The Punto-powered Kernow-Mongolia Minstrel Tour

All right?

2009-09-15T11:37:00.008+01:00

We three idiots jumped into our Punto on 18 July 2009 and joined the Mongol Rally, driving 9,000 miles from Cornwall to Mongolia to raise money for Cornwall Hospice Care.

Yeah, we weren't sure whether that was a good idea either.

We got way more than we could have hoped for: a Caspian ghost ship, a broke border crossing with no visas, an Uzbek wedding and countless attempts to get us to pay for sex. All designed to test our team philosophy:

Duntwurryboudit

You can read all about the trip in the archive to the right. There's an entry for each day, and all of them are way too long and detailed. We saw it mainly as a record for ourselves, but it may be handy if you're planning a similar trip. There's literally nothing of practical value in it, but it should make you smile.

You can make a brew and start at day one, or navigate around based on whatever catches your eye.

The result of it all: we managed to hit the ridiculous fundraising target of £5k (plus £1k for Mercy Corps in Mongolia). Which essentially shows that our mates are brilliant. Thanks.

Day 50: never any doubt

2009-09-05T11:23:00.000+01:00

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We've driven over 9,000 miles in the past seven weeks. By comparison, our final task doesn't sound quite so epic: crawling about 500m across Ulaanbaatar to the finish line. Woo-hoo. Still, that's harder than it sounds when you've got no idea where you're going, the electronics in your car are buggered, and you're sharing the road with a bunch of utter lunatics. It's even harder when the owner of the guesthouse buggers off with the key to the car-park so you can't get out. In other words, we're not counting it as a given till we've got that damn Punto across that damn finish line.

We're up early unloading all the shite from Mr Wazzboobleyoid in advance of the handover. It's a weird feeling. To be honest it's pretty ace to be able to ditch most of the stuff, as it's caked in two-months worth of general grime and a shitload of dust from a week in the desert. And Jeff peed on the back seat. But I've become used to life on the road, and thinking about giving away Mr W, who is essentially my first car (at age 32), it's a sad day.

I unload my drum kit into Guillermo's ambulance - he knows someone who runs a school project that would love to take it on. So it's all worthwhile - we lugged it all the way here on the roof, and I only played the fucker once, but at least now some kids are going to benefit. Who knows, it could inspire the next Phil Collins. Genghisis.

The drive to the finish doesn't feel anything like a cert. We're all a bit on edge as we meander our way lost round the city, trying to avoid collisions with these maniacs. Any fuck-up now would be unbelievably dumb. But after several laps of the place we manage to find a useful landmark and work out where we are.

We spot the sign for the finish line, and Steve drives us through a car park towards it. A bloke unchains a barrier, and we're in. It's all highly surreal. Loads of people are staring at the car. We get out. Now they're staring at us. 'Welcome to Mongolia,' says one guy. Thanks. We arrived a week ago.

We soon realise it's because we're about an hour away from one of the auctions, and these people are looking to be first to get their grubby hands on our merchandise.

Next up it's a beer, and chucking shampers around, taking a few photos. Then I fill out a couple of forms, hand over the keys and we're done.

Done. Stenalees to Ulaabaatar. 50 days. 9,101 miles.

We hear word that an auction has started inside, so we go in to get a taste of what awaits Mr W once we're gone. It's weird being in a roomful of Mongolian city-dwellers bidding for piece-of-shit cars that are totally unsuitable for use in their country. Especially ones that are covered in stickers and marker-pen scrawls. As Jeff points out, the roads are gridlocked. Who needs another city car? I wonder where everyone is going. The city is small enough to walk around, and there's bugger all beyond the city anyway.

Still they're snapping up the cars. We watch the Potters' Punto go for, I think, $999. I wonder how much they'll pay for an identical car with only one back seat. And one which is covered in wee...

Thanklettes

In true hip-hop album sleeve style, I'd like to give a few shout outs. We'd like to say thanks especially to Gabi and his family for befriending us back in Bulgaria and for staying in touch with the story all the way through. I'm sorry to report no Big Problems, not even the horrific sexual abuse you predicted for us in Turkmenistan. The idiots won...

I'd also like to thank Alisher and the guys from the wedding in Uzbekistan for the warmest welcome of the trip, and to remind anyone in a position to carpet-bomb rural Azerbaijan to do so, in a bid to eradicate the menace that is the little shepherd twat who stole Doug and our football.

Thanks also to Andy, Dan and Lamorna at the Adventurists for helping set up such a memorable trip. And for reading and enjoying the blogs. Finally I'd like to thank everyone who sponsored us - you easily passed the fundraising target for Mercy Corps, and are so close to the Cornwall Hospice Care total. Another cheap party should sort that out. It's all been a massive laugh. And finally again I'd like to thank everyone for reading this blog. I'm genuinely chuffed to know that people have been out there following the inane crap we've been getting into. We'll be tweaking the blog over the next few weeks, putting in the best pictures and more video clips once we have the luxury of a bit more time.

And I'm brewing up another trip for next year that will be designed to keep people entertained. So stay in touch for that.

A special final shout goes out to Greg in the Daihatsu, for a comment that really tickled me:

Greg meets a bloke on the road who keeps referring to the Lonely Planet as the 'Lonely P'.

'Please don't speak to me,' he says.

------

Well that about wraps her up. This blog has been brought to you by the letters S, S, and C, and the number 3. And the music of Talking Heads, Beck, the Raconteurs, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, System of a Down, Guerner, Cinematic Orchestra, Aphrodite's Child and two iPods'-worth of shuffle.

As a potentially over-informative aside, my challenge of avoiding self-pleasure for the duration of the trip proved too much. It was a close-run thing but, over the course of the seven weeks, wanks beat wet dreams 3-2.

We'll leave the last word to my big bro: 'Keep on truckin'...'

Thanks again for reading,

Stenalees Surf Club Mongol Rally Minstrel Division

Day 49: the end?

2009-09-04T11:17:00.000+01:00

The road to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Steve and a French guy are trying their best to wrap a bandage round a Mongolian's head to hold his skull together. The poor bloke has flown down a steep slope in his van and rolled it, hammering his head into the desert through smashing glass as the vehicle tipped. His moaning is rapidly becoming a gurgle. He's punctured at least one lung, which is clearly filling with blood. He has about 10 minutes to live.

Minutes before we'd come to the bottom of the track and seen the guy's van lying on its side, a massive sattelite dish and a load of wood overloading the roof that faced us, a crowd of Mongolians sitting around his body as it writhed in pain in the sand.

People are trying to move him - Steve tells them to stop, and asks the French guy if he has thought to try draining the bloke's lungs. 'Yes,' he says, 'but think about it - if we try it out here and he dies these people will kill us.' It's time for quick decisions. Steve has done everything he can to help him, and quickly opts to move us on urgently before the guy passes on and things turn hysterical. We leave as a medical team arrives, too late. Steve says it's one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make.

It's an otherworldly moment for the final day of our trip, and it really puts everything into perspective as we finally reach the fabled tarmac for the first time in this country. The mood in the car is sombre and philosophical. Jeff points out it's a good thing to be reminded of bad things in the world. 'I fucking hate people who are ignorant of everything,' he says.

Seconds later his point is brought home when we see another wreck by the side of the road, this one put on display by the government as a stark warning to motorists to watch their speed. Judging by the state of it, the owner clearly went the way of our friend back up the road. That hasn't stopped one rallyist slapping a Mongol Rally sticker on the door. Seeing that straight after our last encounter, the intended irreverance doesn't really cut it.

But what can you do? Soon the music's back on, and we're singing along in an effort to lighten our mood. Led Zeppelin. We all remark how unfortunate Stairway to Heaven sounds right now. But the road is good, the sun is blazing, and the scenery is back to its stunning best. The day passes with a particularly poignant beauty, as we watch men on horseback herding goats in the epic landscape.

We'd had a coffee and hacky-sack break earlier beneath one set of mountains; now we stop for lunch in another incredible spot, watching loads of huge birds circling overhead. As we're cooking up our pasta we notice an ambulance approaching. It's a rally vehicle. It pulls up, and out comes a beaming gregarious Argentinian called Guillermo.

He actually finished the rally a couple of weeks back - at least he hit Ulaanbaatar, he just never bothered crossing the line and handing his vehicle over. Instead he's been driving round the countryside alone, meeting locals and trying to find a worthy recipient for his ambulance and medical kit.

He leaves us to eat. By 4pm we're back on the road. The sign says 362km to Ulaanbaatar. We start getting excited. Less than 250 miles left of a 9,000-mile journey, and smooth tarmac to bring us on home.

I take the wheel for a couple of hours. As my last ever drive with Mr W, it's particularly beautiful. Then I ask Steve to take over as the light fades - our headlights are crap, and I trust his eye-sight more than mine. This turns out to be the jammiest move - within 20 yards of the swap, the tarmac suddenly disappears, and we're thrown onto the worst road we've seen since Semey in Kazakhstan, and possibly the worst road of the entire trip. What crushing timing. We're meant to be rolling in on smooth roads. As it is we're suddenly sent crunching cruelly through lethal potholes - in the dark. It's potential suicide.

Thankfully, through some unlikely gremlin of chance, we're reunited with Guilliermo moments before. He comes past us as we're swapping seats, as he gives the local chief of police a lift to Ulaanbaatar. Guillermo knows the road, and tells us to follow him and his undulating headlights through the maze. He's an absolute god-send. If Jack Kerouac met this man he'd describe him as a mad burning Argentinian saint. In an ambulance.

Heavy rock is essential at this point. The fury of System of a Down carries us through the night. We crunch into a few pot-holes. We're only a couple of hours from our destination. Can't let Mr W die now.

Guillermo's ambulance is crucial to this whole endeavour. Without his headlights we'd be struggling. Jeff realises this, so when he needs to use the loo he decides to do it in the back of the car in a bottle, so we don't lose our escort. It's not so easy over bumpy roads, especially when the bottle has a leaky neck. He's soon complaining that he's covered himself in his own wee. About 20 seconds later the ambulance pulls over. Steve and I get out to take a leak.

