next option was to push her on to the road, where there was a slight incline, and give her a rolling start. The Chinese tourists quickly came to our help, and TT was pushed about 90 feet into the starting gates. What a funny sight,TT being pushed by a selection of Chinese, English and Uighurs against a background of yurts and grazing animals. Then, thank goodness, our luck changed. A Chinese man—who assured us he was ‘velly good driver’—climbed into the cockpit and got a tune out of her. We were off! Of all the mornings Tingers could have chosen to have a tantrum.

Our last 40 miles of China were beautiful. The road wound through the mountains, past beekeepers, herdsmen, brightly decorated yurts and herds of horses and foals. Rarely has England felt so far away.

Then we hit the maelstrom of the border. We did our usual and weaved TT in and out of the queues of coaches to the front of the fray. At once a crush of people closed in on us, waving wads of tenge—Kazakh currency—for black-market exchange. Gold teeth flashed and questions were fired at us in Russian. Luckily, Jack and TT worked their combined magic and a guard ushered us through the gates in front into the Chinese border compound. TT squeezed in among more coaches, a Chihuahua amongst greyhounds, and Jack and Jo went inside to investigate. In no time several Kazakh bus drivers came up to me and starting asking questions, their smiles revealing more mouthfuls of gold teeth. To my dismay I learnt that it was 230 miles to Almaty on only OK roads. My hopes of our making it that night clouded.

The prognosis wasn’t good when Jack and Jo returned. Hundreds of people were inside and there seemed to be little order to the proceedings. Then once again Lady Luck came to our aid and without really understanding what was going on we were in and out after little more than an hour. A quick, sad goodbye to Jack and we were on our own and crossing the divide into Kazakhstan, full of trepidation as to what lay ahead. Our first impression was good. A tall, handsome, camo-clad soldier with a large rifle slung over his shoulder stopped us and told us where to go, in Russian of course. Upon seeing our confusion, he hopped on to the side of TT and hitched a ride 300 feet to the next point, truck drivers whistling as we tukked past. More soldiers then pointed us towards the main area and we were let through some gates to where the action was. Since Kazakhstan has been my organisational baby, along with Russia and Ukraine, I left Jo with TT and, with an armful of documents, went to investigate the situation.

Inside, chaos abounded. A sea of baggage-laden Kazakh and Uighur families, interspersed with the odd Russian, jostled to get to the front. It looked like we were going to have to unload all our luggage again (we’d already had to do it on the Chinese side) to get it scanned and use a lot of elbows in the process. I went to tell Jo the bad news, and we began the laborious process of putting all our things on a huge trolley. By this time, a group of intimidating-looking guards, all with guns, had gathered round. I answered their questions, told them about the trip and showed them our Russian press release. Laughter and smiles ensued. Phew! Then a very tall official with a large badge and Terminator-style shades appeared—clearly the boss. What happened next was quite extraordinary. After verbally confirming we had no contraband, our luggage was loaded back on to TT. We were led inside and taken to the front of the heaving throng, and our passports were stamped while the guards talked about ‘Beckham’ and ‘Rooney’ with us. The people who had been fighting for hours to get to the front of the mêlée justifiably glowered in our direction. Then we were told to drive TT round the side, where, accompanied by the big boss in the big shades, we had all our vehicle documentation stamped and verified. The boss queried whether we had husbands, told us about his several wives and children, and asked us about the trip. He then disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a bagful of chocolates, cold drinks, a Russian doll and a carved wooden box. Most amazing of all was the fact that he pushed a fistful of tenge into my hand and refused to accept any dollars in return. Here was one of the apparently notoriously corrupt Kazakh officials giving us presents and money—about £20. To top it all, he climbed in the back seat with me and led us the half-mile out of the border area, soldiers saluting him all the way and gates swinging open in haste. We thanked him effusively and he was gone, another guardian angel sent to help us home. What a feeling of relief and happiness swept over us. I felt like crying, I was so happy. A few miles later we came to the final border checkpoint, where a group of young soldiers creased into laughter and asked a barrage of questions about Ting Tong before we were off. What an incredible few hours. Something we had been so fearful of had turned out to be a highlight of the trip. We couldn’t believe our luck. Twenty minutes later, we pulled over beside the quiet country road and just took it all in for a few moments.

I’ve gone on long enough,so I won’t write an essay about the eight-hour tuk to Almaty. But we made it. At 8.30 p.m. we found our apartment, I rang the doorbell and there was my mother. It was so lovely to see her and know she made it here safe as well. The drive here was beautiful, lots of donkey carts, huge wide open spaces, mountains, very strong winds and lots of waving and gold-toothed smiles from the Kazakhs. VW Santanas have been replaced by Audis, Ladas and Mercs, and Dong Fengs by the indomitable Kamaz. Although I was sad to leave China, rarely have I been so pleased to arrive anywhere than here last night, and what a great thought that we’ve got four or five days to recuperate before we hit the road again.

Welcome to Kazakhstan

We woke up at 6.45 a.m. yesterday morning and packed up TT before leaving Saryam Lake and heading to the border. Well, that was the plan anyway. It was about 5 °C and bloody freezing. Our fingers went numb and we had problems undoing TT’s dressing gown. Once everything was loaded, Ants turned the key in the ignition. Can you guess what happened next? Nothing! As I have said before,TT is a tropical tuk tuk and doesn’t like the cold. We tried to start her on and off for about 20 minutes, pausing so we didn’t flood the engine. She did start three times, but cut out straight away. Jack, Ants and myself tried to push her backwards up a slope, but she was too heavy. Thankfully, some locals came to the rescue and we pushed her up the slope and on to the road, before bump-starting her successfully. Drama over and it was only about 8 a.m. Ants found the whole experience quite stressful, while I chose to laugh and use the opportunity to kick-start my nicotine fix. I would have got stressed if the bump-start hadn’t worked, but in these situations you either laugh or cry—and I chose the former.

Finally we set off towards the border, all of us shivering violently against temperatures we were not dressed for and hadn’t experienced in a few months. We stopped briefly for breakfast and then tukked the last 20 miles to the border. It was heaving with Kazakh families who, since it was Monday morning, I assume had been visiting China for the weekend. Unlike the other border crossings, this one was packed with people and vehicles, and all of our luggage had to go through an airport scanner. The whole process of scurrying around to sort out passports, check vehicle documents, etc. took the best part of two hours, but thanks to Jack we were processed more quickly than many others. We were fretting about getting to the Kazakh side before their lunch break because we still had nearly 250 miles of driving before reaching Almaty.

We hugged Jack and said goodbye. I burst into tears and felt incredibly sad to be leaving both him and China. Then the moment of truth arrived and we entered the Kazakh side, where we were greeted by a soldier dressed in khaki and spitting sunflower husks on to the floor. He hopped into TT to show us the way. So far, so good. We drove past all of the other vehicles and went straight into the compound, where it seemed that we needed to get all of our luggage scanned again—what a pain.

A group of guards surrounded us and began to ask questions, so Ants handed them our Russian press release, which they read. Then our guardian angel arrived—a man we think was an important border official. After asking whether we had any contraband (the answer was of course ‘Nyet’), he told us not to bother getting our luggage scanned. We were then pushed to the front of the queue with our passports, which were quickly stamped. Then we drove a few feet to get TT processed. The paperwork was all organised within quarter of an hour and we were told to get vehicle insurance in Almaty. Then the kind officer (who was quite handsome and early middle aged) gave me a plastic bag filled with litres of cold drink, a box of chocolates and two Russian dolls. We asked about changing money, but they did not know what to do with our travellers’ cheques, and so the border official gave us £20 of local money. We were both speechless at the generosity of this man we had never met before.

I offered him a packet of Chinese cigarettes, which he accepted. He climbed into TT and then we drove out of the border area with all of the guards, officials and soldiers saluting him and opening all of the gates for us. Ants later said that she wondered whether he wanted a lift all of the way to Almaty. He didn’t and hopped out after less than one mile. We screamed with delight and relief and were absolutely thrilled to be safely through the border. A couple of miles later we were stopped at an army checkpoint, but all they wanted was to see our passports and to take photos of TT.

The drive to Almaty was over 200 miles and we had heard mixed reports about the state of the tarmac. Some people had said the drive would take us six hours, others eight; one even posited twelve hours. The road had a few potholes, but we could still travel at a good 35 mph. The scenery was stunning, alternating between mountains and grass-covered sand dunes. At one point it was so windy that we were reduced to about 25 mph, with Ants gripping the handle bars with all her might so we didn’t get blown back to China. We pulled over by the side of the road and unloaded the roof-rack of TT’s spares to try to reduce the wind resistance a little.

We stopped to fill up with petrol and I was pleased that I could fill up TT myself. However, the nozzle lever got jammed and I squirted petrol all over the petrol station and myself at a great velocity. A man then came and did the job for me, but he wouldn’t listen to me about putting the nozzle into TT too far. I smugly watched as the petrol squirted out back at him. Why will nobody listen to us about TT’s anatomy? I guess they just like to learn the hard way.

We drove into Almaty at just after 8 p.m. and got a tiny bit lost trying to find the apartment we were renting. We finally located Ants’ mum, Fiona, and the apartment and unloaded TT. Fiona and I put our stuff in the lift to take to the eighth floor, while Ants went to park TT in a secure compound, which a kind man had offered us. After nearly an hour, Ants still wasn’t back. Fiona and I had gone through rational reasons for Ants’ delay, before worrying that she had been raped and murdered. Just as we were considering calling the police,Ants returned. Apparently, someone had taken the parking space and the kind man, Aziz, a Pakistani diplomat, had tried to clear the space for TT. Ants knew we would be worried but had no way of contacting us to explain why she hadn’t come back sooner. After some anxious minutes, everything was fine, Fiona made a salad, we all had a nice catch-up and then we hit the hay, absolutely exhausted.

The fears have been banished and Kazakhstan looks to be a whole new and wonderful experience, although I desperately miss China still.

Thursday 13 July, Almaty, Kazakhstan

A quickie from Almaty

We’ve been in Almaty for almost three days now and it’s been crazy. Almaty is so expensive, statistically more so than Washington, DC, and Boston and with more Porsche Cayennes per capita than anywhere else in the world. Jo and I are both finding it very odd being in the Western world again and being bereft of chopsticks and Jack (not in that order) and are looking forward to hitting the road again.

We’ll write more soon as it’s been a very funny few days. I got attacked by a Bride of Frankenstein dentist with facial hair and inch-thick kohl, we’ve been hanging out with the Kazakhstan Feminist League (long story), I found a huge maggot in my salad at a ‘snazzy’ restaurant, we’ve drunk fermented mare’s and camel’s milk, and today we had a press conference organised by the British embassy, with a scary amount of TV crews and newspapers.

Saturday 15 July, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Who wants to live forever?

The title of this blog is also the title of a Queen song that I was listening to on Ants’ iPod during our last week in China, scaring away the local wildlife by singing along. I find the song very emotive and it makes me want to disagree and say that I do want to live forever. I certainly haven’t always wanted to be immortal, and there were a number of years when I wished that I could just fall asleep and never wake up.

This trip just makes me so happy to be alive. Even the difficult and stressful days make me appreciate the gift of life. I am also very grateful to have the opportunity to see so many different environments and cultures. There is too much to see and do in this world that it is not possible to fit it into one lifetime. I would like to live many lives, on the one condition that all the people and animals that I love could share my experiences with me.

I have just finished a brilliant book called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. At the end of the book one of the main characters commits suicide and you are left with so many unanswered questions, in particular why did he do it? This is probably the main question that loved ones ask when someone close to them chooses to take their own life. Suicide may seem like a selfish choice, but suicidal people are not cowards and to judge someone’s actions when you don’t know their feelings is wrong. I have suffered from depression and I know the feeling when life seems so helpless that there are no apparent reasons to carry on living. I acutely remember feeling like a living corpse, unable to experience any emotions. I knew that I should love my family but I could not connect in any way with any positive emotions.

So, we have been in Almaty for a few days and leave tomorrow for Lake Balkash, a short 450-mile drive away. I am not really sure what I think of Almaty. Everything is very expensive here—£4 for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and £2 per hour to use the Internet—and Ants and I are suffering a reverse culture shock after having been in Asia for so long. We intended to relax and rest a little, but instead our days have been filled with chores that need to be done—press conference, registering passports, organising third-party vehicle insurance, getting TT serviced…However, the people here are very friendly and we have met some really interesting characters this week.

On Tuesday evening, we went out to supper with Mike Steen (Reuters Central Asia correspondent) and his wife Gemma, who have provided us with lots of useful information about Kazakhstan. We went to an Italian restaurant and Mr Ant was lucky enough to have a gleaming white healthy maggot in her cauliflower salad. Well, I am always trying to tell her that she needs more protein in her diet. Thursday was the most serious day of the trip to date. We took TT along to a press conference that had been organised by the British embassy in Almaty. It took place at the headquarters of the organisation SATR, which works with children and young people with mental and physical disabilities. We had no idea what to expect and were thoroughly shocked to be filmed driving through the streets and then to be met by well over 20 journalists and a handful of TV crews. Microphones were thrust towards us as we gave short speeches about our trip (Ants) and about Mind and mental health in England (me). We had to speak in very short sentences so that what we’d said could be translated into Russian. It was a pretty nerve-wracking experience, and I am so glad that Ants and I could share the load of public speaking, one of my least favourite hobbies. Still, it is good to think that we are getting the opportunity to speak about the problems associated with mental health.

Yesterday I took TT to be serviced, and now she has fresh oil (for high-performance cars), a new oil filter, a new fuel filter and new front brake pads. The mechanic was a real character who spoke very little English, and so we communicated mainly through hand signals for three hours. He noticed that part of TT’s rear suspension was missing from one side, and after a few minutes with a blowtorch he had fixed the part and reinserted it. I was shocked that the oil cost £20, but I think it is oil designed for very high-performance cars like Porsches. I gave him a packet of Chinese cigarettes to say thank you and asked how much I owed him. He refused to take any money from me and demonstrated yet again the generosity of the people we have met throughout our journey.

We’re back on the road tomorrow and I am looking forward to it. We have been in one place for five days and I am getting itchy feet. It is time to hit that tarmac, and I hope it is smooth and beautiful and black.

Monday 17 July, Lake Balkash, Kazakhstan

A lucky escape

I thought the driving in China was bad, but Almaty takes the prize for reckless motoring. As we drove out of Almaty yesterday morning, I was praying that we would manage to leave the city without having an accident. It was the first time that I have really felt nervous driving TT. As we were nearing the city limits, a car ahead of us braked suddenly at a pedestrian crossing and the Lada beside us smashed into a large Mercedes at about 30 mph. We were very lucky that the Lada driver decided to rear-end the Merc rather than swerve straight into us. My heart started pounding and I uttered a few expletives, as did Ants. We drove around the crash to see three rather butch men get out of the Merc and walk back towards the Lada driver…God, I hope he had insurance. Guess which car came off worse? The Merc lost 1-0 to the Lada, which suffered only a small dent to its front bumper.

After leaving Almaty safely, we started on the very long drive north to Balkash across hundreds of miles of endless scrubby grassland to the east, west, north and south. I loved driving through barren landscapes in China, but the steppe did not stir up so many positive emotions. I didn’t dislike the drive, but it did feel a bit like driving in a computer game, the monotony broken only by eagles flying overhead and small herds of grazing horses and camels. Petrol stations were few and far between, and a couple of times I was worried we might run out of fuel, which we would have done had it not been for a passing Kazakh family who gave us five litres of petrol from their jerry can—another example of the Kazakh hospitality that has been bestowed upon us and TT.

