Angren, Uzbekistan. I wake up on a big rug, no idea where I am. Jeff's asleep to my right, Steve to my left, and there's a small puddle of dried vomit next to my head. Oh yeah, that'll be the wedding. Are we still there?
Turns out we're not. We're at some bloke's house. His name is Ergash, he's 54. We got driven back last night. He doesn't speak any English, but that doesn't stop him being an awesome host. I point out my puke. He waves me a duntwurryboudit. But that rug really ties the room together.
When we're all up he takes us out past his chickens to the shitty squatter loo at the end of his garden. It's a beautiful spot (the garden, not the loo, which is vile), complete with grapes growing on vines, and a water well. Mountain water. It's lovely. Steve does his best to avoid puking on Ergash's vegetable patch, by filtering it through the fabric of his Finisterre top first. Then, when Alisher shows up, they take us to the river to bathe, eating peaches from his peach tree and taking in the stunning view of the surrounding mountains on the way.
We go back for breakfast, which soon turns into wedding party round two. Ergash is forcing port down us, and bread, and grapes, and fried eggs, and nuts, and tea, and meat. It's amazing. If a little too much for a hangover. They're so kind they can't see when it's hurting you. They've been blinded by hospitality, killing us with kindness.
Blokes keep turning up. Alisher teaches taikwando, and half his students are there, all massive. Then the groom arrives. He looks not unlike a Russian psychopath, and proves to be particularly non-bothered about hanging out with his new bride. And this is meant to be their day off. Tomorrow the party starts again officially. And then proabably goes on for weeks.
Again, they try to get us to stay. We have to press on. The goodbyes are long down in the garage. In a beautiful stroke of random genius, the groom presents us with a gift: a nodding dog called Peter. This for a team who, not a week ago, were mourning the loss of Doug, their duck-dog bonnet mascot, at the callous hands of a thieving little shit of an Azerbaijani shepherd. Now here comes Pete. Unbelievable. I am now able to call off my command to send in a few boys to carpet bomb the eastern half of Azerbaijan. Although I was looking forward to the sight of a naked little shepherd boy fleeing the carnage, wailing in utter terror as the remains of a mutant dog-duck melts into his manky little hand.
Sorry.
The gifts don't stop there. They also give us a hat each. Jeff is disappointed that his skull cap isn't funny enough. He's wrong. We return the favour, giving them St Austell Brewery t-shirts and beer towels, and dishing out pencils. It's ace seeing massive grown men excited to receive a pencil. There are more handshakes, huge bearhugs from Ergash. I'm genuinely touched by the hospitality. Amazing people.
Then we're back on the road, up into the mountains on winding roads, snow-capped peaks ahead of us. Armed soliders are everywhere. We see the fresh remains of two crashes in the first hour, ambulances on the scene. One guy is seen to by two nurses, sitting in the front of his car smashed into the central concrete barrier.
This place is nuts. It's fucking mental. A woman takes a cow for a walk up the street. We drive past a woman pushing a pram the wrong way up the Uzbek equivalent of the A30. People drive past talking to us all the time. Many of them are driving alongside us asking if we want to go for tea with them. It's ludicrous. Steve's starting to get pissed off with it - we've got somewhere to get to. 'Fuck off with your over-hospitability, you c**ts,' he says.
We're aiming for the Kyrgyzstan border, and make it in time. Just. Not helped at all by the complete lack of road signs. You're out in the countryside, the road suddenly turns into a T-junction and you've basically got to guess which way is right. In the end one of the crew who want us to drink tea helps us - we follow him round villages and back roads for miles, watching women in those long flowing dresses crouching in toil in the cotton fields as the sun casts long shadows from the fruit trees. Our guide demands a full tank of petrol for his troubles. Tosser.
The border's closing, but the guards let us through. This is always a massive pain. Or at least it has been. This time we're out of Uzbekistan in 20 minutes, and into Kyryzstan in about five. Oh man. That's amazing. Then just a short drive through the dark to find a hotel. We land at a guesthouse in a spartan Soviet concrete block, run by a tiny Russian Prunella Scales, and settle in for a chicken dinner and a well-earned beer. A new country, and one with ace mountains. Ideal.
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