Then we see lights looming into view beneath us. Ulaanbaatar. This is properly exciting. At that moment, Cinematic Orchestra comes on the iPod, Fontella Bass belting out the word 'evolution!' It's all becoming a bit lyrical. We entered the country a week ago, thrust alone into a beautiful wilderness blazing trails of dust. Now we're on to smooth tarmac, rolling easily past choking power stations and crazy traffic. We've basically driven the course of the country's evolution. If that's what it is.

Guillermo's ambulance leads us on a merry dance round the city. Our indicators are fucked, so we have to signal by winding the window down and sticking an arm into the freezing night air. Junctions are madness, cars flying everywhere. He drops off his passenger, then tries to guide us to a guesthouse. We'll tackle the finish line tomorrow. After half an hour of wrong turns, he finds it - a place with secure parking and wi-fi. We've done it. We've arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

The host takes us up to our room. Fourteen hours on the road today, all we need is a shower, food and a decent kip. And to unleash our delirium. Turns out we're in a shared dorm. There are people everwhere asleep on bunk-beds. We have to talk in whispers. And there's only one shower which is constantly in use. Shit, we say - quietly.

Soon enough though we're all cleaned up and back out in the streets. It's 1am, and Guillermo is leading us on another merry dance to find food. The only place open is a Mongolian R&B club, complete with Mafia dudes and girls in short dresses bumping and grinding on the dancefloor. We pay the door charge, and wander in unkempt and boasting an enormity of beard, ridiculously paying the fee to occupy a VIP table. After seven days out in the desert, the mountains and the steppe, we tuck into pizza and chips. Evolution indeed. But we made it. And the beer tastes incredibly good.

Tomorrow, barring any crushing disasters, we'll cross the finish line.

Day 48: masters of our domain

2009-09-03T11:14:00.000+01:00

From Altai to Bayan Khongor, Mongolia. Like a true pro I'm checking our instruments - we've gone 10 miles in three hours. Now I'm no Clarkson, but that is rubbish. Today we finally have to break out of the convoy. We're all for hanging out in a crew, especially as everyone's a really good laugh, but we've clearly got different aims. And we start to go a bit mental if we don't feel like we're moving.

Lunch illustrates the problem perfectly - we roll into a roadside ger in the middle of nowhere, and the woman offers us meat and noodles, which she has to make entirely from scratch. It takes an hour and a half before we're done. No-one's bothered at all, which is fair enough. But Steve spends the whole time out in the car. Different aims.

The ger woman is also cooking up tea - in a huge wok-thing cooking on a ferocious flaming cow-shit stove. I want to adopt this system for making a brew at home:

'I'll just pop the kettle on.' WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF!

Her job done, she sits down on a stool next to us and starts breast-feeding. Waitresses tend not to do that in restaurants at home. I'm tempted to profer my tea-cup but I realise, as gags go, that would be desperately immature. Plus she may well oblige, which would be weird.

It's a hell of a lunch spot (and that's not a reference to the breast-feeding) so it's a shame we've soiled it slightly by being angsty about moving. Especially as everyone else is just having a laugh and going at their own pace. But things get worse after lunch with a river crossing that takes ages, and pre-empts another bout of hanging around. We sit in the Punto sulking.

All of this is made worse by today's weather. After two months of largely glorious sunshine, we've hit a day of cold dank grey, with a howling wind whipping sand into our faces. It's rough. Not the kind of conditions for hanging about in. Better to be on the move watching from inside a warm Boobleyoid.

Pretty soon we are away again - the roads have turned from perilous hard corrugations to sand tracks, which is a good laugh to slide about in, and not deep enough for us to get stuck. So we can finally get some pace up. We're following the jeep, which pulls to one side to wait for the others and waves us on ahead saying they'll catch up. Which is highly likely, as I'm driving.

So it's a surprise to find an hour or so later that we're still out on our own. We figure they must have got caught up helping one of the other teams, but see it as a chance to recover our own feel to the trip so instead of hanging about we press on. The plan was always to drive 80km to the next town and camp just outside, so we figure they can catch us up.

We've got no map, and haven't worked out how to get M Waller's GPS thing going, so now we're out on our own for the first time in ages, in the middle of nowhere, which makes everything feel more vital again. We've got the tunes on loud, and our mood brightens, mainly at once again being in control of our own destiny.

After a few hours, just as it's getting dark, we see the town of Bayan Khongor lying nestled at the foot of the mountains ahead of us. That'll do for a camping spot - absolutely stunning. We leave the car in a prominent place on the hill and camp next to it, so if the others catch up they can see it.

Our 'calculations' put us about 100 miles from the start of the tarmac road which is supposed to lead us all the way into Ulaanbaatar, a further 250 miles down. With an early start tomorrow, and the freedom to move and stop as we please, we realise there's no reason why we can't pull that off in one day. Especially if the road is as good as people say.

All being well this will be our last camp of the trip. Which is ideal, as it's fucking freezing.

Day 47: plight of the navigators

2009-09-02T11:12:00.000+01:00

Approaching Altay, Mongolia. People tend to love driving off-road. I like the idea of it, but I can't help feeling that giving me the keys to the car here is a little like Hugh Heffner handing control of the Playboy mansion to a eunoch and going: 'seriously chief, do absolutely anything you want'. It's a nice idea, he replies, but I'm going to need a lot of help. And a Haynes manual.

But after Jeff's willful destruction of our rear-end in last night's frenzied heavy-rock-and-Jelly-Baby rush, it seems I've gone up one place up the driving pecking order. I guess the logic is that the worst that can happen at the pace I move is that the engine nods off out of sheer boredom. But like Jeff, I too draw inspiration from the desert rock gods.

We drive on. The boys in the Suzuki Jimney score the ultimate prize - soon they're strapping a skull with horns to the front grill of their jeep. It's a good look, especially as they've also simulated a pair of bollocks hanging out of the back. Viewed side-on the car takes on the appearance of the complete beast. It's incredibly painful following on behind and watching its dangling jewels taking bad whacks on desert rocks.

We've got about 1,000km to go till we reach Ulaanbaatar. We're averaging around 20 miles an hour. That's not good. We're still trying to get there in three days, and the Skoda is still having problems. Again, there's a lot of waiting. And faffing.

Soon enough though we arrive at Altay, and our second visit to a rally graveyard. This time the idea is to find someone to fix our rear suspension. A chain-smoking mechanic beckons Steve to drive Mr W in over the car pit so he can take a look. I feel bad for the car. She must feel like C-3PO when he wandered into the Jawa's transporter and saw all the broken droids screaming as the weird little dudes went to work on their feet with the welder.

But there's a stroke of luck: sitting among the car corpses there's another Fiat Punto. It's blue too. In fact it looks worryingly like Mr W. The only difference is that its rear springs are intact. So there's no reason why we can't just pull the springs out the back and swap them - at least then we'd be in the same position as we were when we left England, on springs that are short and stocky and designed to take the weight of our car.

I say there's no reason not to swap them, but that doesn't account for the logic of Mongolian mechanics. Ours is a bit of a character, an old dude in red overalls who stinks of booze. But he seems intent on denying us our plan to pilfer the springs. Instead he's trying to get us to buy brand new ones - ones which look worryingly like the soft and useless Audi springs we had back in Kazakhstan - so he can cream a few quid out of the sale.

We indulge him, figuring he knows what he's doing. And it all looks great. The back end looks amazing. Until they let the car off the jack and the back slowly sinks down about half-way over the rear wheels. It's laughable. Still they seem convinced they've done a decent job, and ask Steve to take her for a test-drive. The underside takes an almighty scrape just trying to get out the garage. That doesn't stop the mechanics getting arsey with us for being awkward.

It's a huge pain - we know what we want but we share no language, so it takes a couple of hours to convince them we're right. It's a big ball-ache, and another lesson in that quality which the rally has taught us so much about: patience. Much of the conversation takes place rubbing fingers through the dust on the Punto's back window, trying to convince the bloke it's just the springs that need doing, not the whole shock system.

After a long protracted process involving the rally organisers' Mongolian representative, we finally convince the bloke to pull and fit the springs from the dead Punto. It works fine - and could have saved us two hours. So right now we owe a debt to the Plight of the Navigators, the owners of that poor Punto, for unknowingly helping us back on the road and towards our twisted destiny.

Jeff is chatting to the mechanic about our route. The bloke uses mime to convey the idea that the last section we drove was the really shit part. The worst is behind us. But he's still warning us to be careful. He does this by chucking a stone on the ground in front of him, pretending to approach it in a car, and then grabbing Jeff by the testicles. Then he repeats it, instead moving his imaginary motor around the rock, and not grabbing anyone by the testicles. He seems to be saying that, if you're a careful driver, you won't have to suffer weird drunken mechanics grabbing you by the testicles.

It's all been a bit of a pain in the arse. Working stuff like this out in a foreign language is rubbish. But by the end we're all friends. We manage to chop a few quid off the price by chucking in one of our jerry cans. The mechanic ends up hugging it like a drunk suffocating a baby.

We celebrate our success with a bowl of dumplings in the cafe next door, and then set off. Not before the Mong Way Round boys manage to pick up a hitch-hiker and shove him into their tiny weird car. He's a Swiss guy who's ambling around the country and decides for a laugh to go back to Ulaanbaatar with them, having just left the city a day or so ago.

We can't go far before setting up camp again. And yes, it is another beautiful spot. The only troubles are the wind and the cold. We steel ourselves by dancing to Aphex Twin under the stars, and then turning in. We really have to get some miles behind us tomorrow...

Day 46: onward Mongol soldiers

2009-09-01T10:39:00.000+01:00

The road from Khovd to Altay, Mongolia. Having woken up early, with the sun coming up over the mountains, I grab the shovel and the loo roll and head off into the brightness to take a shit under a telegraph pole. Yes, I am a man.

There's something hearty and primal about the faecal act when one is out in the mountains. Especially when you come to bury it afterwards. It's like you're finally giving something back. 'Hello world. I love you. And I made you this.'

The idea was to be up and off by 8am - it'd be good to see what sort of mileage we're capable of on these roads when we're not waiting around most of the day for people to patch up their motors or purchase super-noodles. We're due to face our route's most infamous stretch of road today. It's a known car-killer. We're not sure why exactly, but we've been told to fear the worst for 200km.