At one of the petrol stations the petrol was pumped by hand. This involved two men turning a handle very fast to get the petrol from its underground tank into the vehicle. As usual, the petrol attendants wouldn’t listen to us asking them not to insert the nozzle fully into TT, and this resulted in 17 litres for TT and three litres for the petrol forecourt. At least this time it wasn’t me that ended up covered in petrol.

Balkash is not a particularly attractive town. It is towered over by large industrial chimneys, which constantly belch out acidic smoke. Ants used her Russian skills to find us a hotel and, after an uninspiring supper, we went to bed, exhausted.

For once I slept like a baby and was woken up by Ants just before midday. We had planned to explore the nicer parts of Lake Balkash today, but instead we spent the afternoon tending to TT as for the last couple of hundred of miles yesterday she was making a grinding noise in her front end. She had also started veering to the right when we braked. As I opened up the toolbox and wondered what to do, a handsome young man came and introduced himself as Maxat and offered to help. We jacked up TT, refitted the brake pads and went for a short drive. The veering to the right was better but the grinding was still there.

Maxat then introduced us to a couple of mechanics, who spent the next couple of hours trying to work out where the grinding noise was coming from. We changed the front calliper and brake pad and had another test drive—the grinding noise continued. They then tried to balance the wheel by removing a washer next to the tyre. This reduced the grinding but did not stop it completely. They concluded that the noise wasn’t causing any damage and would probably disappear. We just have to hope that they are right, because apparently there aren’t many (if any) motorcycle mechanics in Kazakhstan. We offered them payment but they refused any. God, the Kazakh people are generous and kind.

So far, the best thing about Kazakhstan is the people. They are mostly incredibly friendly, and many have gone out of their way to help us. Many Kazakh people have told us that they are famed for their hospitality and I would have to agree. Tonight TT is tucked up in the guarded forecourt of Balkash police station. The police would like us to take them for a two-hour drive tomorrow morning, but 20 minutes is more likely. As Ants has said, a great photo opportunity. Anyway, bedtime now as it’s after 12.30 a.m. and I need to sleep well in my rather small bed in order to be full of beans for another long drive through the steppe tomorrow.

Tuesday 18 July, Hotel Balkash, Balkash, Kazakhstan

The kindness of strangers

Kazakhstan has been a revelation. Even more than China, it was a void in our imaginations, filled only with Borat, oil and the steppe. We had no idea what the reality of travel here would be like, and we were convinced that we’d be forking out bribes every few miles. How wrong we were. Every day strangers have shown us astonishing kindness and hospitality, and every day we are left thinking how cold and inhospitable we Brits are.

Anyway, I shall start at the beginning. As I mentioned briefly last week, Almaty is an expensive, westernised city. Having driven from Khorgos through rural villages, where donkey carts far outnumbered cars, it was a surprise to suddenly be in Almaty, with its plethora of German metal. Every second car there is a Mercedes, Audi, BMW, VW or Porsche. Every other second car is a creaky old Lada. We learnt that a great proportion of these cars are driven in huge trucks from Europe, where crashes have rendered them undriveable under EU regulations. Here, however, no one cares—status before safety, it seems.

Such a surfeit of speed makes the driving in Almaty lethal. Speed is at a maximum and spatial respect at a minimum. No journey through the city was completed without seeing at least two prangs, and most of the cars carried some sort of battle scars. As Jo has said, on the last day there we were lucky to escape one of these when a Lada careered straight into the back of a black Mercedes less than a yard away from us. The Mercedes came off much worse, and as we tukked off, thanking our lucky stars that the Lada driver hadn’t taken evasive action into Tingers, we saw three large Russians emerge from the Merc and stride menacingly towards the quivering Lada driver. I didn’t fancy his chances.

The other notable thing about driving in Almaty is the ‘taxis’. On day one we noticed that everyone seemed to be hitchhiking, sticking their arms out by the side of the road and immediately being picked up by any passing car. We decided to try it out. Sure enough, 30 seconds later, a wheezing old Lada pulled up, we negotiated a price, and off we went. Having been ripped off by several taxi drivers on our first day, this became our preferred method of transport, and in our week there we got picked up more than once by people claiming to own the ‘oldest Lada in Almaty’. It’s such a good idea: people do it to make a bit of petrol money as they scoot around town. I might start trying it at home.

So many people in Almaty were so kind to us that I don’t know where to start. First up are Michael Steen and his wife Gemma. While talking to my friend Adam about the trip back in February, he said ‘Oh, my friend Mike lives in Almaty. You should get in touch with him.’ Since then, Mike has been the recipient of a number of emails from me and has obliged us with a wealth of information about travelling here. So it was great to eventually meet him and Gemma, who works for the EU, and thank him for all his help. Mike has been Reuters’ senior correspondent here for three years and is a mine of information on ‘the Stans’. As Jo has already mentioned, our supper with them at Mamma Mia was spiced up by the presence of a juicy maggot in my salad, which luckily I spied before it was too late.

Next in our line of Almaty angels is Catherine Inglehearn, the deputy ambassador here for the past three years. Catherine, like Mike, has dispensed a great deal of advice and support to us over the past few months, when I am sure she has had far more important matters to deal with. With the help of her press officer,Yulia Kaufman, she arranged a press conference for us at SATR on Thursday. The idea to combine with SATR was inspired, since it made people realise that we are not just two dippy girls driving round the world in a toy car but are trying to raise money and awareness for an important cause. The ensuing articles in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Liter and the Kazakhstan Express all talked about Mind and why mental health is a global problem of which we all need to be aware. As for SATR—what a fantastic place. Its founder and matriarch Dr Gulnur Khakimzhanova deserves global acclaim for her work. It was a privilege to meet her and her team.

Then there was Evgenia Salagdinova and the members of the Kazakhstan Feminist League. Before I left, my Russian teacher Vanda had suggested I email a few of her contacts in Kazakhstan. I subsequently got several emails from various members of Feminist Leagues here, most notably Evgenia, asking how they could help us ‘dear ladies’. So, on Wednesday afternoon, Jo and I found ourselves in a smoky basement, eating olives and being interviewed by these lovely people. Evgenia is a delight and, like me, shares a passion for fairies and all things pointy-eared. When she and her husband Alexander came to supper a few days later, she told us how Tolkien is very popular here and that every weekend members of the Tolkien Fan Club dress up in medieval armour and run around in the Tien Shan Mountains acting out scenes from The Lord of the Rings. Even better, I now know the Russian words for hobbit, elf, orc, fairy and pixie.

Our last day in Almaty was spent going into these very same mountains, where Shamil Zhumatov, the Reuters photographer, took some photos of us and TT. Shamil, a handsome, black-eyed Tartar, has covered the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and was with the 4th US Marine Division when they captured Saddam. He was one of the few journalists to see inside Saddam’s hole. And here he was spending his Saturday photographing TT. Shymbulak, where we went, is the playground of Almaty, where they ski in winter and get married in summer. Judging by the 27 wedding processions we saw on the way down, no expense is spared. We wondered where they find enough white Mercedes to feed such extravagant taste.

Betwixt our chores in Almaty we squeezed in a few touristic endeavours—the Zelyony (Green) Bazaar and the Arasan Baths. Apart from being a total rip-off, the bazaar was interesting for its bizarre offerings of shubat and kumys, fermented camel and horse milk, respectively. Both are Kazakh favourites and while we wrinkled up our noses at the alien taste, Kazakhs queued up for pints of the stuff. As for the baths…for some peculiar reason they induced a panic attack the like of which I haven’t had since I used to suffer from them regularly a few years ago. While large, naked babushkas watched in perplexity, Jo had to tell me to breathe and lead me off to recover. Most odd.

So, yesterday, after five days in leafy Almaty, we set off for Balkash, 450 miles north up the M36. Since our notions of camping had been destroyed after hearing of the wolves that roam these grasslands, and with nothing but steppe wilderness between the two cities, we had no choice but to drive this far. The novelty of nothingness wore off after a while and the drive went on and on and on and on and on…Just a straight road, the flat steppe and the unbounded blue vault above. Even more so than the Gobi, this felt like a corner of the earth that civilisation had forgotten about. Every 60 miles or so we passed a crumbling village, where rusting hulls of cars languished and half-destroyed houses stood. Occasionally a herd of camels or horses punctuated the horizon. And that was it.

At last, at 8.30 p.m. last night, we arrived in Balkash, which sits to the north of its eponymous lake. The aquamarine lake stood in violent contrast to the filthy industrial town that greeted us. Balkash is just as you would imagine a ramshackle Soviet-era town to be: depressing apartment blocks, factories belching out toxic fumes, and long-abandoned parks. But having asked two gold-toothed Kazakh men where the nearest gostiniza (hotel) was, we found ourselves at the Hotel Balkash, a pleasant anomaly amidst such depressing surrounds. Since TT has got a mysterious mechanical issue, which we’ve spent all day investigating, we have found ourselves here for a second night. Tomorrow we head north again to Karaghanda, famous for coal and gulags.

A final point, which we have found again and again in our short time here: never have I come across such kind people. Whether it was the passers-by who gave us free petrol from their jerry can yesterday, the taxi driver turned mechanic who refused to accept any money for tinkering with TT today, or Maxat who has asked us to supper with his family tonight, the Kazakhs’ kindness is unbounded. It puts us to shame. As I mentioned today in an article I am writing for the Mail on Sunday, this trip has shown me that human beings are essentially kind and that the world is a much safer place than we all imagine. I recommend that everyone should do a long-distance trip in a pink tuk tuk. It really does reaffirm your faith in human nature.

Thursday 20 July, Kurghalzhino Nature Reserve, 90 miles south west of Astana, Kazakhstan

A country of anomalies

I had every intention of writing a blog last night, until we got collared by a gaggle of vodka-swilling Kazakhs. Since Jo doesn’t drink and my mother doesn’t like swigging back glassfuls of vodka, it was left to me to do the toasts and keep the Union Jack flying high with our new friends, Valeri, Morgea and Dalod. Unfortunately, that meant no blog, no video diary, a rather pie-eyed attempt at badminton and no intended run.

Back to Balkash, where I last put pen to paper, as it were. In a perverse way, Balkash was one of the most interesting places I have ever been. A few months ago I read A. A. Gill’s excellent account of his visit to Moynaq, on the shores of what was once the Aral Sea in west Kazakhstan. He describes it as the ‘worst place in the world’, with the rusting ghosts of fishing boats languishing in the middle of the desert, 100 miles from the edge of the sea they once fished. Lake Balkash, Central Asia’s fourth largest lake, is going the same way and a UN report in 2004 stated that over 700 square miles had already been lost, thanks largely to overuse of the Ili River in China. For the visitor, this is not yet apparent, but the pollution and poverty are. In the 1930s the Russians set up copper smelting works in the town, on the north shore of the lake, and these grim chimneys still pump out poison into the atmosphere daily. Chromosomal diseases are on the rise here, and many of the residents of Balkash complain of constant headaches. I noticed the acid smoke getting in the back of my throat and making me choke. Our new friend Maxat told us that the factory is one of the biggest in the world, employing people of 17 different nationalities, and that British and Canadian pollution experts are currently working to reduce its impact on the environment. Until then, it remains yet another example of the Russian legacy to Kazakhstan, along with the shrinking Aral Sea and the nuclear testing ground at Semey.

Despite the pollution, the filth, the dereliction and the disintegrating apartment blocks, Balkash had its good points. As Jo has already written, we were saved by Maxat, who found us a mechanic and filled the holes that my elementary Russian couldn’t cover. Neither of us can get over how kind and generous the Kazakhs are—they will go to any lengths to help you and make you feel welcome in their country. At times, however, this can go a little far. While navigating our way through Karaghanda two nights ago, a white Mercedes drew up beside us. The blacked-out window wound down to reveal a gleaming set of gold teeth owned by a handsome young Kazakh.‘Where are you going?’ he shouted in Russian. For the next ten minutes we drove in precarious tandem to our hotel, me attempting to dodge the oncoming traffic while simultaneously conducting a conversation with Goldie next door. Later that night the same man, dressed head to toe in pinstripes and moc-croc, burst into our hotel room brandishing beer and insisting he showed us round the local hotspots. After much polite negotiation, we declined and he was off as rapidly as he had appeared. How he found his way to our hotel room remains a mystery.

The Kazakhs also have a nerve-wracking habit of pulling up beside you at 60 mph, so close you could tweak their moustaches, and firing a barrage of questions at you:‘Where are you from?’‘How much was your car?’‘Where are you going?’‘Do you want to come and stay with me?’ The more persistent people force you to pull over and have impromptu photo shoots, the encounter ending with them handing out phone numbers and insisting you pay them a visit. Yesterday it was two cars full of poliziya, all apparently called Eric, and the day before a BMW crammed with well-fed men, whom I felt sure were up to no good.

We have spent the past 36 hours in the Kurgalzhino Nature Reserve, famed for its pink flamingos, of which we have seen not a whisker. It’s a strange place, a cursory attempt at eco-tourism that doesn’t quite work. We are the only people staying here; the rest of the inhabitants are builders and random, slightly drunk men. Our arrival here the other night was even odder. Having driven along the longest, straightest road from Astana (where I had completely lost my rag after getting lost for ages), we came to the town of Kurgalzhino, which we assumed must be where the reserve was. It was 8 p.m. and the sun was sinking rapidly in the sky. After a brief diversion from the village drunk, we ascertained that in fact the reserve was another 30 miles up a dirt track. So off we sped. At last, out of the gloom, appeared the gateway to the ‘famous’ reserve, which we had been assured was well signed. As we pulled up, a ruddy-faced, inebriated-looking Russian limped out of a wooden hut, clearly wondering whether he was hallucinating. We discovered that the reserve was closed for the night and we would have to wait until the morning to get in. We looked around despondently—nothing for miles, just the lonely steppes. Eventually, after much pleading and gesturing that my mother was far too old and delicate to camp (which she isn’t), and a series of phone calls to ‘the director’, our luck changed. Nikolai, the limping Russian, who smelt exceptionally sheepy, gave us our tickets and relieved us of $60 (£30) and off we went, assured that five miles beyond was a gostiniza, with soft towels and moonshine. As we tukked off down the track into the darkness (it was now 10 p.m.) I found it hard to believe that there was any civilisation in such a place, let alone hot water and a place to lay our heads for the night. What we found was a strange collection of wooden huts, a single yurt and a lot of drunk Kazakhs. After haggling for another half an hour over the costs of our simple hut, we hit the sack, exhausted.

It’s eight weeks on Sunday since we left Bangkok. Amazing! Neither Jo nor I can believe it. Even stranger is the fact that we’ve been in Kazakhstan for ten days and yet it seems like only yesterday that we were sitting by Saryam Lake mourning the end of our passage through China. In two days we will be in Russia, leaving Asia firmly behind us. Kazakhstan has been a curious experience. It’s a country of anomalies, where nothing quite adds up—neither Asia nor Europe, but betwixt and between; the ninth largest country in the world and yet with a falling population of only 15 million. Its (benevolent) dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev has a grandiose economic plan for the country—‘Kazakhstan 2030’—and yet everywhere we go poverty stares us in the face. I saw a perfect example of this in Balkash: in front of a decrepit tower block stood a huge ‘Kazakhstan 2030’ sign, the golden snow-leopard peeling off the blue paintwork. It seemed a microcosm of Kazakhstan, trying so hard to escape the shackles of poverty and the Soviet era but not yet able to shed its old skin.