But that's all a while away. Once again we have to sit around most of the morning waiting for the Skoda team to patch up their motor. Their gearbox needs tweaking so they can hobble on into the next town. So we eat a supernoodle breakfast and drink coffee, and then Jeff wanders off with the shepherd's staff he found yesterday, telling us to pick him up on our way past. We're now due out of here at 10am.

We kick our heels longer - more coffee, a few keep-ups and a bit of reading. While Jeff is away, Steve and I replace him on the team with a recently-filled bin-bag. He instantly fits right in. We decide he's hilarious. It's a shame in a way, as I quite liked Jeff.

We finally get back on the move at 11.30, which means Jeff has been wandering alone in the wilderness for about two hours. I seem to remember Jesus doing a similar thing. We find him about three miles down the track, a wild look in his eye and a camel's skull jammed onto the end of his staff.

A little while longer and he'd have had a massive beard, a load of followers and a B-tech in carpentry. As it is he's spent his time in the wilderness honing his woeful lack of knowledge of lizards:

It feels great to be back on the road. Movement is special. The music's on and the scenery is, once again, breathtaking. If wild. At one point we pass five eagles sitting on adjacent telegraph poles. While Steve drives, it's my job to scan the road for skulls. The holy grail is to find one with two horns intact. Instead I find a cow carcass. We decide against gaffer-taping it to the side of the Punto.

The sun's out. Again. In fact we're gradually dropping down out of the mountains and it's getting notably hotter.

We pull into a town for supplies. Fuck me. It's like a Wild West frontier town. Leather-faced dudes ride the streets on horse-back. Old men hang out on front steps, surrounded by Chinese motorbikes. One guy comes past and whips the front of our car. Everyone's drunk. I go into a shop to get water, and when I come out Jeff and Steve are urging me back into the car sharpish. Apparently Jeff had started giving out badges, which quickly turned into a scrum. People were getting aggro. Better to be back on the road with our convoy, our tunes and our packet of Haribo.

We begin to see why this road is known as a car-killer. The main tracks are largely made up of long stretches of corrugations - long series of small parrallel bumps that you have to hit at a fair lick in order to get anything approaching a smooth ride. This extra speed only leaves you open to hitting big rocks. It's also incredibly slidey. The best bits are when there's a generaous coasting of gravel, which Mr W is happy to surf around in. Much of the drive is spent hopping from trail to adjacent trail, trying to avoid the corrugated sections.

It's not actually as bad as we'd expected. But it is bad. We develop a golden rule: go steady. If you drive at a suitable pace, you're almost certain to make it, as you can see stuff early enough. Simple. The other teams in the convoy may seem plagued with bad luck - one team's had nine blow-outs so far, the other a punctured gear box and a problematic sump guard - but they're also going for it, speed-wise. Maybe we're just older and wiser, but we'd rather make it to the end than have to bow out because of overdoing it.

Which is how we do it all day. Until the evening, when Jeff's driving. The combination of the heavy rock of System of a Down and the sugar rush from our packet of congealed Jelly Babies puts him into a frenzied state. Suddenly we're in a race with one of the Mong Way Round cars, one that's been hooning it the whole time, bouncing round bends, sliding about and generally caning it.

Jeff's having the time of his life. Steve wakes up with his head hitting the ceiling. We stop to let others catch up. Steve gets out and inspects the back of the car. It's fucked. The weld on the springs has bent, pushing the whole lot against our brake pipes. Anger descends, and he gives Jeff a despairing assessment: 'You razzed it as hard as possible, on the worst section of road in the entire country.'

The mood isn't exactly bright as we hobble on to our camp. So nearly there - we'd almost nailed the worst road in the place. Now we're back to square one. Tomorrow we have to make it the 130km to Altay, and get our back end fixed again. The only option: set up camp and drink more vodka...

Day 45: the ghosts of rally future

2009-08-31T10:36:00.000+01:00

Khovd, Mongolia. We're at the Mongol Rally graveyard, a garage full of wrecks of rally vehicles that died in the country and could only make it this far on a tow-rope. It's an eery sight.

There's only so many blown tyres and wrecked windscreens you can look at before you start thinking there's no chance your little Punto will ever make it. Thankfully Mr W is parked outside and doesn't have to see this.

One car advertises its sponsor, a motor parts supplier, as 'one of the cheapest in the UK'. Seeing their dead motor here, that's not a great advert. We're here to try and score a spare tyre. Trouble is, as we've already noticed, no-one round here drives Puntos, and tyres are particular beasts. But Jeff and Steve go off to a mad market full of watermelons and animal skins and manage to find a wheel that's both the right size and has the right bolt spacing on it.

So we leave safe in the knowledge we've got a fine rear end and a couple of proper spares. Which is handy - the road from Khovd to the next town is an infamous 200km car-killer.

We woke up that morning at the ger camp, refreshed from a decent night's sleep and a shower powered by a particularly shit generator. Much faffing ensues, with the convoy taking practically all day to get almost nothing done. The only achievements are Steve having around $20 nicked from his wallet, and Robbie, one of the blokes from the Mong Way Round team, being relieved of $100. Thieving shits.

There's also chance for Greg to discover he's snapped a rear spring in his Daihatsu. Luckily we've still got the Audi springs that were too crap to take Mr W's weight and had to be replaced. They do the ridiculous and stick one onto his wagon as a temporary measure. It seems to work.

Paul continues his run of fine cow-shit chefery by cooking a ridiculous breakfast of omelette and beans. It's a sad day for us, as we have to say our farewells and god-speeds to Greg and Karmel and the German boys. They're up for making their way to the finish line incredibly slowly, heading off into the countryside to check out more lakes. It's a shame, as they're ace people and we've had a cracking time together, arse-fat and all. If you're reading this, chaps, remember the door is always open in Cornwall.

After way way more faffing, we finally get on the road at about 6pm. We're starting to get a bit frustrated with all this. It's clearly just a product of moving in a large group, but coming as it does right near the end of the trip we'd much rather be moving - at whatever pace - than sitting around waiting for other people to sort their shit out. You never saw Rubber Ducky parked in a lay-by waiting half an hour for the other truck drivers to buy crisps. But it's a convoy and that's what you do. You don't want to be the bell-ends that cane off ahead only to break down and need people's help four miles down the road.

We drive past some guys in a Mongolian van, who gesture at us to stop. One guy comes over wearing camouflage gear and stinking of booze. 'What is your name?!' he shouts. 'How old are you?!' Turns out he's a Mongolian throat singer. He treats us to a little burn...

When we do finally get on the road there are problems straight away. Mong Way Round's Skoda punctures its gearbox when we're out in the middle of nowhere. As usual I get stuck right into the engine work:

Light is fading, so this dictates where we camp - next to the Skoda. It's not like there's a road you can camp next to - there's just a series of trails. We just need to set up somewhere in between them, and hope no-one decides to forge their own new path right through us in the middle of the night.

We sit around drinking vodka. Stunning place. Blah blah blah. Tomorrow, however, we have to face our futures - on that car-killing road...

Day 44: tears of a marmot

2009-08-30T10:33:00.000+01:00

Somewhere between Olgiy and Khovd, Mongolia. Mongolians tend to be very curious and hands-on. Take the woman who joins us at our campsite in the morning. She's intrigued by an aerosol lying next to an empty vodka bottle, and sprays it into her own face from about 12 inches. It's a stimulating insight into the effects of pepper spray.

She's there for about an hour pouring water into her streaming eyes until Paul, the purveyor of said spray, emerges from his ambulance and points out that water only makes it worse. What she needs is milk. Something like this was bound to happen eventually - the people here do like to rummage. They've got their hands all over everything, asking if they can have it. Greg compares it to a jumble sale. 'You can't take that,' he says to one woman. 'My pants, my beans, I need those.'

We have a couple of women into our tent. They're lovely, but they're also very grabby. At the end of their little visit we've given away our jam, our bread, our penultimate packet of wet-wipes and one of our wind-up torches. Jeff then goes and breaks the other one.

At risk of sounding like a repetitive and irriating tit, the morning is beautiful once again. It's soiled only by the system people have developed for crapping in the wild flat landscape - drive your car off a few hundred metres, then dig a pit behind it and squat. Jeff takes Mr W off for a spin, and comes back beaming at having produced 'a foot-long', next to a mound with the body of a dead dog on top commemorating his efforts.

Before this trip I don't think I'd ever seen a dead dog. Now I've seen hundreds. I've also seen a dead horse. Paul makes a proud proclamation: 'I tea-bagged a marmot.' And then he mimes it. Pretty soon he's talking about going fishing, and doing even more disgusting things to a trout. Not sure why I'm telling you this, but it struck me as funny. I am falling in love with these Germans.

We drive off, again down incredibly bumpy roads, past vast lakes, yaks and more snow-capped peaks, covering ourselves in dust. Crank up the fans and you get a thick puff of choking white mist to the face. I point out there's a lot of traffic, given the fact we're off on this mental dirt track. 'This is the main road,' says Steve. 'It's the M5.'

This main road apruptly ends when we hit a river. There's no bridge or anything, you just have to pick a spot that's not too deep and hammer it across, hoping you don't get stuck.

There's much tense milling about and smoking of cigarettes as the Suzuki 4x4 blazes its way through as a depth test, following the route suggested by a local bloke on a motorbike. Greg wangs it through in his Daihatsu.

The water comes a fair way up the wheels, but it's our best hope. It's soon Steve's turn. Of course Mr W takes it in her stride.

Never in doubt. We finally wind up at Khovd, and drive past a sign advertising the 'Mongol Rally camp'. They've clearly spotted a cash cow. It's an opportunity for us to spend a night in a ger. Before that, Paul invites us to dinner, cooking up an amazing dinner of goat in a massive pan fuelled by cow shit. As a meal it'd be amazing even if we hadn't been living almost exclusively off army rations and biscuits.

It's another fine night of vodka and chat, before we experience the quiet warmth of a night in the ger. It's also incredibly dark in there - I wake up in the middle of the night, so confused in the pitch black that I can't work out where I am. In my semi-conscious state, I even call out to my comrades, to check that everything is as it should be. Cue a panicked cry of: 'Dudes?!' We laugh about that in the morning.

Day 43: pimp my Boobleyoid

2009-08-29T20:29:00.000+01:00

Olgiy, Mongolia. Mr Boobs has had an uplift. The transformation is mesmerising: the car's rear end is now pert, and she moves with fresh vigour and confidence. Mongol heads will turn once this hot bitch hits the desert.

This is all done at a garage in the back alleys opposite our hotel, in spitting distance of horrid old apartment blocks and a cow moping in the street munching on a pile of rubbish. Giant buzzards soar about over the town. Steve manages to find a mechanic who has a sturdy old spring that's just long enough to cut in half to make two for our back end. Oo-er. His welding involves wheeling out the most lethal-looking home-made electrical contraption you could possibly imagine. It looks like a post-apocalpytic electro-octopus. Pretty soon the guy's half-way to blowing himself up by trying to weld his way through his own cables.

There's much hanging around today. A couple of other cars from our convoy need work, so it takes pretty much all afternoon to get everyone wheeled in and patched up. Then there's shopping to do. And fannying about. That's the trouble with convoys: you get the camaraderie and the support, but you also have to suffer a huge faff. The on-going delay is just enough time for someone to go into the hotel's 'safe' room, next to the reception desk, and whip $300 and Jeff's mobile from our bags. It's not a good first taste of Mongolia. It's weird - we've driven half-way round the world and had no problems anywhere, apart from the car getting keyed outside a gig in Cornwall, when raising money for a local hospice, and getting money nicked from Mongolia, when we're raising money for Mongolia. Big hairy balls.

There is a big upside to convoys too of course. You're with nice people. And these people are more than happy to sort you out with some moolah to make up for the stuff that's just gone wandering. Both the Mong Way Round boys and Greg and Karmel happily fronted up some cash to help us out with the car repairs and paying for food, which we buy at the 'bar-karaoke-pub-restaurant'. Which for me rivals Old Street's fast-food joint FCKF (Fried-chicken-kebab-fish) for deft beauty of moniker.

Eventually we're all ready to leave. A proper Cannonball Run scene as four cars, two jeeps and an ambulance weave their way round the town, trying to find someone to dish us out some fuel.

By the time we're all ready to go there's barely any time to get anywhere. This is the pattern for the next few days. We're aiming for a massive lake about 70km away. But it's blatantly not going to happen, so we end up finding a smaller lake nearer and setting up camp there.

It's the most ridiculously picturesque camp of my life. There are a couple of traditional gers (round white nomadic tent things) off to our right - the women who live there come over with their kids for a couple of vodkas, as they sit round the fire. We shit outside, like wild men.

It's another great night, sitting round the fire talking shit.

Can't remember anything else. Tired. Sorry, this is the lamest blog update so far. Bollocks.

SMS update 19

2009-08-29T17:47:00.000+01:00

Left at 29th August 2009 at 09:47

Recieved by SMS (Location: Olgy - Mongolia)

mr wazz has been pimped by some local dudes and is now enjoying a higher ride. On the bum side some dick has nicked all our dollars from the hotel secure room? but our new convoy buddies have sorted us out. So dunt worry bout it-All good really!

Day 42: into the wild

2009-08-28T10:27:00.001+01:00

The middle of nowhere, Mongolia. The three of us sit looking at the three flat dust trails fanning out in front of us. One goes straight ahead, one bends to the left, the other splits off to the right. In navigating terms that's about as useful as being out to sea and someone saying 'hang a right at the wet patch'.

We're just staring at mountains ringing a load of sand.

Pass.

I want you now to go back and erase from your mind any cases in previous blogs where I've used the words 'mental' and 'weird'. As I feared, I really did shoot my bolt too soon there. This is where the trip truly cranks itself up to 11.

Escape from Mongatraz

We woke up among the detritus of vodka and flame, next to the Germans' ambulance, with the sun rising over the hills. The night seemed toasty at the time, but my body temperature has dropped right off. I've got the chills. Which isn't surprising given that even everyone who slept in cars is complaining of shivering all night. Greg tells me he was whimpering the whole time like a small child.

Despite the discomfort we're right back in the game, buoyed by thoughts of being back on the road before the morning's out. A groundhog lemming thing sniffs around at our pans. The big birds are still circling. We even spot a few choughs. 'This is rapidly turning into one of our best stops,' says Jeff. 'Ace nature, ace laughs.' We spot our first yak herd wandering past. 'Yak on,' says Jeff. We celebrate with more coffee and beautifully inept hacky-sack.

But the morning passes and we're still here. We get little Boldbaatr to demonstrate his prowess at Mongolian wrestling. After the Kazakh talc fight, it's the perfect chance for Jeff to reclaim some of his flagging self-respect - by wrestling a child.

The weather turns crap - blowy and wet. And we get tired and shitty again. If we're not out today I'm going to pound Andy's face in. Hi Andy. Steve creates a makeshift shelter out of a sheet of tarpaulin and the Mr Wazzboobleyoid's left flank. We sit under it and eat. Time passes, nothing happens. This is rubbish.

Soon there's more action at the entry gate - a few more cars of rallyers has arrived. We say our hellos, then all end up camped in the customs office waiting for some information. Any information. Please. It's not overly forthcoming. But towards the end of the day we hear word that our man on the other end of the phone has been given the green light - the money has been sorted and they'll be letting us out today.

And so, at 6.30pm, after 31 hours at Mongolian customs, we're finally free. Unleashed upon the world again, we're now part of our first convoy of the trip - five car-loads of idiots weaving their way out through the village onto bumpy dirt roads and into the void. We're away. Finally.

Within two minutes the Fiesta in front has caught fire. What is this? One of the team, Sam, is leaping about, chucking stuff out of the boot, with everyone rushing around her to coat the contents with the foam from fire extinguishers. They had a battery sitting in the back connected to a load of inept wiring and it blew up.

Much faffing ensues, and after two days in customs we're wired and short-tempered and in no mood to remain still, so we plough ahead. Spat out of purgatory and off into the unknown. It's amazing. We're now in proper rally territory - loud rock blaring out as the Punto wheels spit up clouds of dust in our wake. We navigate by the sun and compass. Steve's driving. Our track has just split in two, each curving off into an uncertain distance. He shrugs his shoulders. Jeff points his hand to the right. 'That's south.' We go right.

A jeep comes bombing past looking decidedly local and in the know. We follow him for a bit.

Later on we take what appears to be the road, but Steve spots a problem up ahead. 'There's a gate,' he says. 'This isn't the road.' Sure enough there's a barely discernable trail curving away to our right, under the telegraph poles. Here's one tip for desert driving - if you're not sure which road to take, stay close to the poles, as they're bound to lead to the next town.

Luckily we're taking it very easy, and the others soon catch us up, which is ideal. We've enjoyed being fairly independent of the rally so far - the whole thing has wound up being a road-trip for the three of us - but we quickly appreciate that out here we're so much better off as part of a crew. The convoy gets a big 10-4.

The Aussies in the Jimney 4x4 cane ahead, led by their GPS, with the rest of us in tow. It's a crazy scene - the sun setting behind us, cars veering off all over the place, picking trails, overtaking each other, hopping off of one trail across stoney scrub land to join another. Out the window to the right, a zebra-coloured Skoda bounces along past us in a cloud of sand. To the left it's a battered blue Fiesta. It's like Mad Max has downsized to a more fuel-efficient model.

We roll past a load of yaks grazing next to a lake. They're big-shouldered horny hairy bastards. Soon we stop to regroup, which quickly turns into a chance to throw some shapes in the desert. The yaks watch me and Jeff get funky.

Our first taste of the potentially sketchy comes when the trail leads us up a steep hill. Round here they don't believe in gently winding around mountains - the road goes straight up. Mr W is in first gear giving it everything she's got. It's nearly not enough, but she makes it. Just. Like a Scottish gym teacher panting his way up the Gladiators travelator.

The reward is to look back on one of the most stunning views we've ever experienced. Jeff has a moment. Me too - it's my second nature-based well-up of the trip, after Kyrgyzstan. The feeling is one of triumph mixed with privilege. We're lucky to be here. The mood is altered when Greg pulls up, with Stenalees Surf Club's rendition of Magic Number booming out of his jeep. I gave him the CD earlier. This is ace. We formed the band for the trip, now I'm standing in Mongolia as a new mate cranks our sound out across the desert.

The only downer is that finding the chance to write is becoming increasingly tricky. The perfect writing time used to be in the back of the car as we drove, or in a hotel of an evening once we've turned in. But now we're rolling in a convoy, there's vodka to be drunk, and the roads are so bumpy that a simple sentence can all too easifsds;5ly; tuasdhkrn isnto sthissasgh ksaind oasf shit. If I try to sneak off for a cheeky half-hour in a car, someone comes over to ask what I'm up to. Even now, it's 7.15am in the middle of the desert, I've just taken a crap next to a telegraph pole, silhouetted by the rising sun, and every other fucker just got up as I started writing this. And they're making me coffee. The selfish bastards.

The convoy crawls into town under the cover of night, guided in by a Mongolian man on a chopper with a fuel tank painted up like the Stars and Stripes. We end up at a hotel which charges $20 a piece, for a shitty room with no shower. We take over an entire floor, with everyone arranging to meet in each others' rooms for booze. It's ace, if a bit too much like university halls for someone in their thirties to be totally at ease with.

We wile the night away with the Germans and Greg and Karmel, on the vodka. It's a great night, mellow, talking. Martin makes the point that if you got 15 people together to compile their stories from the rally, you'd have an almighty collection. Then they show everyone the photos of the arse-fat they were fed in Kyrgyzstan. I hadn't expected it to be actually anus-shaped.

Day 41: purgatory

2009-08-27T10:24:00.000+01:00

The Russia-Mongolia border. Customs. 'You don't sound too wound up about the whole thing, so that's good.' Andy, one of the rally organisers, is on the phone, referring to our reaction at being held by customs until we pay $,2000 tax to bring the car into the country.

Indeed, we are quite mellow now, because Andy and the Adventurists were straight on the case to sort it out. Go team. But 20 minutes ago I had them being buried neck-deep in the Gobi desert, giant marmots gnawing raw meat from their twisted faces, as I poked at their eyes with our lucky wolf's claw.

'Loving the blog,' says Andy.

The day started bright enough. We wake up with the rising sun, to discover that the Russian border, our home for the night, is in the middle of yet more beautiful hills, with more snow-capped mountains in the distance. Birds of prey are circling above our heads. We eat super-noodles and drink coffee, propelled by the caffeine into a laughable game of hacky-sack. There's an ace toilet. All is good.