Kazakhstan is also full of anomalies in other, minor ways. In Karaghanda two nights ago, a steppe town famed for coal and gulags, we found ourselves in a Belgian restaurant serving Hoegarden and waffles. And in Almaty last week, we had a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub called Mad Murphy’s, where a trio of maudlin Russians sang bizarre renditions of Beatles songs.

That’s it for now. We’re off to Astana today, from where my ma flies home, to leave us to Russia and its rhinoceros-sized mosquitoes.

Our mission to Lake Tenghiz

We left Balkash on Tuesday morning and drove north to Karaghanda. The steppe became less monotonous and was replaced by lush grass and rugged hills to our east and west. Ants and I both thought the scenery looked like Tellytubby land and I expected Tinkywinky to pop up and say ‘Eh-oh’. TT cruised happily at about 60 mph, and we enjoyed the drive much more than we had the drive to Balkash from Almaty.

We stayed the night in Karaghanda, where we were led to a hotel by a kind Kazakh guy in his van whom we had asked for directions. He also helped us to check in and managed to haggle down the price a bit. Kazakh people rock. As we drove through the town, people were beeping and waving at us. Most of the time this is good fun, but sometimes people pull up within a couple of feet of us and try to chat or take photos, often when a big Kamaz truck is bearing down on them in the opposite direction. It gives us flashbacks of China and trucks trying to make a TT sandwich.

We ended up at an expensive Belgian restaurant for supper, where the menu was a curious mix of Belgian, Greek and Kazakh food. I had a Belgian waffle with chocolate sauce for pudding, and it was the best waffle I have ever eaten. The plate ended up being licked, much to Ants’ amusement, and I ended up looking like a toddler after her first birthday party. My parents would have been ashamed of my behaviour.

Yesterday morning we left about midday for the Khurgalzhino Nature Reserve. Everything was going smoothly until we got totally lost in Astana. There were absolutely no signs and everyone gave us different directions. In the end we found the right road and drove in a straight line for 80 miles until we reached the village of Kurghalzhino. Thinking we must be nearly there, we asked a man for directions, who unfortunately happened to be extremely drunk and clambered into TT before we could do anything. A family in a green Lada then pointed us in the right direction, and we removed the drunk from TT and set off for the reserve, which the family had told us was 30 miles away. Eventually we came to the entrance of the nature reserve and were told it was too late for us to enter. We were in the middle of nowhere, 30 miles from the nearest form of civilisation, the sun had set and it was 9.30 p.m. The man on duty at the gate said that we could sleep in his hut, but we didn’t really want to because it smelt of sheep. We were desperate to get to the lake and after a few walkie-talkie calls with the director we were allowed to enter. A short five miles to the guesthouse was all we had to manage before finding a bed for the night. However, a Kazakh five miles is like a Chinese five miles and this means double it and add five.

Just as we were giving up, we saw lights in the distance. Our bed for the night was a small log cabin by the lake, crammed with four beds, a fridge and a TV. We eventually got to sleep after a very tiring evening, relieved to have arrived at all.

Today we woke up to a beautiful hot day—a pleasant change. Everyone in England is having the hottest summer on record, and the weather in Kazakhstan has been mostly cloudy and not that hot. We had heard that there was a beach five miles away, and so after a lunch of stale bread and salad we headed off in TT across the steppe. I was driving and within a couple of hundred feet had successfully got TT stuck in a muddy ditch. I didn’t think the puddle was so muddy, but TT had her rear right wheel totally stuck and no amount of pushing or pulling could extract her. We saw a Lada driving over and out got a Russian with a moustache and large belly. He attached TT to his Lada with her dressing gown cord, and after him revving and me revving TT shot out of the ditch and on to dry land.

That evening we were invited to join three men enjoying a feast of vegetables, pasta, rice, horsemeat and of course vodka. We opted to just have drinks and out came the vodka. I pretended to drink mine but didn’t really,Ants had three large glasses and Fiona had one. One of the men,Valeri, was a Kazakh Korean who was a doctor in St Petersburg (random), and he pulled out a magnifying glass and looked into Ants’ and Fiona’s eyes. He then walked around the table and squeezed Fiona’s tummy, intimating she was pregnant. He looked at my scars and proclaimed that he could rid me of them in three days. After our brief meeting with our new friends, Ants felt quite tipsy and decided that she would crash out after I refused her challenge to a game of badminton. When it was a bit cooler we had a short game and squeaked and grunted our way around a makeshift volleyball court, watched by all the local men. Tomorrow we are heading to Astana, where we leave Fiona and then head to the Russian border. I hope the food improves, otherwise I will turn into a piece of stale bread.

Saturday 22 July, a wood in the middle of nowhere, north Kazakhstan

The rocky road to Russia

The campfire is burning, an orchestra of insects is keeping us company, and Jo and I are camping in a wood in the middle of not quite sure (no)where. Since there are only about three trees in the steppe, this is quite an achievement in itself.

This trip has been a series of ‘I can’t believe it’s. It has progressed from ‘I can’t believe we are actually doing it’ to ‘I can’t believe we are in Thailand’,‘I can’t believe we are leaving today’,‘I can’t believe we are in China’,‘through China’,‘in Kazakhstan’ and now, finally,‘I can’t believe we are about to hit Russia’. As I have said before, time has never passed so quickly.

This time tomorrow evening, we will (I hope) be in Russia, in Chelyabinsk to be precise. It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating our passage into Kazakhstan, and the minute we get used to it we are speeding out the other side, in the flash of a gold tooth. Each day Jo and I are so engaged in driving, navigating, blogging, filming, etc. that sometimes the future springs upon us before we are aware it has arrived. Russia is a perfect example. The day before yesterday saw us frantically extracting the Russia Lonely Planet from TT’s lock box and investigating what lay ahead. Lots of vodka it seems. When I was writing the route page for our website on a cold winter’s afternoon in February, it felt like we would never actually be driving along the far-off roads that I was describing. I remember eulogising about the ‘fabled Urals’ and wondering what it would be like when one day we arrived there. That day is now only three away.

Our approach to a new border is always accompanied by a certain amount of trepidation and wonderment. Have we got all the correct documentation? Is everything in order? What is in store for us? We have got used to every day being a mystery, but borders are a different kettle of fish. I hope Russia will be as easy as all the rest and tomorrow night we will be happily ensconced in Chelyabinsk, eating borscht and (me) swigging vodka. Before you get the wrong idea by the way, I’m not descending into alcoholism—I’m just partial to the odd cockle-warming voddy.

The past few days, like all our time in Kazakhstan, have been a surprise. Our last night with my mother was spent in the capital, Astana (originally meaning ‘capital’ in Kazakh). We dined at a hilarious Russian joint called Egorkino, where the waitresses were garbed in seventeenth-century Russian peasant gear and the music provided by a motley crew of gold-toothed Indians. This morning it was time for Jo and I to strike off solo and leave my ma for Russia and home. Tears were shed and we sped off west towards Kostanai, with little idea of how far we would get today but just a desire to get as far as we could. Thanks to terrible roads and TT-swallowing potholes, we now find ourselves in the only wood in North West Kazakhstan. Having felt rather unsure about camping, it has turned out to be an absolute delight. As the sun set and burnt the steppe gold and orange, we tukked into the wood, erected the tent in a masterly fashion, whipped up a fire and settled down for the night. Now, as I type, Jo is gathering firewood and a kestrel is crying overhead. Camping isn’t so bad after all.

Back to the campfire, over to Jo and onwards to Russia.

We left peaceful Lake Tenghiz on Friday morning and headed back towards Astana. As we were leaving we bumped into Nikolai, the sheepy Russian who allowed us into the park at 10 p.m. the other night. He met us with huge smiles and asked to come back to England with us in TT—this is quite a frequent request. He also wanted me to get together with his 18-year-old son. When I told him I was engaged, he suggested throwing away the ring and marrying him instead. Next was the petrol station, my least favourite hangout in Kazakhstan. The petrol was 50 per cent more expensive than anywhere else and there was a crowd of very drunk locals, who decided it would be funny to steal our keys. They finally gave them back and we tukked off quickly, because the men were all drunk and quite creepy.

During the drive it started to rain and strong gusts of wind reduced our speed to 35 mph. After about four hours we got to Astana and ferreted out a hotel that seemed like a ripoffski for what it was. Apparently the hotel prices in Astana have skyrocketed over the past couple of years, and so we were reluctant to search around to save a few dollars.

As it was Fiona’s last night, she kindly took us out for supper. We picked a local Russian restaurant and enjoyed a mixture of salads, chicken (not for Mr Ant as she is vegetarianski) and mushrooms with cheese. During supper we were serenaded by a group of men who looked decidedly un-Russian or Kazakh. It turned out they were Indian. They sung beautiful Russian folk music while flashing us their gleaming gold gnashers—I think they have been in Kazakhstan a while and picked up the local fashion.

This morning we said goodbye to Fiona and headed for Russia. When we stopped for lunch at a roadside café, a wedding party pulled up and insisted on the bride and groom having a photo shoot with TT. The bride was wearing a flowing white gown and TT made her look even more stunning. Lunch was the usual exciting stuff: tomato salad, fried eggs, macaroni and bread. I bet you’re jealous when you guys in the UK are probably enjoying Pimms and BBQs. Bastards (only joking).

After lunch the wind picked up and the roads began to deteriorate. We both started having flashbacks of Yunnan in China. Still, straight perfect tarmac can get a bit boring after a while. We soon realised that we didn’t have a hope of getting to our intended destination. So right now we are in a wood sitting around a roaring campfire. We have had some samphire (sea asparagus picked at Lake Tenghiz by Ants and Fiona), tomatoes and bread. I have managed to burn myself on a hot brick and our tent is erected and ready for us to crawl into. I hope we won’t be disturbed by drunk locals or wild animals. Any sleep would be a bonus. Tomorrow we continue towards the border. This time tomorrow, I hope, we will be in Russia. I cannot think of a more perfect way to spend our last night in Kazakhstan.

I nearly forgot a couple of things so I will add them now. Three is the magic number and to prove it I was stung today three times by small bees. Kazakhstan is a multicultural country: we started our campfire using a Chinese sanitary towel and a Swedish FireSteel, we are drinking Russian vodka, TT is a Thai tuk tuk and our tent is from Korea. We have witnessed some amazing sunsets here—particularly over Lake Tenghiz—and we have been privileged to see birds of prey hunting in their natural environment. That’s all folks.

Sunday 23 July, Kostanai, Kazakhstan

The end of the earth

Well, we didn’t make it to Russia today. Tonight, Jo, Ting Tong and I find ourselves in Kostanai, a big town in North West Kazakhstan, a hop, skip and a jump away from the Russian border. As we sat round the campfire last night, we didn’t think for a minute that we would be spending another night in this country. We were sure that today would see us crossing the border at Troitsk and tukking on to Chelyabinsk.

On Friday night, in Astana, we got talking to Nurzhan, a handsome, expensively dressed Kazakh. Jo and I had been sitting in the bar of our hotel poring over the map and deliberating our best route to Russia. Since we were racing against time to beat the expiration dates of our Kazakh visas, we were after the fastest route possible. It was either north to Petropavlosk or north west to Kostanai. Nurzhan strolled into the bar and, as is customary here, immediately struck up a conversation with us. Being a native, we felt sure he could advise us of the best route. After a short period of careful consideration, he pointed towards Kostanai: ‘Zees one ees best I think. Zis is ze main route to Europe, ze route all ze big trucks take from Russia and Germany.’ Since the road was encouragingly called the M36 and cut an impressive red line across North West Kazakhstan, our decision was made. The M36 it was.

Cut to 18 hours later, where Jo and I are driving along this Central Asia-Europe superhighway. It’s a single-lane track across cornfields and we haven’t seen a car for two hours. Kostanai is another 210 miles. At 8 p.m. we decide we haven’t a hope in hell or heaven of reaching civilisation by nightfall, and we set up camp in our little copse.

I’m not the best of campers. I love the romantic notion of being in some beautiful spot, at one with nature, the stars twinkling overhead, and waking up to the sun rising over a meadow of flowers. But the reality is somewhat different—a cold, sleepless night spent terrified that the local axe-murderer will come and finish me off. Last night, however, was excellent. Yes, it was a little cold, and no, we didn’t get much sleep, but it was so much fun camping in the middle of our wild wood at the end of the earth and warming our mitts round a blazing campfire that I’m willing to gloss over the minor discomfort. So it was with high spirits that Jo and I tukked out of our sylvan shelter at 8.30 a.m. today. Having been freezing all night, we were both attired a little strangely. Jo in her Yi apron of course and me at the wheel in two rugs and my sleeping bag. Just as we emerged from the trees, with Jo running beside TT to guide us out, a truck drove past and we were met by an ‘Am I seeing things?’ look from the quizzical driver. What a funny sight we must have been: a pink tuk tuk and two very odd-looking girls emerging from the undergrowth early on a Sunday morning.

Our high spirits soon evaporated when the reality of the road became apparent. For two hours we saw not a single car. The road, dotted with sporadic signs to Yekaterinburg in Russia, was cratered with huge holes. Moreover, the sky was an angry mass of low black clouds and an ill wind was buffeting Ting Tong in an alarming manner. All we saw were flocks of black crows taking off in fright as we tukked past, and the occasional herd of horses. No houses, no cars and no people. Just as we were becoming concerned about our petrol situation and I was wondering whether this road really went anywhere, a town appeared in the distance.

As we drew closer, I could see that the houses were dilapidated, the windows mainly smashed and the roofs full of holes. It must be derelict, I thought, and began to get the feeling that this whole area had been abandoned with the collapse of the USSR, hence the hideous disrepair of the road and the antiquated signs to Yekaterinburg.

I was wrong. As we drove through the edge of the town, I saw an old babushka hobbling along the street and a bashed-up Lada creaking along a track. More surprising, we were able to find petrol, where the prices on the rusted pumps were still in roubles. The whole place was eerie. Neither of us could believe that people actually lived here in this desolate, windswept corner of the steppe. It felt like a ghost town, with people clinging on to the shreds of civilisation. I wonder what life must be like for the inhabitants. Judging by the shelves full of vodka in the local store, escapism is a popular choice. (The average life expectancy for men here is 58, thanks mainly to alcohol abuse.) My, oh my! Seeing that place made me appreciate how lucky we are in our cosy little Western lives.

Lunch was a classic. Jo and I stopped at the only café we’d seen for hours and extricated ourselves from Ting Tong, both still wearing our ridiculous outfits. For some reason, Jo’s Yi apron never ceases to make me cry with laughter. It must look even funnier to a bunch of Russian truckers in a roadside café. Our hair was standing on end from all the wind, and we tripped into the café in a flurry of ponchos, rugs, aprons and sleeping bags. Whether it was the apron,Ting Tong or our English charm, we quickly befriended two truckers, who’d seen us on TV in Almaty. When we asked for the bill, they very kindly insisted on paying and off we went.

After eight freezing windy hours, we arrived in Kostanai. Neither of us expected to experience such bitter weather in Kazakhstan, even though we are just south of Siberia. Today was a chilly reminder that TT sure ain’t a cold-weather car. Tomorrow we are going to equip ourselves with some hardcore cold-weather gear in case of further inhospitable climes in Russia.

Enough from me for now. I’m off to have a sauna to warm up and then tip into bed for an early night. Tomorrow we hope we really will be in Russia

Wednesday 26 July, Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovskays oblast, Russia

From Russia with love

I know, the title is a terrible cliché, but sometimes clichés are hard to resist—and Jo and I were so relieved to make it into Russia late on Monday night it was love at first sight.