Soon a load of Russians and Mongolians show up to queue for the border too. We've foolishly left a car's length between us and the one in front, and watch incredulous as a bloke performs a protracted 15-point turn to wedge his 4x4 into the tiny space. Utterly pointless. Foreigners, eh.

It soon opens and we're through in a couple of hours. It's relatively painless, and we're just excited to be getting on to Mongolia. We drive out into what seems like no-man's land - things turn barren immediately, and we drive 20km seeing only the occasional truck. Where's the entry border? We pass a final checkpoint signalling the end of Russia, whereupon we get an immediate taste of our new home - the road goes from being a smooth strip of tarmac one side of the gate, to a shitty bumpy car-pummelling dirt track on the other.

This bumps along for 7km, before we pull up to the entry border. We're queuing behind a few Russian trucks. 'Welcome to Mongolia!' says a cheery soldier. Very mellow. He takes me to sort out some car documents. 'Change money?' That doesn't normally happen. As usual we've no idea what the exchange rate's supposed to be, so I take his offer of 1,000 tugrug to $1.

Inside a shed there's a bloke watching TV on a black-and-white set so shit he'd get more entertainment out of watching a microwave. 'One dollar,' he says. What for? 'Vehicle decontamination.' This involves driving through a small pool of filthy stagnant water - which seems more like vehicle recontamination. Steve asks whether they offer a full valet service. By now it's not the outside of this car that's carrying the virulent disease.

I give him a dollar. He tells me to drive round the decontamination tank. I like his style. I wonder how much I owe him for not giving me a cheeky hand-job. 'Change money?' This is weird. We'll need more than $100-worth, so I take his offer of 1,100 tugrug to $1.

Our passports are stamped immediately. 'Welcome to Mongolia' says the girl behind the desk. This could be the easiest border crossing ever. It's all pretty mellow: there's a few kids hanging around the office, one of whom seems to be the handler for the sniffer dog. It's a new approach to 'bring your spawn to the office' day.

We do our vehicle document bit, and get asked to sit down on a row of plastic seats by the wall. So we do. We wait. And we wait. And we wait. A little man in a suit beckons us into his office. 'Change money?' We've got plenty of money now, so we turn down his offer of 1,200 tugrug to $1.

We wait. And then they close for lunch.

It's all fairly mellow round here, so we decide to wander out of the compound to get some grub. The guard at the gate asks us where we're going. To the kafe. Ok. Brilliant.

The town isn't so much a town as a settlement. Nothing but a handful of concrete bungalows dotted about, with the odd white wall covered in spray-painted words like 'shop' and 'kafe'. A guy shows us into a building. It's basically someone's kitchen, full of women and raw meat. If only sex were on sale too it'd be ideal. It actually looks like someone's house. The weirdest thing is that the girl from the passport desk is in here, sitting at the table next to her mum.

They show us to the other room, which is full of beds and a table. There's no choice or anything, they just bring us bowls of dumplings. An old woman comes over and asks if we want chi. Yes please. Then she goes over to a bucket full of milk and asks if we want it. We don't want it. She ladels it into the chi. Oh. 'Mama,' she says.

We eat loads of dumplings, and then go to pay. Comes out at $18. Jesus Christ. These Mongolians know how to screw people. At least people who they know are stuck at customs.

Back at the office, I ask a dodgy-looking bloke what's going on. This is where he drops the bombshell about the $2k tax. We don't share enough common language to discuss it. All I know is it's not true. One girl here speaks a little English. She tells me we have to pay, and to call the rally people. 'Wait in the car please,' she says. There's little in that request to suggest the wait will be another 24 hours.

This is the point at which my mind starts to fill with the image of kidnapping a load of clever young entrepreneurs, burying them up to their necks in sand and unleashing ferocious beasts upon their features. Nice marmot. Then we have a nap, and I wake up feeling a bit better. I recall the logic of the trip - to trust stuff and watch it resolve itself. I look at Pete, the nodding dog, and notice his head is nodding, ever-so-slightly, even though the car isn't moving. I decide to call the Adventurists instead of killing them. I speak to Lamorna, who immediately tells me to ring someone who'll sort everything out. Ideal.

I call and a dude called Aruka says he can sort it. Minutes later Andy's on the phone, reassuring us that they're on the case and that they'll have us through tomorrow morning at the latest. We'd expected it to take a while, so this is all no biggie.

We're not moving, so Steve takes the opportunity to tinker more with the rear suspension, taking the springs out again to repack them, filling them with bits of hardboard. A Mongolian kid shows up and watches intently through the fence. He's ace. His name is Boldbaatr, he lives in the village, and he already has a handshake that can have a grown man whimpering. He becomes Steve's little helper, running to find stones that Steve can use to jack the car up.

Towards the evening we spot an odd-looking vehicle in the distance, just pulling into the compound. It's an ambulance covered in stickers, clearly a Mongol Rally vehicle. It's driven by two Germans, Martin and Paul. They're joined by a couple, Greg and Karmel, who are driving a battered Daihatsu 4x4, which looks like it's been through the ringer.

We give them the lowdown on what's happening, and once they go through the paperwork bit we settle down for an evening in the car compound. This means creating a sesh. Steve and I wander out to grab some vodka from the shop. This gives us such a great taste of Mongolia - stooping through a tiny doorway into the darkness, pushing on a big wooden door and stepping into a large empty room with a bloke surrounded by small piles of groceries at the far end.

We return to find we've been locked out. Which puts us in the unusual position of having to break back into somewhere we've been detained. Being Mongolia, that's easy enough - just hop the fence - then it's on with a sesh. We start a fire, neck vodka, and get to know each other. Greg and Karmel have had a hell of a time - they suffered an almighty blow-out in the heat of Turkmenistan, which flipped their Daihatsu and sent it flying 30-feet off the road. It sounds horrific - Greg had to pull her out all bloodied and, as he says, make sure she was ok before he could start getting photos.

The beautiful upshot is the good that came from it. The accident led to them spending three days with a Turkmen family, Greg off having a laugh with the boys, Karmel expriencing what it's like to be a woman in these countries.

The German guys are classic, and they've had a hell of a rally, taking in everything from dodgy dealings with patchy Ukranian hookers, to meeting the dog-fighting champion of Kazakhstan, and staying with a family in Kyrgystan who slayed a lamb in front of them before feeding them the whole thing, including its balls and, much to our amusement and Paul's continued dismay, the arse-fat.

This rally is brilliant - everyone has had a mad time, and each story is completely different. It allows for myriad different experiences, from the extreme to the beautifully minor. What I hadn't expected was people doing the rally as part of a wider trip - both the Germans and Greg and Karmel are going on afterwards, to China and Oz.

The night winds up with us performing our first live music since Dortmund. Everyone has a good time, depsite the fact we keep forgetting everything, and it all reaches a glorious crescendo with the improvised magic of the Arse-fat Blues.

Then we sleep, outside the car, on the concrete. It's fucking cold. The RAF sleeping bags do us proud, despite the near freezing temperatures. All being well, we'll be out in the morning.

Day 40: to the border

2009-08-26T10:23:00.000+01:00

The M52, to the Russia-Mongolia border. 'This is fucking stupid.' Steve is lying under the car, hitting stuff with a hammer. We've just driven out of Barnaul, and have an 800km drive ahead of us to the border, and things are looking a bit grim already. Apparently the rear wheel has rubbed through the fuel tank anti-syphon pipe and a breather pipe. I have no idea what that means. But judging by the amount of 'fuck's being flung about, we need to get this back end up.

A bit of hammering, and some tinkering, and it's all that can be done. Pretty soon we're back among the stunning scenery, which is something I hadn't thought about. I figured it'd be just more sunflowers and flat meadows. It's actually incredible rivers and mountains and sprawling forests. Tis lovely.

I see big Russian women climbing on haystacks with pitchforks. A man works the fields with a scythe. A cow stands in the road, side on, taking up the whole lane, slowly chewing the cud and daring us with its eyes to c'mon and drive straight at it. It doesn't flinch. Old Russian buses leave the road to dodge its mates. These are hardcore heffers.

Smoke comes out of chimneys warming little wooden shacks. It must be a glorious lifestyle. Get your woman, your Lada, a few cows. Wake up, jump in the river, ponder the mountains, take a crap in the woods, get to know the meaning of everything. To become, in Jeffery parlance, 'a zen-ass motherfucker'.

We stop at a garage. It's an impossibly serene scene. A woman sits alone in the little booth, dishing out petrol to passing punters, probably a few litres every month or so. What does she think about sitting there all day, all year? I imagine a handful of Russian students crawling up at 3am giggling as they fail to work out the change from 10 Twix, a Mars milk and two big bags of Jelly Babies.

The light is fading. We've got to get to this border, if only to get the process started. It's late on Wednesday, and we have to get through the Mongolia side before the weekend. The crossing takes 12 hours minimum, and the whole thing closes at weekends. So we'll have to drive on through the dark.

Which would be easier if locals didn't keep stopping and taking us off to see fascinating Stone Age carvings. We pass a bloke and his son, who are by the roadside buying apples. He waves one at us as we drive on waving back. Have to keep pressing on. Pretty soon he's caught us up and is waving at us to pull over. He takes us up to a look-out spot, with a beautiful panoramic view of the river. Then it's back in the car with a 'let's go'. Suddenly we're on a sightseeing tour.

Just down the road he pulls in and takes us up a hill to a load of rocks cordoned off by wooden fencing. A Mongolian-looking dude joins us, and starts pointing out barely-visible carvings on the rocks. They're cave drawings from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. It's quite incredible - pictures of archers, stags and god-women. It's funny watching the guide just squat over the images as he talks about them. It's like a French bloke scraping his finger over the Mona Lisa, going 'look at the paint work on that'.

It's all very kind of them. 'That'll be $20,' says the guide. Of course. Business. He's then telling us we'll follow the bloke to the next point of interest. Hang on mate, we've got a race to win. We're going to Mongolia. No we're not - the Russian guy is making gestures to suggest we're sleeping at his house. 'Let's go,' he says. Cue images of waking up on his floor, possibly next to a dried vomit puddle, with a bill for $200, followed by a weekend spent looking at a border fence.

It's another case of killing us with kindness. Or is it? Is it even kindness? Or is it a business? It's hard to work out, with this irritating system of bringing up money after the event. We're knackered and start getting suspicious, so decide to ditch our friend and plough on. But he's totally happy, and sees us off with a massive wave. So he was just being friendly after all. Ideal.

By now we've lost the light, so we're careening round these mountain roads unable to see where they're going. Or whether any cows are lying in wait for a date with our radiator. We drive on into the dark fearing an imminent bovine-bonnet altercation.

Fourteen hours after leaving Barnaul we eventually crawl up to the border. It's shut. We're left sitting parked in the Punto staring at a big gate and a fence. Kill the engine. Sit. At least Russia is behind us. We made it. We celebrate by sleeping, in the same seats we just spent a whole day in. My legs go weird. There's shite ahead.

Day 39: the Sirens' call

2009-08-25T10:19:00.000+01:00

The road to Barnaul, Russia. Nothing happens today. It's brilliant. We just drive 250km along smooth tarmac, through fields of sunflowers, listening to tunes. I could roll along like this forever, nodding my head, thinking up plans.

For now the plan is to get half-way to the border, pulling in at a place called Barnaul (pronounced barn owl) to pick up supplies and use the internet to work out where the hell we're going. We don't have a map of Russia, which is fairly stupid. We also need to work out where we cross into Mongolia, and what the hell happens when we do.

Barnaul seems like a weird name, until you get there and see how many ridiculous-looking women there are here. Very soon your head's rotating 360-degrees. Before you know it you're emitting a string of small pellets.

We head for lunch at the first place we find, a spot called the Goodwill Kafe. This is where things slow down. The kafe happens to be a health-food gaff across the hall from a gym that seems almost exclusively populated by particularly ridiculous-looking women. I've never seen anything like it. The effect is especially powerful after five-and-a-half weeks sweating in a Punto with two men.

To continue my line of film references, it's like the bit in O Brother Where Art Thou where the three weary travellers are seduced by the sounds of the Sirens, a group of women washing clothes in the river, only for two of them to wake up on the rocks and find their mate has been turned into a frog. We're sent into a daze with sushi, cappuchino and luxurious cheese-cake. Time slows down. Sadly my hope isn't realised: that we wake up later to find Jeff has been transformed into a dildo.

By the time we've finished our lunch, uploaded some more of this nonsense and got the information we need off the internet, it's getting towards the evening. We decide to stay at Barnaul and press on the full 600km to the border tomorrow. Steve goes off for a nightmare queuing session at the bank, while Jeff and I pick up some supplies, and chat in English to some kindly youths who tell us how to get out. We have to head to Biisk. 'Only don't stop there,' they advise, 'it's a criminal town.'

Not that Barnaul is free from peril either. I risk going back to the cafe to get directions to a hotel. In Homer's Odyssey I seem to remember Odysseus getting his men to tie him to the ship's mast to block the irresistible lure of the Sirens' call. I rely on the fact that I've got a big ginger beard and haven't changed my clothes for a week. Plus my top is stained with Jeff's talcum powder spit. That should keep those wiley bitches at bay.

Turns out there's a hotel next to the kafe. I go up as instructed to the 13th floor. The receptionist looks like a porn star. Two enormous breasts take our money and hand me a room key. What is it with this town?

Not only is the room affordable, it's covered with loads of Soviet war images, with aeroplanes on the ceiling. This place is a boy's dream. The art work makes us feel well protected. It's dangerous out there, so we bunk down for the night, happy and secure and in our own little world. Those bastard women cannot touch us here.

'We'll be at the Mongolian border tomorrow,' says Jeff. 'That's fucking nuts.' Yep.

Day 38: Russian cops

2009-08-24T10:17:00.000+01:00

Rutzovsk, Russia. The three of us are being driven through town in the back of a Russian police jeep. We only crossed the border about an hour ago. That's pretty good going.

If you'd told me that when I woke up - with a hangover, in a hotel room covered in talcum powder - I'd have probably groaned and rolled over onto one of my potentially cracked ribs and gone back to sleep. The weird of this trip is so relentless, it's almost becoming too much.

The day starts with us setting off for some new tyres. We had one blow up on us with the heat back in Turkmenistan, and another one is struggling to stay inflated - best sort this out before we go much further, especially now we're rolling on improvised shocks.

I get my first taste of car Par market, which is brilliant. We ask about Punto tyres at one shop - the guy listens to what we want, realises we don't speak the same language, shuts his shop up, lights a fag and wanders down the road to our car before squatting down and studying the wheels intently as he drags on his smoke. Nope, he says, can't do that. Trouble is all the cars here are massive - they have to be given the state of the roads, so no-one stocks wee spares for Puntos.

We're outside the tyre place when a big mellow guy wanders over in a vest, arms covered in tattoos, wearing shades, and starts speaking perfect colloquial English. 'One question guys. How many cars are doing this drive? Every day I keep seeing these cars covered in stickers.' We tell him there are 500 teams on the rally. 'Fuck me,' he says. It's one of the best exclamations of 'fuck me' we've heard in ages.

He's a really helpful bloke. But he's serious when he warns us against drinking with the locals in the city. He says they can seem very nice, but that they'll then turn on you. Before you know it you've got a knife to your throat. We tell him we were ok last night - we were drinking with the feds. 'You were lucky,' he says, and warns us to be careful. Maybe it's a good thing we're leaving the country in the next few hours. Into Russia, where nobody's mental.

Jeff asks the dude directions to the border. This is greeted by loud guitars blaring out of his jeep. 'Good rock,' says Jeff. 'I know,' he says. We follow him out of the city, banging our heads to the guy's Nirvana. He sees us off with a raised fist, a 'good luck guys', and a final 'be careful'.

And so we drive the 90km to the Russian border. The countryside is verdant and flat, and the road is surprisingly smooth. Steve's up doing 60mph and everything. Mr W gets there no worries. We even manage to get in a lunch at this little family-run roadside cafe involving jam and cream. Cream tea on.

We hit the border, and bump into two Italian teams queueing to get out of Kazakhstan. It's a long wait, but sedate compared to the border trying to get in, when it turned into a mental stock-car racing job. The Italian team are amazed we tackled the Semey road in our little Punto, and in the dark.

The only bummer is when the Russian soldiers tell us to unpack the car. It's the first time we've had to do that, and Jeff's up on the roof handing down guitar cases so they can open them up and sniff suspiciously at our packets of strings. Pretty soon though they're calling us the Beatles, and taking photos of us pulling away. Even in Russia, which we figured would be the hardest of all borders, it seems Mr W only brings smiles.

We drive on through the Russian countryside. The aim is to get to Barnaul, just one 600km drive from the Mongolian border. Mental. Trouble is it's getting late, so we pull into the town nearer, to get a hotel and some grub. Turn up, no-one speaks English at all. It's well off the tourist trail. The town is old and has a sad air, a big square in the centre where everyone sits mooching about, watching us on our hunt for shelter. It's not unfriendly as such, but standing out here feels different to everywhere we've been. It's no longer a case of being an amusing visitor - perhaps more potential target.

Even the word hotel isn't understood. We ask a girl, who points across the square. Too easy. We go in to find the huge dark hall of a dusty old hotel. It's brilliant. A woman sits in a booth in darkness in the corner. If you've seen the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink, it's like that, where if you rang the bell at reception its chime would ring unbroken for an hour. We convey what we want. The woman just shakes her head and says nyet. Blatantly because we're foreign. Shit.

We're tired. It's been a long day, of driving in a knackered car and long border crossings, with no food or water. It's times like this that everything gets testing. But luck is of course never far away. We'll find a hotel somehow. We go outside, and ask a couple of old dudes stinking of booze. They're a good laugh, and bicker for ages in Russian about what to tell us. They try drawing a map, he's holding his fag in the same hand as his pen. It's not going to work. We're about to try their idea, when we see an old couple and their grandson staring at our car. They point us around in the other direction.

We're on the way there when we pull over to get money - we've learnt our lesson of rolling into places with no cash. We're parked on a main road. Shit, the cops come past in a jeep - they pull in, probably to give us shit for illegal parking. It'll be our first taste of Russian law.

Jeff gets out and pre-empts them by asking if they know a hotel. They say to follow them. Unbelievable. First they tell us to park Mr W next to the police box, to prevent anyone giving us any trouble. Unbelievable. Then we jump in the back of the jeep and drive to the hotel. There's a huge rigmorale with the receptionist, who's on the phone to someone trying to organise everything. All we want is a room. No-one speaks English. But the policeman, Andrei, is still there dutifully helping. They try charging us $83 each, which is crazy. Andrei finds out about another hotel, $100 for all. So drives us across town, and out of among huge suburban tower blocks, to a hotel with knight-decorated banquet hall. Mental. Again, Andrei waits while it's all sorted. He's spent over an hour with us trying to sort out a room. Crazy.

The Russian attitude seems to be to cause as much fuss as possible about a simple request, and then to suddenly become incredibly friendly, as if nothing had ever happened. Anyway, the epic day ends with eating chicken and chips, and drinking a beer. I've never had as much contact with the police as this trip, and the vast majority has been positive, funny, and incredibly strange. We're now only a day's drive from Mongolia. Heh heh.

SMS update 18

2009-08-24T10:01:00.000+01:00

Left at 24th August 2009 at 02:01

Recieved by SMS (Location: Rubtsovsk - Russia)

we are now in russia heading to barnaul but now late so may have to stop in rubtovsk. Roads here good so far so mr wazz is coping well and peter is rocking to the vibe of back in the ussr by the beatles. Mong on wed it seems. X@

Day 37: sitting on bricks

2009-08-23T20:12:00.000+01:00

Semey, Kazakhstan. Even shit can taste sweet. I'm not sure that's true, but you get the idea. Steve looks under the car and sees that the shocks are totally buggered. It's a miracle it hasn't all collapsed and fallen out already. So we're stuck here for another night - which means drinking vodka with a Kazakh copper, who becomes just the latest person to try selling us sex. Ace.