On Monday morning, after a rocky 125-mile drive from Kostanai, we tukked up to the Russian border at Troitsk, 125 miles south of Chelyabinsk on the edge of the West Siberian Plain. We had every reason to be a little nervous, since our Kazakh visa had expired four days previously. Earthquakes, mechanical problems and bad roads meant that we’d been unable to keep to the tight two-week visa issued to us three months ago in the UK, and it’s basically impossible to extend tourist visas in Kazakhstan. So we were just going to have to smile angelically and hope the guards were in a good mood.

In the shadow of three colossal factory chimneys belching black smoke across the plains, we pulled up at the back of a small queue of (mainly) Ladas at the border. Jo insisted we behaved well and didn’t do our usual habit of queue-barging since, as she said, we didn’t ‘want to draw any attention to ourselves’. Considering the nature of our vehicle, I thought this was fairly impossible, but I complied anyway. Fistful of documents in hand, I walked into the small wooden hut by the barrier, where a woman with scarily dyed red hair was officiously stamping documents and a man was snoring noisily in the corner. A faint whiff of vodka hung in the air. Ten minutes later I was gone, clutching more documents and feeling very relieved that Red Hair hadn’t noticed the little problem of our invalid visa. It seemed that all we had to do now was wait until, car by car, we were let through the barrier to passport control.

Three hours later we were through to the next stage, and Jo and TT waited while I went to meet our fate at passport control. A surly-looking man said ‘Zdrastvuyte’ through the small window and took our passports, while I gave him my most winning smile. It didn’t work. Within a nanosecond, the window was abruptly slammed shut and the man disappeared into another building across the road. Two minutes later he and another guard reappeared and summoned me into a small dreary room where a number of officials came in and questioned me about why we were late exiting the country. I gulped as one of them told me glumly that we had a ‘bolshoi problem’ and would have to go back to Astana to validate our visas. Considering it had taken us over two days of hellish driving to get from the capital, this was a most unappealing option.

Yet once again the gods were on our side. No one it seems can resist the charms of Ting Tong, and I was soon told that we could go…not even a fine. Unbelievable. Here we were in Kazakhstan, a country notorious for corrupt officials dying to extract dollars from all and sundry, we had every reason to be fined and beaten, and we were about to sail through to Russia without even a slap on the wrist.

As we were leaving the hut, we saw the other side of the coin. Three Turkish men were engaged in heated conversation with the same group of officials who had been so lenient with us. The youngest of the Turks came and spoke to us, furious that they were being forced to pay money for no reason. They’d driven from Ankara to here, and nowhere else had they experienced problems. I guess we were very, very lucky indeed.

It was 5.30 p.m. by the time we tukked across the border, waving goodbye to Kazakhstan and hello to Russia. Only Ladas, barriers and wooden huts stood between us and the biggest country in the world. Once again I took our documents and headed for the barrier hut, where I was greeted by Anatoly Konstanteenovich Lookanov, the lone guard on duty. His green eyes twinkled with mirth as he looked through the documents, asked about the journey and tried to decipher TT’s Thai registration documents. So fascinated was he by the sight of this rare Thai species that he left the confines of his hut and came for a closer inspection, joining the gold-toothed crowd that had gathered in my absence, and creasing with laughter at TT’s three wheels and hot-pink paintwork.

More waiting…For another three hours we sat in the queue, making friends with everyone, letting all the children have a TT experience, playing badminton, letting people take pictures…until finally the barriers opened and the whole queue of cars was ushered through to passport control. The end was in sight—and within ten minutes we had all the right stamps and were heading for the door. Then we remembered the small matters of insurance for Ting Tong and the dreaded deklaratzia (customs declaration form). Insurance was easy enough, once the bleached-blonde assistant had got over the shock of the Thai registration papers, but the deklaratzia took us an agonising extra two hours to finalise. In short, a deklaratzia is a vital piece of paper for anyone coming into Russia. If you don’t fill it in correctly and get all the right stamps, you are liable to get all your money and equipment confiscated when you leave. This would have meant losing cameras, laptops, the BGAN, etc., etc.—not an option. As Dimi, the 26-year-old guard, was filling out our deklaratzia for the eighth time, I asked him whether many English people came through this border. He screwed up his face and thought hard.‘In May we have a Holland, and in February we have two Australians. I can’t remember Eenglish here.’ No wonder it was all taking so long.

At last, at 10.30 p.m., in the dwindling light, we walked out to TT and into Russia. Five or six guards came over to ask casually whether we had any drugs on us and to send us on our way. After drawing us a map to a hotel in Troitsk, the nearest town, we waved goodbye and tukked off into the darkness. What relief! What a day!

But it wasn’t over yet.

In Troitsk, 20 miles from the border, we drew up outside the aforementioned hotel, a grandiose mansion in the early stages of decrepitude. The receptionist shook her head. They were full. Yeah, right, I thought—a huge hotel like this full on a Monday night. We’d heard that some Russian hotels can be unwilling to take foreigners, a hangover from the Soviet era, and I am sure it was this unwillingness rather than a genuine lack of rooms that was the reason we were turned away. The same thing happened at the second hotel, and Jo and I started to wonder whether we might have to pitch our tent on the pavement. But thank goodness—hotel number three, the Gostiniza Kaspi, said yes, they had one room left. Phew!

At 11.45 p.m., tired, grubby and much in need of tipple and tiffin, we sat down for supper in the hotel restaurant. Our only fellow diners were three very drunk men in one corner, and a pair of heavily made-up, fairly drunk 30-something women in another corner. It wasn’t long before we were spotted by the former, and subsequently accosted, while a DJ appeared out of nowhere and put on hideous, ear-splittingly loud eurotechno. Having successfully used eating supper as an excuse not to join them, our prospective paramours—Mikhail, Dimitri and Alexei—retreated to the dance floor and began throwing some serious shapes and blowing kisses in our direction. Very funny. They soon returned, however, to propose that they be our boyfriends in Russia—despite the fact they were all wearing wedding rings and Jo and I said we were married. We’d been warned this might happen a bit here…

At 2 a.m. we crashed into bed, elated to be in Russia and looking forward to the next stage of the adventure.

The next morning I awoke early and left Jo snoring in bed to go and investigate the local market. We’d been so paralysingly cold in the past few days that I wanted to find us some warm clothes so we wouldn’t have to drive in our sleeping bags.

Two hours later I returned, not with any warm clothes but with a baby hedgehog called Henry. I’d found Henry in the market, being sold by two mischievous little boys who’d caught the unfortunate beast the day before. Henry looked very unhappy in his little box, being prodded by passers-by, so the only solution was to rescue him and think about what to do with him later. He was so sweet, with beetly black eyes and a long twitchy nose. It was tempting to secrete him in TT, give him some goggles and bring him back to England with us. But of course this wasn’t possible, and two hours later we released him in a silver birch copse in the middle of some farmland, where he scuttled off into the undergrowth without even a wave goodbye.

Our destination that day was Yekaterinburg, about 250 miles north west of Troitsk. We hadn’t intended to go there, but we decided it sounded more interesting than Chelyabinsk, plus it would add a few extra miles to our world record bid. At 3 p.m. the heavens opened. Anuwat warned us to be careful in the rain and that Ting Tong’s spark plugs wouldn’t be happy if they got wet, but we’d always been OK before. We carried on driving through the rain at a sedate 25 mph. Anuwat’s wise words soon became reality and TT began to splutter in an unseemly manner. It wasn’t until 11 p.m. that we finally made it here, to Yekaterinburg, having crawled along in the rain at 25 mph for the last 100 miles, with TT choking and backfiring.

We’ve only been in Yekaterinburg for 36 hours and once again Jo and I have been overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers. While fruitlessly searching for our hotel late on Tuesday night, we met Ivan, a local radio presenter, who speaks very good English. Without him we would never have found the Gostiniza Academia Geologia, tucked away on a dark side street behind Prospekta Lenina. Nor would we have found a safe place to park our three-wheeled friend. Ivan, a philosophical, highly intelligent 31-year-old, was fascinated with our trip and went home and posted all about it on a local website. Among those who read the site were two 21-year-old boys, Oleg and Rudy, who, with nothing better to do, decided to go and search for the ‘tuk tuk girls’. So there we were, in a random little Internet café yesterday evening, when two (very handsome indeed) boys came over and said ‘Are you the two driving the pink car to England? ’They had come to this café to use the Internet and track us down—and walked straight into us. Extraordinary—Yekaterinburg is a big city with 1.4 million inhabitants and they had stumbled upon us by total chance. Even funnier was when they showed us the website on which Ivan had posted, with a long thread all about the funny pink car that had been spotted last night coming into the city. Oleg and Rudy knew exactly where we had been, where we had got lost, where we had parked to ask directions…all from the replies to Ivan’s posting.

This morning Jo has gone off with Ivan, Oleg and Rudy to get TT seen by a mechanic found by Ivan through his posting, and I’ve gone off to take our DV camera to the Sony service centre and do Internet chores. The little bugger has an audio problem that might not be fixable. I don’t even want to think about it, and I begged the engineer at the centre to do his very best to sort it out.

Having spent four years attempting to learn Russian at school, it’s wonderful to finally make it here. My Russian teacher, Mrs Ainsworth (she’d married an Englishman,hence the surname),appeared determined to paint as bad a picture as possible about her homeland to her three pupils, and she delighted in showing us videos about the Aral Sea, Chernobyl and glue-sniffing street urchins in Moscow. But then it was the early 1990s, when Russia was emerging painfully from the mantle of Sovietism, and the fistfuls of roubles Mrs Ainsworth would show us in class wouldn’t even buy a loaf of stale bread. She didn’t manage to dampen my desire to come here one day though, and I feel sure it will be one of the highlights of the trip. The driving is a bit hairy, but it has been everywhere. By the time we get back to England we’ll be tailgating, overtaking on the inside verge and beeping like the best of them.

Thursday 27 July, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Ting Tong, the people magnet

We left Troitsk two days ago with a special gift from the local market, where Ants had gone to get some food and drinks and also to try and find us some warmer clothes. When she returned to our room she instructed me to put out my cigarette and close my eyes. I opened them to see a box with a pink towel in it, which on closer inspection I found to contain a baby hedgehog that Ants had bought at the market. We named him Henry and gave him a saucer of milk to drink. Then we had to smuggle him out of the hotel without the babushkas catching on to our little animal-rescue mission. As we drove through town,Ants popped to the local market again to get Henry some meat—a chicken wing, some sausages (which I ate) and some local pâté, which looked similar to what we feed our cat in England. We hit the main road and turned off on to a farmer’s track and headed for some woods. Henry, Ants and I waded through a waist-high wheatfield and found a shady collection of trees far from the road and civilisation. We gave him some more milk and put the pâté in his box. Henry wasn’t interested in hanging around to eat his lunch and scuttled off into the undergrowth, to a free and happy life I hope.

Then began our nightmare drive. The weather was cold and windy and it soon started to piss down with rain. Big trucks and cars were flying past TT, sending torrents of water all over us and her. Anuwat had warned me that in very heavy rain the spark plugs might get wet and cause problems. Sure enough, TT started to misfire, struggle and lose momentum. We pulled over and I had a real ‘Oh, shit!’ moment. We were in the middle of two cities, with nothing really in between, it was pouring with rain and TT had semi-broken down. Some locals we had met earlier had warned us that there were mafia and banditos on this road—great. Furthermore, our phone had decided not to let us make outgoing calls, and so we had to just hope that the rain would ease off and TT’s sparks would dry out, if indeed that was the problem. I pulled out my faithful Auto Repair For Dummies and read all the info relating to spark plugs. I knew that we had about ten spare sparks, but I wasn’t too keen to start trying to change them by the side of the road in the pouring rain. Luckily, my dad phoned at that moment and provided much-needed moral support. He told us to wait for about 30 minutes and then to try driving again.

It continued to rain, although with less intensity. We had no choice but to keep driving, and I prayed that TT would be able to safely take us to our intended destination. She was still having some issues and could drive at only about 30 mph, but at least she was moving. We finally arrived in the outskirts of Yekaterinburg at 10 p.m. but were initially delayed by a police stop, where our documents were checked and we were kept waiting for a good 20 minutes. This was the second time we had been stopped by the police that day, and we were cold, stressed, tired and not really in the mood to make small talk.

Then came the next challenge—trying to find our hotel. With TT farting, i.e. backfiring, around the streets of Yekaterinburg, we searched unsuccessfully for the right street. At 10.30 p.m., feeling cold, tired and pissed off, we pulled over and Ants went into a shop to ask for directions. While I waited, a guy came over to me and started asking about our trip—luckily for me, he spoke English. His name was Ivan and he was a presenter for a local radio station. In desperation, Ants asked him if he would hop into TT and join our search for the elusive hotel, which to our surprise he did. Twenty minutes later we finally located it, well and truly hidden down a back street. We unloaded our bags and set off with Ivan to find a secure place to park. After a couple of tries, we managed to persuade a security guard to let us park TT outside his hut for 60 roubles a night. Relieved, hungry and tired we then ended up in a Belgian restaurant with Ivan, eating Greek salad and drinking beer at gone midnight. We then returned to our hotel and hit the hay.

After a lie-in the next morning, we headed into town to register our visas, which tourists in Russia are obliged to do within three working days of arrival. When we tried to register our visas, we were informed that it would not be possible because first we had to go to the state bank and pay a rouble for each of the days that we planned to be in Yekaterinburg. As the office was closing soon, we would have to wait until Friday to register our visas. This meant that we would be a day late registering and may end up having to pay a £26 fine each—I hope we can work some TT magic and escape unpunished. Ants and I had no idea that these complicated rules for registering existed, and we didn’t know where the state bank was. Luckily for us we got chatting to a lovely couple who offered to take us to the bank and help us. Christina was a local and she was with her Turkish boyfriend, Elich, who needed to get his visa registered. They had been dating for two years and met through an Internet chat site. Christina showed us to the bank and helped us to fill out our forms in Russian, before we paid the cashier six roubles each. I will let you be the judge of whether this makes sense or is economically profitable for the Russians. We then went out for a drink and had a long and interesting chat with our new friends about Turkey, Russia and life.

The following morning Ants went off to try and fix the video camera and I went off to get TT fixed. Ivan said he knew a mechanic but the guy didn’t have a phone number. About 30 minutes later, Rudy and Oleg arrived with their friend Alexei, a keen photographer who also knew a good BMW garage. Alexei led the way in his BMW, and we arrived at a very professional garage full of smart Beamers. TT could hardly contain her excitement at being in the company of such attractive, powerful and sleek cars. I explained about the problems with the accelerator, spark plugs and windscreen wiper (which was misbehaving and had developed a mind of its own) and Rudy translated into Russian. I got out three new spark plugs and the mechanics set to work, promising that they would let me know when it was time to change the spark plugs. Meanwhile I relaxed upstairs on a leather sofa watching National Geographic and playing with a black kitten, which the guys informed me couldn’t understand English.

I was fetched to see the old spark plugs and watch the new ones being inserted. The old ones were coated in black muck, probably due to the poor fuel quality we have had during our 7 500-mile drive from Thailand. They showed me how to insert new ones and I watched carefully, in case the need arises for some DIY mechanics on the road relating to spark plugs. TT started first time with her new plugs and revved happily. Then it was time for a quick photo with all the mechanics, who then refused any payment for their services. What total dudes.

We headed back into town and stopped to get some petrol. Oleg phoned up a local news station and they agreed to come and film us when we arrived back in town. I tried to track down Mr Ant, but she was still ferreting around town. After a quick pizza we met the TV crew and they interviewed me, Rudy and Oleg, before filming TT driving around town. They found Ants’ bottle of vodka and I had to hold it up to the camera, as well as my mechanics book and a Russian map that I can’t read.

Tuk to the Road PR over, and we went back to the hotel and met up with Ants, who had been for a jog. After a quick shower we headed out for supper and some drinks and a bit of sightseeing. Apparently we were on the news at 8.30 p.m., but we were out and I didn’t have to worry about seeing myself on camera. Now we are back in the hotel and I am sitting in the shower room writing this blog. I need to get to bed as it is 1.30 a.m. and we have an early start. We are splitting up again, with Ants off to the British Council and me to get our visas registered. Then around midday we are meeting Ivan for a radio interview.

I am very pleasantly surprised by Russia, although I didn’t really know what to expect. It is an interesting place, the food is good, the cities are attractive and, most importantly, the people are great. Goodnight.

Saturday 29 July, Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovskaya oblast, Russia

Raving with the Romanovs

A glaring anachronistic impossibility I know, but read on and all will make sense.

Jo and I are still in Yekaterinburg, where we’ve been for four days. We didn’t quite mean to stay this long, but since Russia is the first country we haven’t had to pelt through in a dash to make our visa and permit deadlines, we thought we needed to wind down for a day or two. TT is now happily fixed and purring like a pink pussy cat, and we’ve got ourselves registered with OVIR (Office of Visas and Registration)—two essential chores we had to do here. Unfortunately, the problem of the DV camera hasn’t been resolved and we’ve either got to wait here for three weeks while it is sent off to Moscow for a spare part or see whether I can get another one sent out from England. The latter option is far more likely.

Yekaterinburg is an interesting city, somewhere rarely frequented by foreigners and famous predominately for three things: the Romanovs were murdered here, Yeltsin was born here, and there was a spate of violent mafia killings in the early 1990s. Furthermore, the Second World War turned the city into a major producer of arms and hence it was closed to foreigners until 1990 because of its plethora of defence plants. Today the surrounding countryside still hides a number of these plants—the father of someone we met the other day is the boss of one such place, which produces ground-to-air missiles from a factory deep beneath the woods outside the city.

With Jo engaged with her bevy of BMW mechanics on Thursday, and my camera-fixing errands over, I set off for a walk round the city to explore some of this history. The highlight was the grandiose Church of the Blood, built in 2003 on the spot where Tsar Nicholas II, his family and servants were horribly murdered by the Bolsheviks. The house where they died, Dom Ipateva, was destroyed by the then governor Boris Yeltsin in 1977, and today the exact spot is marked by a simple cross in the shadow of the new gold-domed church.

The tale of the Romanovs’ demise doesn’t make for pleasant reading. On 16 July 1918, the tsar and his family were murdered by their Bolshevik guards, having been imprisoned for months in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution. For decades the question of what happened to the family after their deaths remained unanswered. Then, in 1976, a group of local scientists discovered their remains near Ganina Yama, ten miles outside the city. So politically sensitive was this issue during the Soviet era that the discovery was kept quiet, and the remains were not excavated fully until 1991, when the bones of the nine people found were tentatively identified as those of the tsar, his wife Alexandra, three of their four daughters, the royal doctor and three servants. Absent were the bones of the fourth daughter, Anastasia, and the only son, Alexey.

In 1992, with the help of the DNA of Prince Philip (a grandson of the tsarina’s sister) and the pioneering work of a British forensic team, it was established with 98.5 per cent accuracy that these were indeed the Romanov remains. The full story of their ignominious end was then unfurled by a Russian inquiry.

According to this inquiry, the bodies of the five children and their parents were dumped in an abandoned mine shaft near Ganina Yama. Grenades and acid were used to destroy the remains, but the job was done so badly and the operation so bungled that the bodies were still almost fully intact when unearthed 73 years later. What a gruesome end for Russia’s last tsar and his family, who today have been sainted and buried at St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

It seems strange to me that a short walk from the Church of the Blood is Prospekt Lenina, where an austere statue of Lenin dominates the main square. Yet it was his party, his revolution, that killed the Romanovs, whom the city has recently gone to great lengths to commemorate. I went to see Kevin Lynch, the British consul general here, yesterday and put this question to him. He replied that of course the Russians are aware of the contradiction, but Lenin is an integral part of their history and what happened in 1917-18 cannot simply be wiped from the history books. A fair and valid point of course, and I would be intrigued to find out more about how Russians today view Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Right, history lesson over…on to the raving bit.

Last night Jo and I hit the tiles for the first time in our nine-week tukathon. After a few drinks with Kevin Lynch and a gang of British and American diplomats, we tripped off to Yekaterinburg’s number-one nightclub, the Snow Project, with Oleg and Rudy.

Jo and I obviously met the right boys in Oleg and Rudy, for we strolled into the uber-hip Snow Project at midnight waving the free VIP passes they had procured for us all—it normally costs 500 roubles to get in. I’d expected to go to a few clubs in Russia and had heard that there were some decent ones, but I never expected to find anywhere like this. After going though the obligatory metal detectors—everywhere here—and getting our UV stamps, we entered the most incredible main room, far more glamorous and better decked-out than any British club I’ve ever been to. Girls with the most ridiculous pairs of legs danced on podiums and sashayed past in absurdly high heels, skirts they might as well not have bothered wearing, and make-up several inches thick. Enormous sunglasses and blingtastic jewels completed the look. And there were Jo and I, in our jeans and trainers.

With Graeme Lloyd, from Turnmills in London, on the ones and twos, we all danced until 5 a.m., leaving as the sunrise was flooding the horizon red. Graeme spun some great tracks and we were introduced to him after his set. We had a quick chat, before leaving him to two keen blondes. All in all it was a fantastic night out—Jo and I think we should make it the first of many on the European leg of the trip.

Which takes me on to my next subject…Russian women. When on earth do they make the transition from tottering dolly-bird to doddering babushka? It must be overnight, for there doesn’t seem to be any in-between stage. Jo and I stick out like sore thumbs here, for the simple fact we lack three-inch heels, heavily dyed hair and a hefty helping of make-up.

After five days here we’re finally leaving in the morning, for Ufa, via the Urals. After six miles we’ll cross the divide into Europe. What a strange thought—home is almost in sight.

Monday 31 July, Hotel Tourist, Ufa, Bashkortostan Autonomous Republic, Russia

TT does it five times in one day!

We leftYekaterinburg yesterday morning, driving in convoy with Rudy and Oleg to the Asia/Europe border, where we parked TT with her front end in Europe and her back end in Asia. It gave us a brief moment to reflect on how long we’ve been tukking and how far we’ve travelled. We left Bangkok nine weeks ago and have travelled 8 000 miles. Being back in Europe has made us think about our arrival back in Brighton. We need to start planning for a big homecoming and work out quite how we are going to raise another £29 000 for Mind.

Saying goodbye to Rudy and Oleg was really sad, and I cried. Even though we’d known them for only four days, we’d spent nearly every waking moment with them and become really close. If it wasn’t for meeting them,TT would never had got to flirt with those sexy Beamers; nor would we have been on the local news and got to speak about our trip and mental health. It was also sad saying goodbye to Ivan, the first friend we made in Yekaterinburg, after we kidnapped him to show us where our hotel was.

On Friday night Ants and I hit the tiles for the first time on this trip, with Rudy and Oleg. Ants and I had both been quite tired earlier in the day and had returned to the hotel for a siesta before even contemplating going clubbing. We surprised ourselves by managing to stay up until 6 a.m., hanging out in the VIP area all night and hitting the dance floor a couple of times to throw some shapes. Some of the people in the club looked (and acted) like they were high on more than just the music. The music was house, not garage and not uplifting garden shed. Why the stupid names for dance-music genres? There was an English DJ playing, and Ants and I were introduced to him once his set had finished. He asked what we were doing in Yekaterinburg and I explained, before thrusting a business card into his hand and telling him to read our website.

Russia has definitely exceeded my expectations and I would suggest that people come and check out areas outside St Petersburg and Moscow. My only complaints are the Baltic weather and the overly efficient traffic cops, who have stopped us seven times in the past two days, including five times today. Mostly they just want to see our documents and ask questions about TT. Even though Ants speaks very good Russian, when we get pulled over with that irritating white baton she speaks as much Russian as I do—none! Given that the weather has been incredibly English, i.e. cold, wet and grey, we are starting to find these all too frequent police stops in the cold a little trying.

Crossing the divide

After five days off the road, the travelling trio once again hit the tarmac yesterday morning to head for Ufa…and Europe. Under a leaden sky we loaded up a sodden Ting Tong and headed out of Yekaterinburg, Jo driving, with Oleg in the back, and me with Rudy, filming our soggy exit from the city. We never even meant to go to Yekaterinburg, let alone stay there for four days, but as Ivan, quoting Voltaire, said: ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ I don’t go for the full Celestine Prophecy version of everything being some part of a predestined design, but I do subscribe to the attitude that many occurrences in our lives are more than simply an accident, and Yekaterinburg was a classic example. Jo and I went on a whim, deciding it sounded interesting and worth the 200-mile northern diversion, and thanks to that whim we ended up meeting Ivan, Rudy and Oleg, all extremely lovely people, who did everything they could to help us and show us round their city. As we said goodbye to Ivan, he said it was his dream to come to England:‘To see Stratford-upon-Avon, and to perform The Tempest. But first I must be wise—for a man to perform thees play, I think he must be wise.’Ivan, with his passion for Shakespeare,Voltaire and Irish folk music, is already wise, and it was a joy to meet such an unusual, intelligent person in the midst of a city we never intended to visit.

Just six miles outside of Yekaterinburg we came to the Europe/Asia border, where we parked up, took some snaps and contemplated what had been before and what lies ahead. As I stood with one leg in each continent, I thought of all the places and faces we have seen, and all the extraordinary experiences we’ve had, and wondered what the next leg of Tuk to the Road had in store for us. I wondered how you can just draw a line and say that right there one world ends and another begins. Moreover, the Russia we have experienced has rarely felt even faintly Asian. The last time I felt we were truly in Asia was at Saryam Lake in China, among the nomads and yurts. Since then, that Asian sense of otherness has faded, each day seeming more and more familiar, more European. But then again, Russia doesn’t feel quite like the Europe most of us know—there’s an edge to it you don’t get in the Bois de Boulogne, plus a hell of a lot more hookers and hummers. But it feels a very long way from North West China, where only a month ago we were sweltering at 40°C.

After our first lunch in Europe, we said a sad goodbye to Rudy and Oleg and set off in the general direction of Ufa, not really sure of where we would end up that night. There was no direct road, and so after studying the Russian atlas we decided to go the scenic route, dropping down through the Middle Urals into the Bashkortostan Republic. Aside from the incessant rain, which we all have a strong aversion to, and the almost as incessant police checks, we had an uneventful drive through beautiful country. Not since China have we driven through such natural beauty. The road plunged, weaved and climbed through rolling green countryside, populated by silver birch copses, herds of grazing animals and an abundance of wild flowers. Freshly cut piles of hay dotted the fields and farm workers laboured with scythes, looking up in astonishment as we drove past. Occasionally we passed through a village of wooden houses, all with ornate, brightly coloured windows. Beautiful.

Five police stops later, at 8 p.m., we came across a roadside hotel and decided to call it a day, where I left Jo with TT and dived in to check it out. After the corpulent receptionist had finished getting her oversize knickers in a twist about the fact that, first, we were inostranka (foreigners) and, second, we had a curious vehicle that was nyet motocikla i nyet mashina (not a motorbike, not a car), we were allowed in. Twenty minutes and one beer later, Jo and I had acquired our next pair of Russian boyfriends, Roma and Zanil, both from Tyumen in Siberia. As we have both said before, Russians are wonderfully friendly people, sometimes the men a little over so, and it’s hard to sit anywhere for five minutes without being accosted by a potential suitor. Before long, a third, slightly inebriated, gentleman had come over to our table and was declaring undying love for Jo. It was 1 a.m. before we finally got to bed.

This morning we set off, again in the rain, for the last 100 miles to Ufa, capital of the autonomous Bashkortostan Republic, home to the Muslim Turkic Bashkir people. We met our first Bashkir, Zoofar, last night, who very kindly asked us to his sanatorium—a kind of Russian Champneys—bezplatno (free of charge). Although the idea of being pampered in the mountains for a day was very appealing, we opted to hit the road and head south west in search of the sunshine. Having spent the last week getting cold and wet every day, we’re craving some heat and have decided to reroute south along the Black Sea coast via Odessa for a few days of sun, sea and surf.

This afternoon was spent tukking along a spectacular road across the heart of the Urals. Trucks loaded with German cars bound for Kazakhstan clanked past us, and a constant line of bored-looking babushkas hawked honey by the roadside. Although honey isn’t the most practical thing to travel with, we couldn’t resist and pulled over by the neediest-looking babushka we could find to make a purchase. A Kazakh lorry was parked 60 feet away and I had a quick chat with the driver, who told me he drives back and forth between Germany and Kazakhstan covering 4500 miles in ten days. Poor man—I don’t envy his job.

As we turned Ting Tong on to the road, a lady selling berries next door ran after us and pushed a large jar of raspberries into my hands, wishing us a good journey—a small gesture that is typical of the kindness of the Russians.

It’s midnight now and so time to go to bed…but one last anecdote before lights out. As we arrived at our hotel this evening, a stumbling, red-faced group of army officers lurched out of the adjacent bar. One of them, toad-faced, middle-aged and more than a little tipsy, locked his eyes lasciviously on Jo and planted a lingering, sloppy kiss on her cheek. By the time I had got us a room five minutes later, Jo had been fully groped, kissed repeatedly and proposed to. Evoking our imaginary husbands was no use at all, and Jo and I had to dash into the hotel under the cover of our baggage to avoid further gropage. At this rate we could have multiple husbands by the time we leave Russia, should we wish. What a thought.

Wednesday 2 August, Samara, Volga oblast, Russia

Rain, rain, go away

It is 11 a.m. and I am sitting in bed listening to the deluge of rain falling on the windowsill outside. Neither of us expected weather like this, and TT hates it even more than we do. After the episode when her spark plugs got wet on the way to Yekaterinburg, we are now very wary of driving in wet conditions. Therefore, we will be staying a second night at the Hotel Ripoffski.

We left Ufa yesterday morning and it was my turn to drive first. Ufa is a very strangely designed city, being over 12 miles long and shaped like a dumbbell—it must be a total pain if you are a teenager and your best mates live the other end of the dumbbell. Having got a little lost leaving Ufa, we then followed the M5 all the way to Samara—but don’t think it is anything like the lovely motorway connecting the West Country to the Midlands. Actually, it wasn’t a particularly bad road; for the most part it was in good condition and we could drive at up to 60 mph.

We beat our record yesterday of police stops and managed eight. Strangely, most of the police that stopped us knew we were travelling from Thailand to England. I can only assume they are somehow communicating and warning the next patrol unit to watch out for a strange pink vehicle. Only once were we asked for our documents. Ants and I have had a bet as to how many times we think we will be stopped in Russia in total. I estimated under 30 and Ants over 30. At the rate we were going yesterday, Ants is likely to win the bet.

After what felt like a really long day on the road, we arrived in Samara in the dark and set about finding a hotel. The first place was full, the second place didn’t accept foreigners, and the third was thoroughly overpriced and we were told that all of the hot water in the city had stopped working, i.e. they had problems with their plumbing. As it was dark and raining we were left with no choice but to stay at the last Hotel Ripoffski.