It definitely makes sense to press on, but it's perfect when outside events step in to make that impossible. Surely that's what this trip's about - if you're stupid enough to have a plan, you have to abandon it all the time, whether that's for random high-speed Uzbek wedding invitations, or because your car's falling to pieces. Either way it just opens you up to more random chance, and to more signs that there may just be forces out there that are working to help you.

Take today's car trouble. We need new springs for the back. How do you get them? Go into the hotel to ask for a garage - no-one speaks any English. We've been here for 24 hours now and we've established that. Jeff tries with the security guard, no luck, so says 'it's ok, I'll try over here.' Ah, a fluent English speaker in the lobby. Perfect. And so we meet Olzhas, a kid who's here for his uncle's wake. He used to live in the US, so his English is good. He tells me how he has papers saying he was born during the period of nuclear testing nearby, and how this may have health implications. Very heavy stuff. He says the town has a high rate of cancer, and seems chuffed that we're raising money for a hospice which helps sufferers back home.

He's happy to drive Steve and Jeff to Spartak, the car parts place, to get them some springs.

They come back contented, mainly because for the second time in a matter of days, they've gotten to experience a central Asian equivalent of Par market. This one is in a massive hangar, hundreds of little shops selling pretty much the same automotive gear. This time we're willing to withold the cries of 'diversify, you retards,' as we could actually do with this stuff.

Trouble is, Fiat's aren't exactly the business round here, and the shocks Steve's been given are just too big. The dude in the shop said they could take them back, so Steve and Jeff take a taxi back to swap them. He comes back with the springs from an Audi A4 - a much bigger car than Mr W, but the only springs that looked even vaguely suitable. He needs to cut them down a bit, and the Halfords hack-saw we've got in our tool kit is shite. Luckily Sergei, the taxi driver, whisks Steve off to a garage, where a kid goes at them with an angle grinder. Ideal.

So now we have the springs, and they're the right length. Steve spends the next couple of hours improvising a solution. He's never done this before, but that doesn't stop him looking like he knows exactly what he's doing. The bastard. It's a patch-up job - it has to be when you've got the wrong springs and shit tools - but it does the job.

At one point we take a wheel off, and Jeff notices a bit of piping that's worn right down to the cable inside. The handbrake cable had come loose, and been almost destroyed by the weight on the wheel rim as it span round. A good spot, and it solves the riddle of the mysterious rattle of the previous evening. At this point Mother Waller is off cooking Super Noodles, to keep my boys fed and watered as they do manly car stuff.

By 6pm it's all done, the car looks barely higher than it did when we started, but as long as it gets us to Mongolia that'll be ideal. We need to get a local mechanic to do some business there anyway.

We celebrate with a wander round the nuclear city. We head in to a park in the centre, where we see a grown man sitting on a little red plastic chair, staring at a TV screen, singing into a microphone. Even in Japan I never saw such a shamelessly open display of crap karaoke.

Dinner is shashlik, chips and beer in one of the park's cafe-bars. All is good until two blokes come bounding over pushing their fingers in Steve's face demanding money. Apparently they're friends of the staff. Jeff had wandered off when he was supposed to pay, before the food came out, and it seems the way to point that out round here is to almost pick a fight with the customer, rather than quietly highlighting the error. Soon the aggro blokes have set up with their mates on the table right next to ours, despite the fact the rest of the place is empty. The twat radar is beeping loud, so we finish our beers and leave. This place has a definite vibe to it - people here are probably quite happy to behave like bell-ends.

We're close to heading back when we see a nice-looking beer garden and decide to check it out. It's way nicer - I meet a man taking a leak in the loo and he invites me over to drink vodka. On the way I meet one of his mates, a chubby camp chap who used to live in Tunbridge Wells. Steve says he's the closest-sounding to Borat of anyone he's spoken to here.

I get a few vodkas in - they keep magically refilling - before going back to grab Steve and Jeff. The crew is big and the talk friendly. One of the dudes, a big baby-faced guy called Roland, is a policeman. We have a go at him for taking all our money. He laughs and says he's not like that. No-one here is a huge fan of Borat. Speaking to these people, it's easy to imagine why.

Don't remember much else. Until later, vague memories of Roland joining us in the cab back to the hotel and pointing out the fact there's a brothel/sauna in the building round the back. Of course. He's insistent we go. Of course. Unfortunately it's closed. Damn. Later Steve tells me what he'd have done if it was open: 'Gone in, gone 'fuck me, this place is weird. Bye.' As for Jeff and me, the world's plan to get us to pay for sex has once again been foiled.

This may have had a bad effect on Jeff. I sense a need to release. Back in the room he starts getting all scrappy (he later claims I must have done something to set him off, but I don't think so, unless you consider lying on a bed to be an incendiary act). Steve films us grappling on the floor, slapping each other's arses. It gets properly good when, in an inspired moment of improvised weaponry, I grab a tub of talc and squirt it on Jeff's head.

Jeff's convinced he won. He has since apologised for 'being such an aggressive prick', not that he needs to. He's also still convinced I started it. I promise never to lie down near him again.

And so we sleep, in a room that smells like a freshly-pampered sumo wrestler. Tomorrow we're off to Russia.

SMS update 17

2009-08-23T14:15:00.001+01:00

Left at 23rd August 2009 at 06:15

Recieved by SMS (Location: Semipalatinsk - Kazakhstan)

attempting to limp out of semey to rubtovsk. Changed rear shocks in hotel car park with non fiat parts. Who after all would bring a fiat here? Now have rear suspension but looking a little low so will potter along to the better roads of russia. Will improve it all when in mongolia. Need to replace spare types also. Apart from that got drunk with locals on vodka and dave and jeff wrecked the hotel room with talc wrestling. Semey on!

Day 36: shock and awe

2009-08-22T10:09:00.000+01:00

Taldyqorghan, Kazakhstan. We're on the way out of the city, doing about 10 miles an hour round a left-hand bend, when there's an almighty clang. What the hell was that? We take a look. That'll be the rear shocks snapped then. So we end up covering 600km, on the most dilapidated roads we've seen so far, with Mr W's back-end scraping the ground. By the end of the day the car's not the only one whose arse is suffering.

It's a shame about the roads, as otherwise the drive is stunning. We're well out in the middle of nowhere now, out on the plains, barren countryside stretching for miles. The sun sets behind jagged peaks, casting its serene light upon a lake. We're not alone on the road, but otherwise there's nothing human here but the odd bulb-lit concrete hut promising Nescafe, and kids on horses herding sheep. I suddenly see a kid cycling down the road. Where are you going? And where from? The stars are incredible, lit up orange by occasional flashes of lightning.

We're heading for the Russian border in the north, and the town of Semey, which is still suffering the effects of the Soviets testing nuclear bombs on the steppes just outside the town. They call the area the Polygon. They tested around 450 bombs there, as recently as 1989. You can still go and wander around it if you like, but you're recommended to wear a radiation suit. That hasn't stopped the locals ambling around it, or grazing their sheep there. I'll have the talking lamb casserole please. Shock and awe the enemy, turn your kids' gums into rubber. Maybe Mr W will benefit from a dose of radiation. She could grow legs or something, run us to Ulaanbaatar.

Of course we shouldn't diss her. Jeff points out it's one hell of an achievement to have gone 6,500 miles without anything going properly wrong. But we'll need to get it sorted before Mongolia. There's no way we'll make it anywhere in a country where the roads make Kazakhstan's rally tracks look like Silverstone.

The first half of today's drive is a dream. Even with no suspension at the back the roads aren't too bad, the sun's out of course, and despite the ongoing lack of signage the drive across the open moorland still warms the soul. Until the cops show up. Getting stopped is no fun in these parts. We get a $30 fine for nothing, and pay up once he threatens to take us back to the last town and write up a proper ticket. Even mentioning Manchester United wouldn't get you off round here.

Jeff looks at the map and points out that China is just past the mountains to our right. We've driven to China. For some reason that sounds far more ridiculous than the fact we've driven to Kazakhstan. Which in itself is pretty stupid. My head hits the ceiling as the rear right wheel yelps its way over a bump.

Once the sun drops things get worse. There's a new noise, which seems to be coming from under the handbrake. Jeff reckons it's coming from back left. We turn the music down, and drift alone in the dark, listening for clues. It reminds me of Jaws when they're out in the boat, nothing but the sound of water lapping on the hull as they train their ears for any ominous sign of their predator.

Rumble rumble clank... rumble rumble clank...

And so it continues for about 150km. Steve's a seasoned driver, no stranger to caning his old Mini round Cornish backlanes, or go-karts round suicidal race tracks. But right now his driving stance looks like that of an old woman. He's Miss Daisy driving. 'All I can do is press my eyeballs to the windscreen and stare at shadows,' he says.

Our inept map shows a motorway ahead. That would be a god-send. We see some lights, which may be it, and aim for them, further up a road that looks like it's seen a few nuclear tests of its own. Soon we crawl past the barely discernable shapes of more concrete huts, dark and mysterious, their lights revealing shadowy figures moving about inside. Then the road gets more ridiculous - huge bomb craters that would be guaranteed to kill the car if you were unfortunate enough to fall in them. This can't be the main road. We pick our way back through it all again, back to some guys outside a hut. It is the main road, they say. Unbelievable. Keep going, 100km, straight, straight, straight, straight... Not that driving straight is even an option on these trails.

And so it continues: pick your way through the mess, first gear, second gear, up to third, peering through the windscreen into the gloom. Back to first, pick, weave, dodge the pothole, hit the pothole, swap onto the road running parallel, see if that's any better. It's not, go back on the first road, into first gear, our first kilometre. Only another 99 to go. The weirdest thing is that we haven't taken a wrong turn. This is the right road, the main road, and loads of other idiots are using it too.

It's nearing midnight. Portishead comes on the shuffle. It's the first time this trip, and the combination of dusty drums, dubby basslines and ethereal vocals are the perfect soundtrack to our increasingly surreal night. We listen to the whole of the Dummy album, as we bump our way through the darkness.

Jeff takes over for the final hour, Steve crashes in the back exhausted. It's more of the same, except now Nick Drake provides the maudlin soundscapes, as we're flanked by sprawling mausuleums in the fields. I would drive, but watching the road even as a passenger is tiring enough for bushes to start looking like living people out the corner of your eye. Just writing this blog had been playing with my mind enough already. Last night I awoke from a dream remembering only that I'd described something on the trip as 'like Pac Man in a war'. I wish I could remember what that was.