We were told that if we wanted a shower we would have to go down to the second floor. I felt quite tempted to go down to reception and drop my towel, in protest at the fact that our bathroom is useless for washing and they are not offering any kind of discount for the inconvenience. Unfortunately for them, I decided not to bless them with my naked flesh.

Last night we encountered a strange sight. As we walked along the banks of the mighty Volga, Europe’s longest river, we both stopped in our tracks to stare at a large python wrapped around a young woman. She offered us ‘photo with the snake’, which we declined and instead opted to stroke the cold scaly skin of this impressive reptile. Thank God I wasn’t walking my ferrets at the time.

Ants and I both feel a little strange at the moment. Personally, I feel pretty flat, uninspired and uninspiring. I am hoping it is just a phase and that I will come out the other side. Even though we are doing this amazing trip, it is not possible, I don’t think, to always feel happy and be having an amazing time. Emotions are something that wash over you continuously, even though you may not want to feel a certain emotion at a certain time, i.e. feeling below par even though there is nothing in particular to cause the feeling. I have said it before, but I think the weather is having a huge effect on my mood. I hate the rain, and when it is cold, grey and miserable in England I hibernate indoors. We cannot do that on this trip and have to carry on tukking, regardless of the weather. I am not complaining, because I love this adventure. It’s just that sometimes my heart doesn’t love it as much as I want it to.

Not the Samara we had envisaged

The Lonely Planet says of Samara, where we now find ourselves, that ‘in summer the Volga’s riverbanks are packed with bathing beauties, rollerbladers and beer drinkers’. With this idyllic image at the forefront of our minds, Jo and I left rainy Ufa yesterday, feeling very excited about a day or two sunbathing by the banks of Europe’s longest river. Such was not to be; as has now become the norm in Russia, I awoke this morning to the symphony of mosquitoes dive-bombing my head and rain hammering on the windows. Visions of spending a sybaritic day lounging by the river evaporated in an instant. And since Ting Tong has made it very clear that driving in the rain is not her favourite pastime (or ours) we opted to don our very fetching tropical ponchos and hang out in soggy Samara for the day instead. What a riot.

Yesterday was our longest day on the road for a while, and it seemed to go on and on and on and on…The countryside was beautiful and the roads passable, but nothing spectacular. The oddest thing was the endless police stops—eight yesterday. But although all our previous stops have included a demand for our dokumenti, all but one of yesterday’s cop stops were simply to have a nose at Ting Tong and ask all the usual‘Where are you going?’,‘Where are you from?’,‘Aren’t you cold?’(yes!) and ‘Where are the men?’ type of questions. Furthermore, most of the police stopping us seemed to know the basic details of our journey, i.e. that we were travelling from Thailand to England. We suspect that this is thanks to the two policemen who bought us cake and chatted to us in a truckers’ café at lunch, who then must have warned their cohorts further down the line of the pink oddity heading their way. We can now pretty much guarantee that at every police checkpoint, that irritating black-and-white baton will wave us down as we try and tuk past inconspicuously.

I’ve discovered in the past 24 hours a peculiar paradox that exists in Russia—one of many I am sure. Our blog during the past week has been full of praise for the incredible hospitality and friendliness we have encountered here. But our infuriating, exhausting quest for a hotel room late last night, after ten hours on the road, in the rain, was hindered by what I can only call xenophobia. The hatchet-faced receptionist at hotel number one, the disgusting-looking Hotel Rossiya, informed me very frostily that they had no rooms. At hotel number two, I didn’t even get past the door, being physically blocked from entering by a bad-tempered old goat who curled his lips in disgust at the sound of my foreign accent and told me that this was a hotel for Russians only. I tried to duck past him to verify this with the receptionist, but he barred my way and sent us packing. Hotel number three was the same, and hotel number four, the wildly overpriced Zhiguli, let us in. Jo and I objected to paying 3300 roubles (over £60) for a room with no hot water, but it was either that or the pavement.

Finally, I want to add an appendage to my blog about the Romanovs from the other day. My father, the Biggest Boffin in the Business, who has been to St Petersburg twice, wrote the following in an email a few days ago:‘I have in front of me a four-page article from the St Petersburg Times dated 17 July 1998, which casts a huge amount of doubt on the whole business. The most significant piece of evidence is that Tsar Nicholas was attacked by a madman during his 1891 visit to Japan and that his skull was permanently scarred. No sign of such a scar was found by the investigators of the Commission of the Identification of the Remains established in 1993. At the time of the reburial in St Petersburg, nearly every leading Russian newspaper published articles doubting the authenticity of the bones.’ Maybe my next foreign sojourn will be a hunt for the real Romanov remains…

That’s all for today. I wish the rain would stop because it’s getting boring. With luck, this time next week we’ll be soaking up some rays in the Crimea, where we have decided to reroute to in search of sun and extra mileage.

Saturday 5 August, Volgograd, Volga oblast, Russia

Sun at long last

We have arrived at our last city in Russia before crossing into Ukraine early next week. We are staying in the originally named Volgograd Hotel, which is a huge characterful building that has been restored to its original splendour after being destroyed in the Second World War.

We left Samara two days ago in the sunshine. The rain had decided to stop, and Ants and I were thrilled to cast aside our ponchos and jackets to wear T-shirts again. Ants went off to get TT while I packed up and finished checking out. Ants returned after about 30 minutes with the bad news that TT had stubbornly refused to start. So I stopped emptying our room and we both returned to TT, determined to get her running. Of course I took my faithful Auto Repair For Dummies with me.

We nearly got TT started, but in the end we had to accept the kind offer of a pull-start from a Lada. Drama over, we drove TT back to the hotel. However, the drama was only 50 per cent over as TT was misfiring like a trooper again, as the old spark issues seemed to have returned with a vengeance. We decided to leave her in the sunshine to see whether this would cheer her up enough to drive smoothly. In the meantime,Ants contacted a local TV crew with whom she had been in touch and they came over to interview us. We gave an interview and farted up and down the street in TT, before parking her up again and heading off for lunch.

After lunch we went back to the hotel and loaded up TT. As we emerged from the hotel, we were surprised to find a British hearse parked outside—a team from the Mongol Rally called The Hearse Flies. The aim of the rally is to drive a cheap car from England to Mongolia as fast as possible and auction the car for charity on reaching Ulan Bator. We would have loved to chat to the brave hearse drivers for longer, but we were being shown out of the city by our new pals from the TV station and couldn’t keep them waiting.

We started the long drive towards Volgograd, planning to stop somewhere around Saratov to camp. In the early evening we pulled off the main road and drove about one mile into a field of newly harvested hay. I was a bit worried that we were trespassing and might get into trouble, but our spot seemed pretty remote and we couldn’t see any signs of civilisation, so we parked TT behind a haystack and set up our tent.

We had a typical camping meal of pasta and tomato sauce from a jar, checked our emails and had a game of badminton, before retiring to our tent, covered in 100 per cent DEET to try to ward off the large persistent mozzies that had been attacking us all evening. If a local farmer had come across us he probably wouldn’t have believed his eyes—two foreign girls playing badminton in the middle of his field next to a bright-pink tuk tuk.

We awoke the next morning to sunshine and another day of good weather. After a quick breakfast of porridge, we packed up TT and tried to start her. Can you guess what happened? She wouldn’t start. So, we pushed her further across the field into a patch of sunshine and let her sunbathe. After about half an hour she did start and we tukked off towards Saratov, with the intention of reaching Volgograd that night, some 350-plus miles away.

TT flew along for the first couple of hours but then started to misfire again. I checked that the boots covering her sparks were attached securely and found that one of them was not secure enough. She seemed a bit better but was still not driving brilliantly, so when we stopped for lunch we drove TT over to a neighbouring garage, where the mechanics discovered that one of her three new sparks had already gone. We replaced all three and set off for Volgograd, arriving late last night, exhausted but relieved to have arrived for a weekend of relaxation and, we hope, some sunshine.

A geek’s tour of Volgograd

After 400 miles on the road, Jo and I chased the setting sun into Volgograd last night, very tired but happy to have got through another momentous day of Tuk to the Road. TT’s recurrent troubles and a night of being besieged by monster mosquitoes hadn’t helped our cause over the previous 36 hours, and we were both looking forward to a weekend off in the sunshine.

Arriving in a big city on a Friday night was a novel experience for both of us. Having thrown off the shackles of the working week and no doubt having already imbibed the odd tipple, the inhabitants seemed particularly glad to see Ting Tong. Girls tottering across zebra crossings screeched drunkenly as we tukked past and a red sports car crammed with overexcitable Russian boys escorted us most of the way into the centre. ‘Russian boys…Eenglish girls…gooooood!’ they shouted hopefully, begging us to pull over ‘just for two minutes to have a chat’. On the other side of us a minibus driver shouted questions at Jo, and hence we drove into Volgograd blocking the three-lane carriageway, cars glued to either side of Ting Tong.

For me, Volgograd means one thing, the battle of Stalingrad. Fought between July 1942 and February 1943,this was one of the vilest and most vital battles of the Second World War. Had the Red Army not fought so doggedly against the Germans, the war, and subsequent European history, could have been played out very differently. But victory came at a terrible cost, with at least 600 000 German troops and a million Russians lost in the fighting. Russian casualties here roughly equalled the number of Americans lost in the entire war, and by February 1943 the ancient city of Tsaritsyn (renamed Stalingrad in honour of the Great Leader) lay in ruins, not a building remaining intact. Walking around the city today, with its leafy boulevards, cosmopolitan cafés and swanky shops, it’s hard to believe that only 63 years ago it was razed to the ground.

In delicious blazing sunshine this morning, after Jo and I had watched a load of wedding antics by the Volga, I set off to find out a bit more about the battle, while Jo, suffering from a nasty Russian cold, retired to our room to recuperate. The only evidence that such a struggle occurred here is the ruin of a flour mill, left as a memorial to the battle. Otherwise, the city has been entirely reconstructed. There is, however, an awe-inspiring memorial to the battle, Mamaev Kurgan, crowning what was known as Hill 102 during the struggle, the scene of particularly vicious fighting. Mamaev towers over the city, 210 feet high, a magnificent memorial to the dead. As I stood and craned my neck up at the gigantic statue, I felt a pang of sadness about the hideous loss of lives that took place here. It is said that even the Germans were shocked by the Soviet army’s tactic of sending massed ranks of men towards the German machine guns, so their bodies would shield the troops behind.

I know that I have harped on about history quite a lot in my recent blogs, but Russia, more than anywhere else we’ve been, visibly bears the scars of its tumultuous twentieth-century history. Whether it is cities that were closed to foreigners until 1991 (Yekaterinburg, Samara), tanks and fighter planes on display in city centres, the Romanov remains or stern Communist statues glaring down at you in every main street, you are never allowed to forget for long what has happened here since 1917.

Back to Samara…

The further we go on this journey, the more we believe that everything happens for a reason. Two days ago, as Jo has mentioned, TT threw a tantrum and wouldn’t start in Samara. It was those pesky spark plugs again, revolting against the cold and rain. All we could do was wait until they dried out. In the meantime, Irina, a journalist I’d been in touch with for a while, rang me. She was keen to do a TV interview and, after playing phone tag for the past 24 hours, TT’s misdemeanours allowed us to finally hook up. The interview went well and we had a chance to talk about Mind, mental health and the reasons behind our trip. Interestingly, she was the first journalist to ask about Jo’s scars, which I find odd. Aren’t journalists supposed to ask pertinent questions?

After the interview, the three of us had a quick lunch and a really interesting chat about Russian literature, mental health here, and how the Russians feel about their Communist past. Irina seemed hesitant to talk about the issue of mental health, saying that even though the Soviet era is long gone, journalists still need to watch what they say, particularly to foreigners. I’ve asked quite a few people here the same questions about mental health, and the answer is always unclear. Suicide rates are very high, self-harm is common and alcoholism and domestic abuse are notoriously rife, and yet the provisions to care for those with mental illness are barely in place. Aside from that, no one seems able to tell us any more.

At 2 p.m., after we’d had lunch and our spark plugs had pulled themselves together, we set off down the P226 in the general direction of Volgograd. Six hours later we called it a day and pulled into our home for the night, a freshly harvested hayfield near Saratov. Lovely as it was, the night was spoilt slightly by the mosquitoes, which seemed unperturbed by the fact we were both coated in 100 per cent DEET. We snuggled down for a night of typically unsatisfactory tent sleep. I’ve yet to master the art of proper sleep when in such close proximity with Mother Earth and, since I burnt a hole in my inflatable sleeping mat the first time I used it, it offers little respite from whatever lurks beneath the groundsheet.

As I lay in my sleeping bag, my mind strayed to the puzzle of the Romanov remains and the big question: if they weren’t the bones of the tsar et al., then whose were they? I concluded that the ‘identification’ of the bones in 1991 smacks of political spin and is suggestive of an attempt to discredit the Communist past and bolster patriotism at a time when the new Russia was throwing off the mantle of 73 years of Soviet rule.

Jo and I are very relieved that the sun has at last got his hat on and come out to give some respite from the rain. Ting Tong says she’s very happy too, and I hope those darn spark plugs won’t give us any more gyp from now on.

Monday 7 August, Volgograd, Volga oblast, Russia

Success and sunbathing

We have spent the past two days enjoying the sunshine in Volgograd, soaking up the sun on the local sandy beach with our uneven zebra tans. Actually, most of our tan had disappeared after the rubbish weather we have experienced during the previous three weeks.

To reach the beach we had to get a boat to the other side of the Volga. The beach was absolutely packed, not only with people but also with rubbish—a real shame, because it could have been a nice beach. We settled down for the afternoon and quickly forgot about the miserable rain and cold weather we had thought would never end. It seems that the weather here can be as changeable as that back home.

In the evening we went to see Mamaev Kurgan, a huge striking statue that Ants has already mentioned. It was a beautifully clear evening and we enjoyed a spectacular sunset, while Ants explained to me the significance of the spot where we sat and the blood that had been shed during horrific battles in the Second World War. I do not understand why people still feel the need to go to war, including our embarrassing present government. Violence breeds violence, and there can be no such thing as a just war.

Today we had expected to hit the road and head west towards Ukraine. However, we were waiting for a parcel from England, which did not arrive. We were told that we may have to wait for another couple of days, and so we decided to hit the beach again. As it was Monday the beach was emptier, but that didn’t stop us attracting attention from the local drunk. His name was Valeri and Ants suddenly forgot (intentionally) all of her Russian. Valeri indicated to me that I needed a manicure and he proceeded to try and clean under my fingernails with a biro, which actually just made them go blue. He also then took a grasp of my love handles and didn’t let go until Ants and I both let out a yelp. We decided we’d had enough sun and headed back across the Volga.

When we got back to the hotel we were thrilled to find that our parcel had arrived. Now we can hit the road tomorrow and should be in Ukraine on Wednesday. After a relaxing and sun-filled weekend we are ready for another tukking week.

Tuesday 8 August, Hotel Volgograd, Volgograd, Volga oblast, Russia

Our escape from Volgograd

After an unintended four-day sojourn in sunny Volgograd, it looks like Jo and I will actually be heading south again tomorrow. Here we come, Ukraine, referred to by a post on this blog as our ‘last doggy spot’. I think the doggiest thing there will be the poliziya. We just hope they fall for TT’s charms as all their international counterparts have.

When we arrived here on Friday night we intended to stay only for the weekend, hoping that a new DV camera being couriered from England would arrive on Monday morning and off we could go. Monday morning arrived but the camera didn’t. After tracking it down to a depot in Moscow and pestering the staff at our hotel on an hourly basis, we decided there was nothing to be done except head for the beach, again, and wait. If it had got as far as Moscow, it couldn’t be too far away. Our patience and sun-worshipping were rewarded by the arrival of our package when we got back. Phew! We could hit the road again this morning.

But the courier company had obviously been a bit rough with the camera and, having excitedly reset it and headed into town to do some filming last night, I quickly ascertained that its focus was gone. I despaired. We’d already hung around in Volgograd for longer than necessary, and although Dan at ITV very generously said he’d send out another camera, that would have meant risking wasting more time and potentially having the same happen again. I lay awake for most of last night puzzling over what to do. Should we buy another camera here, risk another one getting sent out, or find someone here who could fix one of our two cameras…today?

The last option seemed the only viable one, so first thing this morning I was on the phone to Rudy in Yekaterinburg. Could he try to find us a Sony centre here? Of course he could—ten minutes later, he emailed three options and in a flash I was in a taxi to Planet Service.

A bevy of techies gathered round the two cameras. Heads shook and the word ‘nyet’ was repeated far too many times for my liking. But I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Somehow they had to fix either the sound on camera number one or the focus on camera number two. Today. After much cajoling, Sergei, one of the overworked engineers, gave me his mobile and said to ring at 3.30 p.m. He’d see what he could do.

And do what he could he did. At 4.30 p.m. I was walking out of the centre, having thanked Sergei, my new best friend, profusely, with camera number one intact. The relief! The gratitude! So now Jo and I are back on track, with all our equipment intact, and ready to head home. I’m so happy, albeit a little tired from my sleepless night.

Thursday 10 August, the Russia-Ukraine border

Camping it up

I am sitting here on the road next to TT while we wait in a queue of 40 cars to cross the border from Russia to Ukraine. The sun is shining and we know from previous experiences with border crossings that we could be in for a long old day. Oh well, at least we can work on our tans.

Last night we camped just outside Rostov-on-Don, which I think is a very funny name for a Russian city. We were stopped by the police five times yesterday, which means I have lost my bet. I estimated we would be stopped fewer than 30 times in Russia, and Ants correctly guessed over 30. I think the total now is 34. My prize as the loser is to pose for a photo naked in the Yi apron with TT in a public place. Ants, as chief photographer, will try to keep the photo as decent as possible.

Camping was fun, as it has been all three times we have camped on this trip. Although we never end up getting much sleep, being outside in the middle of nowhere with just the birds and bees to keep you company is quite a special experience. Last night there certainly were bees around, because we camped near some beehives in the woods. Poor Ants was stung on her bottom and has just been stung again this morning. Up until last night Ants had managed to avoid being stung, whereas I have already been stung four times, including three times in one day. The bee that stung Ants last night was already dead and so it managed to get its own back from the grave. I tried to be sympathetic, but when someone is stung on their bottom it is quite amusing—even Ants saw the funny side.

The drive out of Volgograd was well signposted, for once, and we were soon on our way to Rostov. One of our first police stops of the day made me laugh: the policeman collected coins from China and Mongolia and, after we explained about our trip, he asked if we had any Chinese coins. We searched through our bum-bags and were able to add a one-yuan coin to his collection.

Ants has just returned from an office at the border with some bad news. Apparently they don’t accept credit cards for our Ukrainian insurance, and we don’t seem to have enough money. That could mean a 30-mile trek to the nearest town. Bugger!

Problem over—after ferreting around in our bum-bags we have enough money, with only 25p to spare. Ants also just informed me that she has been stung on the bottom again and walked off rubbing her left cheek (that’s the second time today!).

Next time we write a blog, I hope we will be in the Crimea, where Ants will be exploring the history of the area and I will be looking at rock formations. I am also on a mission to find a naturist beach so that TT can get an all-over tan.

One more thing: TT’s spark plugs seem fine now and she is driving like a dream. I am hugely relieved, because as chief pseudo-mechanic I would have had to start checking inside her carburettor and distributor, and these jobs are best left to the pros. Changing the accelerator cable is about as skilled as I get. For those who are interested, we have now covered 9600 miles from Bangkok. Only about 3000 miles left before England, and then I hope TT will fly into the record books for having completed the longest-ever journey by an auto-rickshaw.

Borderland

Another border, another pair of underpants, as Jo would say. After 16 days in Mother Russia, we have eaten our last eggy breakfast, been stopped by our last Russki poliziya and drunk our last Russian Baltika beer. Now for country number six, Ukraine, which lies merely a field from whence I now write. So near but yet so far. With 35 cars between us and the barrier, we could be in for a long wait. But at least the sun is shining and we know that on the other side lies the Crimea, with its beaches, Silk Road fortresses, cave cities…and naturist beaches.

Jo, being a devout naturist, is very excited about the latter. She’s been trying to drag me to one since we were 13. The last time I was naked in public was at the Arasan Baths in Almaty, where the experience induced a panic attack and Jo had to lead me to safety while a gaggle of portly, unclad babuskhas looked on. Whether I’ll be able to get over my fear of getting my kit off is yet to be seen. I may have to hide behind a large rock while Jo struts her stuff.

Our last night in Russia was spent in a field, watching a harvest moon rise over the trees and listening to a cacophony of insect life, several of which stung and bit us. Once again the tent experience led to little sleep but was most enjoyable, although unfortunately I left our cutlery in Volgograd so we ate our pasta with toothpicks. There are few things more pleasurable than sitting outside on a warm summer’s evening under a full moon. It seemed an appropriate way to be ending Russia, and Jo and I sat and chatted about the past two weeks and the three and a half weeks we have left on the road. Time is slipping by so fast, and Brighton is looming out of the future at an alarming rate.

This trip has been like scaling a huge mountain. Our four-month preparation was akin to galloping across the plains towards the peak ahead, leaving Bangkok the first step towards the clouds. At Almaty we reached the summit and prepared for the descent. Now I feel as if we are scrambling down the other side, with home just visible through the clouds below. I know that we still have 3000 miles to go and anything could happen at any moment, but I feel as if we are on the home stretch now, and it’s a funny feeling. My friend Al wrote me an email yesterday in which he reminded me of Gandhi’s philosophy that life is one long journey, the only destination being death. As I lay in the back of TT yesterday, I thought about it a lot, how doing this journey and getting home are all a microcosm of that ‘Journey’. When we cross the finish line in Brighton, this journey may end, this chapter close, but then another chapter will open and the next part of the ‘Journey’ will begin. What that next chapter will be neither Jo nor I knows. As for Ting Tong, her next chapter will be cohabiting a garage in Brighton with 11 smelly ferrets. I don’t envy her.

Thanks to another five police stops yesterday and two today, I have won our bet as to how many cop stops we racked up in Russia. Our final tally is 35.

Police were one of the things we were most worried about in Russia, but on the whole the stops have been no more than an excuse to have a closer inspection of Ting Tong. A cursory glance at our dokumenti is always accompanied by the usual tukking questions and disbelief that we have no moosh (husbands) with us, are in a three-wheeled car and are going all the way to England. One policeman yesterday was a keen collector of coins so we added to his collection with some yuan and tenge. So far that is the only money we have had to hand over to men in uniform. At the next stop the policeman, half-joking, asked us whether we had any ‘heroin, cocaine, narkotiki’. Yeah, right. If a smuggler were to dream up the worst accoutrement to smuggling they could imagine, Ting Tong would be it. Today, however, we met our first bad egg. It was quickly apparent that he was determined to extract roubles from us. He examined our documents, asked to see the engine number, bombarded us with tiresome questions and then marched off to the police station with our passports. But since our documents are perfectly in order and he could find nothing wrong, we headed off in the direction of Ukraine with our wallets and tempers intact.

All in all, Russia has been a great experience. Rain, spark-plug issues and technological hiccups have not dampened my enthusiasm for this country or its people. More than anywhere else, the Russians have loved Ting Tong. Barely five minutes have passed on a Russian road without people laughing, shouting questions out at us, begging us to stop and chat, asking to swap cars and whipping out video cameras. Some classic comments have included ‘What is this apparition I see before me?’ and ‘Is it a car, is it a motorbike, is it a tractor?’ Some Russians have also been just as surprised to see Anglichankas (English girls). In Yekaterinburg one man lurched up to us, beer can in hand, and said ‘Eenglish…never before have I seen an Eenglish’ and then just stood and stared. Most bizarre. Apart from the odd Communist fossil and sulky waitress, I have found the Russians to be fun, positive, kind and welcoming—a far cry from the cold, hard stereotype we feared. I hope the Ukrainians will be the same.

P. S. Jo just told a queue-barger to fuck off in Russian. Then the babushkas joined in, and now he’s reversed in a fury to the back of the queue. I hope he doesn’t hunt us down on the other side. Eek.

Saturday 12 August, The Crimea, between Sudak and Yalta, Ukraine

Love at first sight

We’ve been in Ukraine for a mere 48 hours and already I am under its spell. The countryside is beautiful, the people wonderful and the nightclubs highly entertaining. I think Jo and I have got a great ten days ahead of us, and as we tukked round the Crimean coast in the blazing sunshine today I felt the holiday mood set in. Although this journey has been unbelievable it’s also been fairly exhausting at times, and for the next few days we are going to kick back, slap on the sunscreen and pretend we are just a normal pair of Brits abroad. Bliss.

Last time I put finger to keyboard was at the border two days ago, sitting in the back of Ting Tong. I was a little nervous at what lay ahead as we had a little problem with our dokumenti. Unbeknown to us, the customs at Troitsk had only given Ting Tong a Russian passport until 7 August. We were exiting Russia on 10 August. Their mistake lay buried in the small print of one of the many vital documents we carry around, and had a policeman not pointed it out to us on a routine check the night before we would have had no idea. Now we could be facing serious trouble, through no fault of our own.

The problem was spotted quickly and, at the Kazakh-Russian border, Jo and I were frogmarched into a small stark room by an enormous, cross-looking official. I didn’t fancy our chances. For ten minutes we were at an impasse, with me trying to explain that we had no idea why Troitsk had made the mistake and him shaking his head and repeating that we had a problem. Then Jo whipped out a copy of Komsomolskaya Pravda, featuring an article about us written by our friend Evgenia in Almaty, and in an instant the issue of our faulty documents was dropped. He read and reread the article, went and copied it, then came back and opened a large safe in the corner of the room, from which he produced a handful of Ukrainian hryvnia and some euros. As he handed them across the table, he said that he understood about mental health problems and we both got the feeling he had either experienced them himself or knew someone who had. Whatever his motives, it was an extraordinary incident, and with our new friend in tow we skipped out of the office and into Ting Tong. After some photos and lots of thank yous, the barrier rose up and we said goodbye to Russia. We couldn’t believe that at a second border crossing, we had actually been given money by people who are notorious for exactly the opposite. What a brilliant end to our two weeks in Russia.

The Ukrainian side of the border passed without major incident, and after six hours in Borderland we sped into country number six. Since we were both dead beat after a night of camping and a series of insomniac nights in Volgograd, we stopped for the night in the first place we came across, which happened to be Maryopol, a fairly large town on the Sea of Azov. When we found a hotel, which I can’t begin to remember the name of, I went in to investigate while Jo held the TT fort. The heavily made-up, perfectly dressed receptionist took one look at my filthy T-shirt and grubby Thai fisherman’s trousers and snottily said that they had no rooms, only luxe, i.e. you can’t afford it so piss off. But since Jo and I had camped the night before and were in no mood for hotel hunting, she had to eat her words and luxe it was.

When I skipped out to tell Jo the good news, I found her surrounded by a group of handsome young men, all asking the usual questions, with Jo looking perplexed and not understanding a word. Not taking no for an answer, they carried our bags up to our room, bought us beers and supper, and then insisted we come out dancing with them. Both of us could think of nothing worse. We were shattered and pretty grubby and could hardly string a coherent sentence together in English, let alone Russian. But for some reason we found ourselves saying yes…

Half an hour later we were washed and downing our first shots of vodka. An hour later we were at the Santa Barbara nightclub, with two bottles of vodka being planted in front of us and seven excitable Russians toasting England, Russia, three wheels, etc., etc. Sasha, Vittya, Sergei, Alexei et al. told us they lived in Novosibirsk in Siberia—where it regularly hits -40°C—and were all metalworkers. Vittya, who had multiple tattoos, bullet wounds and shaved hair dyed leopard print, had spent four years fighting in Grozny. From what I could understand, the experience had affected him deeply. He was only our age and for the umpteenth time on this trip I appreciated what tame, easy lives we live in England. Sergei had several gold teeth and a bad case of wandering hands. Sasha was apparently married and had a daughter but spent the evening looking lasciviously at Jo and dragging her off to dance. They also taught us an interesting Russian custom, which I still think they made up just for our/their benefit. Apparently it’s customary for two people to link their arms, drink shots of vodka and then kiss each other passionately on the lips. To demonstrate that they weren’t having us on, Sergei and Sasha shared a very unmanly kiss on the lips and then told us it was our turn…

At 2 a.m. we staggered home, locked the door of our bedroom and passed out. But not before Sasha and Vittya had begged to come in for a ‘nightcap’ and Sasha had been on his knees begging for ‘Diana’ (Joanna after too much vodka). What a funny and totally unexpected night.

Yesterday we awoke, feeling a little bleary eyed but full of the joys of Ukraine, and set off west for the Crimea. At about 6 p.m., with a storm brewing in the distance, we pulled over at a rinok (market) to get some veggies in case we had to camp. The vendors were all Crimean Tartars—more about them another time—and they loaded us up with every vegetable imaginable and then refused to take any money. As we were leaving, Jo asked one man whether he had email, so we could send him pictures. He let out a throaty laugh and said ‘Internet? We have no money, only potatoes. How could we have Internet?’They had nothing and yet had just given us so much. It was another one of those incidents that leaves you feeling humbled, incredibly grateful and wishing you could give something back.

I’ve written enough now and need to go to bed, so more tomorrow. We’re in a village in the Crimea, somewhere between Sudak and Yalta. No idea what it’s called but it has a beach and we’re sharing a house with some Russian punks from St Petersburg who we met in a café this afternoon.

Monday 14 August, Vecolny, The Crimea, Ukraine

Ting Tong’s summer holiday

Those of you who speak Russian might have noticed something funny about the name of the village we are staying in. It means ‘merry’, which is fitting, since the three of us are indeed having a very merry time here. The sun is shining—almost too hard—the sea is on our doorstep and we have spent the past few days being deliciously idle on the beach. Apart from my rather hot three-mile run this morning, our time has been spent horizontally, reading and simply soaking up the rays.

It’s not that interesting reading about people lying on the beach doing nothing, so I’ll keep it short. One thing I do want to say, though, is that Jo and I found out this afternoon that out of 16 000 entries, we have made it down to the last ten in Cosmo’s Fun Fearless Female Award, which is dead exciting. I think the final decision is in September.

Brown girl in the ring

We managed to locate the local naturist beach yesterday, which involved an energy-sapping scramble over rocks in the midday sun. The naturist beach was less of a beach and actually some rocks where people either decided to wear clothes (pecker checkers and beaver patrol) or chose not to (naturists). Ants and I found a reasonably flat rock and toasted ourselves.

We’re still living with the aforementioned punks from St Petersburg. They are not really punks, but they do have a strong penchant for facial piercings, Mohicans and tattoos. The three of them, Nastia, Vova and Anna, are living here for the summer and running a club on the beach. We went down last night and I got far too excited by all of the Boney M tracks they were playing, hence the title of this blog.

Nothing much more to report, other than that TT has decided she likes to steer to the right when we apply the brakes. This same problem happened in Kazakhstan and we solved it by changing the front brake calliper, and so tomorrow we will have to drag ourselves away from the beach and deal with Ting Tong.

Friday 18 August, Tanya’s House, Bakhchysaray, the Crimea, Ukraine

Another tukking tantrum

After several divine days of chilling by the Black Sea, it was back to reality on Tuesday afternoon, when we limped into Sudak with Ting Tong in a quest to get to the root of her latest troubles. We weren’t sure whether the problem was with the calliper, as in Kazakhstan, or whether it was a new ailment. We had no idea where to find a good mechanic with whom we would be able to communicate—my Russian doesn’t stretch to mechanical technicalities, and very few people round here speak any English.

A hot traipse around Sudak finally led us to Signal, a tiny shop piled high with every sort of auto part you can imagine, apart from callipers. The nearest place we could buy one, they told us, was Odessa, over 350 miles away. We looked at each other and groaned. As the reality of our problem was sinking in, a heavily accented voice piped up on my right: ‘What are you looking for?’ I turned to discover the owner of the voice was a smartly dressed, good-looking 20-something man. He introduced himself as Redvan, a mechanic. An hour later he was at our house, stripped down to a pair of fetching satin shorts, and inspecting our sick baby. Despite our misgivings he soon ascertained that the problem was not with the calliper but with our front suspension, which had gone again. Boris, a biker we had met the day before, had said the same but we had dismissed his prognosis, convinced it had to be the same problem as in Balkash. This was bad news—we had already used our spare shocks in China, and the nearest ones were in Bangkok, about 9000 miles away.

We now had three options: wait for up to two weeks while the new shocks were couriered to us, fly to Bangkok to physically pick them up or find someone who could somehow fix them. The only realistic option was the latter, and with Redvan leading the way on his moped we bumped off to the best mechanic in town, Serva, who lived down a dusty track among half-built houses on the outskirts of Sudak. Yes, he said, he thought he could do it…come back in three hours. So Jo, Redvan and I went off to Redvan’s uncle’s café and drank coffee and smoked hookahs, waiting anxiously for the outcome. If he failed, we were in serious trouble…

As we waited, Redvan, only 26 and married for four years, told us about his people, the Crimean Tartars, and about Stalin’s terrible expulsion of them in 1944—within a space of a few days, Stalin exported every single one of them to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Siberia. Thousands died on the journey and, although given an official apology by Khrushchev in 1967, it was not until 1989 that they were officially allowed back to their homeland. Today, about 12 per cent of the Crimean population is Tartar, but life is hard for them and many struggle against poverty and racial prejudice, all because of the whim of a single megalomaniac.

Full of coffee and Tartar tales we returned after three hours to find Serva putting the finishing touches to Tingers. A test drive would reveal whether he had managed to mend her. And guess what? He had! Jo and I couldn’t believe it. He had managed to do in one hour what had taken ten men seven hours in Jinhong. Moreover, he had never seen or attended to a three-wheeler before. We thanked him, thanked him, thanked him, thanked him some more, took photos of him and his wife, and gleefully drove off into the sunset. Problem solved. Our evening was thus spent celebrating over a few beers with Redvan and his friend Rostom. Please, please, let it be the last problem Ting Tong has before we get home in two and a half weeks. If Redvan had not been in Signal at the same time as us, goodness knows what might have happened. Thank you, guardian angels, for coming to our rescue again.

This morning we packed up and said goodbye to Nastia and Vova and our Tartar hosts, Ismail, Aisha, Gulya, Esme and Eleonora, plus their four dogs, Naida, Akbar, Dinai and Puppy. The downside of the trip is saying goodbye to all the wonderful people who cross our paths and become part of our journey, and I felt as sad about leaving them as I have about leaving anyone else. But the road and Brighton beckon, and it was time to move on.

Now we are in Bakhchysaray, the old Tartar capital of the Crimea, staying in a little house in the garden of a lady called Tanya. It’s very beautiful here, and our lodging is costing us the grand total of £3. At 7 a.m. Tanya is going to make us breakfast and then we’ll head for Odessa. The Crimea is fantastic. We love it. You’ve all got to come here.

Saturday 19 August, The Hotel Odessa, Odessa, Ukraine

Odessan nights

Odessa, the creation of the indefatigable Catherine the Great, is famous today for several things: neoclassical architecture, Ibizan-style 24-hour nightclubs, lissom girls and a rampant HIV epidemic. The lissom girls have also made it a major destination for lonely cashed-up Western and Turkish men, one of whom has just mistaken me for a Ukrainian hooker in the lift and launched himself upon me.

For the past few hours Jo and I have been luxuriating in the Turkish hammam and pool in our hotel,our first slice of luxury in a long time. As I got into the lift up to our room on the seventeenth floor, a lecherous-looking Turk scurried in after me. I was clad only in a white bath robe. When he said something to me, I replied, in Russian, that I was English and I didn’t understand what he had just said. Being Turkish, the same applied to my answer. He looked at me in an undesirable manner and then said ‘Sex?’, which I did understand. He lunged at me, kissing me on the cheek as I swerved his advance. I ducked several more advances as we sped up through the floors and then bolted for our room. Yuk. And he had bad breath.

Apart from that little episode, which in retrospect is quite funny, Odessa has been great. We left Bakhchysaray at 8 a.m. yesterday, having breakfasted under the fruit trees in our host Tanya’s garden, and headed north. We had 350 miles to cover in one day, so knew we were in for a long one.

Unsure of which road to take out of Bakhchysaray, we pulled over and asked a man waiting for a bus. Before we could object he’d hopped into the back of TT and offered to show us the way, which he did for the next 20 miles. Jo was driving, so I chatted to him in the back. He told me that his name was Emil, that he was a Tartar and that he had returned from Uzbekistan only the year before. Life is clearly not easy for him. He’s 36, is married, has a child and earns only £200 a month as a mechanic. Considering petrol costs 50p a litre here, that sort of salary doesn’t get you far. At Simferopol he hopped out and off we went. It’s funny that after three months of nobody except Jo, myself, Jo’s dad, my ma, Jack and Sam being in TT, we had four alien passengers in 24 hours, since everyone we stopped and asked for directions in the Crimea insisted on getting in to show us. Not to mention a man leaping out of his car at some traffic lights and kissing us both.

Believe it or not, the Ukrainians appear to love TT more than the Russians did. In the past few days she has been called a helicopter, an ant, a tractor and an apparition. When people ask where we are going and what we are doing, they all say two things—‘Klyass!’and ‘Malatyets!’—which mean ‘Class!’ and ‘Good girls!’ or something similar. They also press packets of cigarettes, fruit, vegetables and jams into our hands as gifts. What lovely people.

The drive here was uneventful, so I won’t dwell on it. At 7.30 p.m. we passed the sign announcing our arrival in Odessa. Unsure of where we were going, we tukked towards the centre, past docks, train lines and auto repair shops. Then suddenly we were in the centre, with the famous Potemkin Steps on our right and the towering Hotel Odessa on our left. Jo was instantly under the spell of the latter, a glitzy glass and steel affair occupying what must be the best piece of real estate in town. Although mentioned in the guide book we’d dismissed it as too expensive, but since we were tired and it looked big enough not to be full we opted to give it a try. Half an hour later TT was in her pyjamas in the hotel parking lot and a porter was unloading all our baggage. Yes, the price was far too much, but since we’ve been roughing it for a while we felt the sudden urge for white bathrobes, swimming pools and panoramic views. Thankfully, the hammam, pool, sauna and gym have made up for the fact that the room is identikit and motel-like and it’s basically a revolting rip-off, but that’s Odessa in the high season for you.

Jo and I had a late, luxurious breakfast this morning and then set off for a potter around the city. The guidebooks rave about the Potemkin Steps, the location of a famous scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). Not being an expert on black-and-white films I am afraid I have never heard of it, and for me the steps were just a hot climb that necessitated a cold drink at the top. However, Odessa is as beautiful as its lofty reputation states. Crumbling, neoclassical buildings line the streets and well-heeled Odessans sip coffee in Parisian-style cafés. It’s a shame we have only a single day here and that today, at 39 °C, it was a little too hot for extensive exploring.

Tonight we’re going to hit Arkadia Beach, which is ‘Ukraine’s Ibiza’, crammed with 24-hour clubs pumping out house, drum and bass, et al. No doubt we will feel underdressed, given the Ukrainian proclivity for very short skirts and very high heels. Unfortunately, I haven’t got my Guccis stashed away in the bottom of my rucksack, so Birkenstocks it’ll have to be.

Two more weeks to go till Brighton, and 13 weeks ago today we left England. It seems so long ago.

Kamaz, Kamaz, Kamaz, Kamaz, Kamaz…

What am I going on about? Well, yesterday on our 350-mile drive from Bakhchysaray to Odessa, we came across a queue of Kamaz—Russian mega-trucks—on the M24. I first spotted a line of about a half a mile of trucks snaking around a dirt track by the side of the road. As we drove along the road the line of trucks went on…and on…and on…for a total of about six miles. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It got to the point where we actually started to find it a bit freaky. We didn’t stop to say hi to them, but we waved at a few as we drove past in the opposite direction. I would have loved to know what they were doing in that queue. It must have contained nearly all of the Kamaz trucks in the whole of Ukraine. Ants and I feel that we are almost part of the trucker fraternity, as we have some appreciation of what it is like to drive long distances day in day out. In my early twenties I had considered being a trucker or cabbie, but now I don’t think I could deal with driving as a career.

Apart from the Kamazes, the drive yesterday was nothing interesting and we arrived in Odessa as the sun started to set. After six days using squat loos and outdoor showers, I was seduced by the glistening structure where we are now staying, the Hotel‘Ripoffski’Odessa. Ants and I both agreed that despite the identikit rooms, the price was worth it for the comfy beds, cleanliness, hot shower, swimming pool, buffet breakfast, gym and free parking. The frustrating thing about yesterday’s drive was that our darling TT has started pulling to the right again. Just when we thought she was sorted, the same problem rears its ugly head again. We both think she has raging PMT at the moment.

After checking in last night and settling into our room, Ants started to read all of the blurb about the hotel that you get in such establishments. She spotted that as we were staying in a ‘superior’ room, then we ought to have an adjoining room with a balcony. A quick call to reception resulted in housekeeping bringing us a key to get into this extra room. I was in the shower at the time and Ants popped her head around the door in hysterics. She had unlocked the door and walked in on a couple in bed together. She quickly retreated and relocked the door. We then planned all sorts of unpleasant tricks on our neighbours, a few of which I will mention: taking everything from their mini-bar, putting Boovie and Wirral (our snuggle blanket and pet squirrel, respectively) in their beds, climbing into bed with them in the middle of the night…I could go on, but I have told you only the more innocent pranks we hypothesised. I can tell you that, 24 hours on, we have not done anything to our neighbours.

Tuesday 22 August, Hotel Wien, Lviv, Ukraine

Into the setting sun

On first impressions, Lviv, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has got to be one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to, if not the most beautiful. Jo and I have just had a brief meander round its cobbled streets and crooked alleyways, past a cornucopia of renaissance, baroque, rococo and neoclassical buildings, but sadly we are both too exhausted to give the city justice and have had to put ourselves to bed for the afternoon instead. I know that sounds feeble, but the past two days have been a bit of an endurance test and with only 12 days to go until Touch Down we need to preserve our energy. If not, then Jo’s nightmares about collapsing with exhaustion on Brighton Pier will be in danger of becoming reality.

After posting our last blogs, we got our best glad rags on and hit the tiles in Odessa’s Arkadia Beach. Lauded as Ukraine’s answer to Ibiza, this pulsating strip of the Black Sea is a mass of bars, clubs, restaurants, buff boys and tottering girls. We’re used to the Russian and Ukrainian girls dressing to kill, but this was something else. The average girl that strutted past was dressed like a hooker and wearing so much make-up you’d have to dig it off with a spade to see what they actually looked like. Skirts were indistinguishable from belts, and heels were at least four inches high. If Jo and I had decided to go out in nothing but G-strings and six-inch gold heels no one would have batted an eyelid. The boys here must love it.

Having fortified ourselves with a vodka and watched open-mouthed at the human traffic parading past us, we bought our tickets for a club called Ibiza, getting there at 12.30 a.m., just as a Levi’s fashion show was kicking off and a troupe of anorexic models was parading down a catwalk. The club was even more glamorous than the Snow Project in Yekaterinburg—all open-air, with white troglodyte-style booths cascading down to the dance floor. Champagne-swilling mafia types were everywhere, surrounded by scantily dressed girls clutching Gucci and Chanel handbags. Labels, labels, labels.

The fashion show was followed by the dancers, an array of pornographically (un)dressed boys and girls who were high on a little more than life. Quite a spectacle and very, very different from the sort of clubs we’re used to in London, like Fabric and Turnmills. All a laugh though, and at 3 a.m. we crawled into bed not looking forward to our 250-mile schlep the next day.

Just as we were checking out the next morning (Sunday), two English men called Donal and Gavin came up and pressed $30 (£15) into our hands, saying we had to have a ‘beer on them on the way home’. We’d met them the day before in the lobby, and I had jokingly asked them whether they were in Odessa looking for wives, like every other older western man, but in fact they were Davis Cup organisers, the tournament this year being held at the Odessa Lawn Tennis Club. They were the first western people we have spoken to in seven weeks.

Jo and I have both been baffled by the reaction of the Ukrainian police to Ting Tong. We’d been warned that the police here could be even trickier than the Russian or Kazakh police—who turned out to be more nosey than tricksome—but so far we have been stopped only a handful of times. On most occasions, they look so flabbergasted as we drive past that by the time they’ve composed themselves enough to wave their baton and stop us it’s too late.

No doubt spurred on by Jo’s very short shorts and leopard-print bikini top, one group of bored cops did stop us on Sunday. They were interested not the least bit in our dokumenti but in taking pictures, sitting in Ting Tong and groping Jo’s boobs. We got a classic photo of one of the policemen sitting in the driver’s seat, grinning widely, his hand clasped firmly to Jo’s leopard-print breast. Jo and I have come to the conclusion that the average Russian or Ukrainian man has an overdose of testosterone pumping through his veins; they make English men seem incredibly tame in comparison.

Apart from the randy cop stop, our drive on Sunday was uneventful. We cruised up the main road to Kiev, turned west at Uman and set up camp in a wood about 200 miles from Odessa, both desperately in need of a good night’s sleep. But, as usual, sleep was not forthcoming in tent land and we awoke early the next morning feeling pretty jaded, but with over 250 miles to cover before Lviv. I’d also managed to pour a saucepan of boiling water over my hand the night before, which was agony. Thankfully, Nurse Jo and our Nomad medical kit saved the day and my hand is now swathed in special burn bandages. If that’s the worst injury we sustain on our trip, we’ll have done well.

Only 12 days now until we get back to Brighton, and so we’ve been busy sorting out the Touch Down plans. At the moment, we are going to land in Brighton at around 3.30 p.m. on 3 September and be finished officially by the mayor, Bob Carden. Fingers crossed, we’ll be granted special permission to end in Bartholomew’s Square, outside the mayoral office. Then it’s on to a bar for some tukking serious celebrations.

Poland tomorrow…then Prague at the weekend…followed by Cologne, Brussels and home. I can’t believe it’s getting so close.