Finally we make it to Semey, which in our current state of mind looks even more ominously Soviet than it ordinarily would. Huge grey concrete buildings and massive pilons. That's all I see. Some guys guide us to a hotel, itself a huge concrete block, brightened pathetically by a strange string of Christmas lights. Blatantly another cheap Kazakh knocking shop.

We end the marathon day in the kafe with a beer. It's a room of yellow flowered wallpaper, lit only by the light from one little red lamp. The flowers seem to have giant eye-balls at their centre. Fitting for a former surveillance state. In the USSR, even the radioactive flora is watching you...

SMS update 16

2009-08-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

Left at 22nd August 2009 at 02:00

Recieved by SMS (Location: Semipalatinsk - Kazakhstan)

on the road to semey with rear suspension totally fucked - both springs snapped. Semey is radioactive due to the russians testing over 460 nu ** some text is missing **

SMS update 15

2009-08-21T17:17:00.000+01:00

Left at 21st August 2009 at 09:17

Recieved by SMS (Location: Almaty - Kazakhstan)

kazakstan, the greatest country in the world. All other countries are run by little girls.

Day 35: across Kazakhstan

2009-08-21T10:07:00.000+01:00

Almaty, Kazakhstan. We're all itching like mad from inadvertently spending the night at that Soviet spuff parlour. We've probably got AIDS or something. I know you can catch AIDS off bed sheets, but does it itch? Turns out it's not AIDS - Steve's covered in bites, especially on his elbow, so it's probably just something harmless, like mosquitos or bed bugs or full-body crabs.

What a fine introduction to Kazakhstan. Corrupt officials, shopkeeper-whores, and now bed-borne disease. But after a quick walk round Almaty, it seems our experience is only representative for cheapskates who can't afford to splash out on the proper stuff. It's a really swanky place. We're soon hunting breakfast in a part of town full of tree-lined boulevards and posh hotels, where we feel uncomfortable about the prices and have to move ourselves on to find something more down-market. We need to work on finding our level.

We end up with barely-fried eggs on a bed of cheesy bread. It's amazing. And a few good old traditional cappuchinos, which feels like being licked by Jehova after three weeks of Nescafe. I'd never realised the extent of Nestle's grubby reach. We're just tucking into our eggy bread when Jeff lets out the tiniest groan. What's that? He laughs. 'I thought I could allow myself a cheeky trump. But I think I may have followed through.' He gets up silently to find the loo in the immaculate restaurant, revealing a perfect moist strip on the seat of his trousers.

Nothing much happens the rest of the day. We drive. The scenery is, of course, beautiful, and the sun's out again, and all is lovely. The trouble with such a long and varied trip is that it's easy to enjoy but hard to keep conveying in words how ace it is. The bar has been set high for scenery. This is perfect - rolling hills, vast plains, mountains in the distance, and a fairly decent stab at being green. It's ace, but it just doesn't make me fire words out my balls like the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

I guess after a while you do get used to stuff. Take toilets. In the first week or two I must have dedicated at least 5,000 words to discussing the loos. And that was only in Europe, where a couple of high-tech towel dispensers and stool-inspection shelves were enough to get me excited. By the time we'd reached places where a restaurant's toilet is a half-mile hike up the road to an open concrete shed housing a faeces-flecked hepatitis hole, I'd lost interest in discussing it. Maybe deeper into Kazakhstan they have loos that involve squatting over the gaping jaws of a wolf and curling one down. Then I'll be back in the game.

Everyone's into karaoke into Kazakhstan. There are big karaoke halls all along the road into Almaty. Later we arrive in Taldyqorghan, a town 250km away, and after driving around the town about 20 times and enquiring of half the populace, we finally manage to find a hotel. It's a definite step up from the last one, even if there's no sex on sale. It is opposite a karaoke joint though, so we go in for some shashlik kebabs and beer.

An unseen woman is performing Elton John's Sacrifice (the song, not the long overdue wicker and fire ritual). 'Eeet's no sacariiifi-ii-iise...' The food is lovely, the local beer is ace, and in the middle of the meal three Kazakh b-boy kids run in and start doing loads of ridiculous breakdancing next to our table. Hadn't expected that. They're really young, and really good too, doing all kinds of impossibly nimble spins, and choreographed moves where one dude runs up his mate and does a backflip.

It's one of the many moments in my life I've wound up ruing the fact I can't breakdance. What a way to connect with the locals, shouting 'Manchester United!' while grabbing my bollocks and busting out a nifty windmill.

We give the b-boys about 500 quid for their efforts. Not least because they were infinitely more exciting than the shit Elton John track that played through the night practically on loop.
We have been in the country two days and seen not one person who looks even remotely like Borat. It's amazing what you can get away with if you pick the right stereotype to make your comedy out of. Take Almaty - everyone there is incredibly westernised in terms of dress, but with an overwhelmingly oriental look. Others look distinctly Russian. I see a grand total of no moustached Turkish-looking Jews in funny swimsuits.

Even in this small town, everyone is more old Soviet than anything else. Our hotel room has a shower that at one time must have been luxurious - it has jets coming out of every angle, and a radio, playing D.I.S.C.O as I stand there washing myself and half my wardrobe. After five weeks away, everything is getting pretty rank. And with the trip turning into a bit fo a mission - get out of Kazakhstan in four days - we've no time to fanny around. Hence sharing the shower with my smalls.

The upside is that talk is now turning to Mongolia. It's been such an abstract concept for most of the trip that it wasn't worth thinking about. Now we should be there in less than a week. Whereupon everything will duly turn properly strange.

SMS update 14

2009-08-20T17:05:00.000+01:00

Left at 20th August 2009 at 09:05

Recieved by SMS (Location: Biskek - Kyrgyzstan)

kyrg mountains the most amazing and beautiful vistas so far with good roads too. Yurts on! horse herders doing their thing snow capped peaks and we were witness to an ace lightning display last night too. On the road to almaty, hope to make it today. Kazak on. We think it will get as weird as 4 arm wrestling nuns on a unicycle from here on. Ace. X@

Day 34: the wonderful and the weird

2009-08-20T10:05:00.000+01:00

The road to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. High up among the snow, a yurt chimney blowing smoke; Mr Wazzboobleyoid winding her way round gloriously smooth tarmac; horses grazing on the plains. Wonderful. Later: Almaty, Kazakhstan. The security guard is keen to sell us sex with the girl who works in the shop downstairs. She's completely aware of the whole thing. Weird.

This was our route to the border with Kazakhstan. Done with all this beauty, Kazakhstan was where things got weird again. Actually that's doing it a disservice. The scenery was stunning as we drove the 200km to Almaty, with the sun setting behind us.

First, though, we had to get across the border. Waiting to go in we're stuck in the all-too-familiar queue, fairly similar to the one in Azerbaijan, on the dirt track down to the armed compound. This time though everyone's cheekily nipping down the outside lanes and trying to cut in. It turns the whole thing into a demolition derby. Sit there revving your engines, bonnets lurching into view either side, waiting for the barrier to go up, whereupon all kinds of testosterone-fuelled carnage goes off.

I figure Mr W can handle a bit of superficial damage to the front wings, so I'm not budging, especially as we've done the English thing and queued like real people for the last 20 minutes, only for these jumped-up foreigners to come bombing down the outside and force their way in. Boom! The barrier goes up, I'm sticking close to the car in front to stop the bloke to my right getting in. But the car in front is too slow, so the cheating foreign swine makes it in. I ever so lightly tap the back bumper of the car in front. It's all a bit nuts, especially when the cars either side of you are so completely battered already.

Later it happens again. The old dude in the car in front this time is ace. He sees a bloke coming down his left, and cuts him off so well he almost stacks it on the concrete barrier. A couple of blond kids come begging at the window. Dollar dollar. Steve says we have no dollar, butwe have pens. They seem weirdly delighted. Try that on the tax man.

Inside the customs office there's the usual sense of herding, but we're through passport control pretty quickly. In fact we're back out with our car almost straight away, before a bloke points out we need to go back in to get our car papers stamped too. This takes an age, and sends us right back to muggy memories of being chucked about by bureaucrats, in a scrum where everyone knows the rules but you.

We see several foreingers going down a few steps to a dark alcove, where money is clearly changing hands. I'm only prepared to do that to own innocent young country girls. Others speed their passage by slipping notes into their passport and handing to the guard, the same bloke who later on is waving his taser gun at his mate for a laugh.

It turns out to be not too bad, once we actually got someone to look at our forms we're straight through. But pretty soon Steve's getting pulled over for being in the wrong lane at a police checkpoint. Cops here seem to be back on the arsey side. We get away with a $10 bribe, although as Jeff points out, they've no right to take any money at all. I guess if you've got long enough to wait you can get away without paying, but we need to crack on so $10 doesn't seem too bad. I suggest the idea next time of claiming to have no dollars, and then performing a little mime to suggest certain sexual favours wouldn't be below us. See how the bastard reacts to that.

We drive across more gently beautiful scenery, then finally arrive in Almaty, a city that we'd heard was cosmopolitan. It's certainly open-minded. We get recommended a cheap hotel in a Soviet-style concrete fabrication, by a bloke at a lovely posh hotel, and soon after checking in I go outside to look for Steve, who'd been called aside to pay for parking. I say hello to the security guard, who makes a gesture with his arms that seems like he's asking if I've got any bags that need carrying. Doesn't seem that kind of dive to be honest. He also keeps stroking some imaginary long hair out of his face. That's odd.

Steve then reappears, and tells me that the bloke is asking if I want to have it off with the girl in the shop. He'd asked Steve the same thing a minute ago. I'm not entirely comfortable with all this, not least because the 'can I carry your bags' mime, which involves clenching your fists and moving your arms up and down, also looks a bit like he's imitating someone pushing themselves along in a wheelchair. I tell him I'll think about it.

Steve reckons it's 5,000 for one. That converts to approximately 0.3 of a TBJ (see blog day 17). Later the three of us go out to the car together to fetch our stuff. The guard wants to know what I've decided. I point over at Jeff, implying that he'd probably be more keen than me. He holds up two fingers, and says ok. Then he adds another finger. That'd be ok too. And we thought the three of us sharing a Punto for eight weeks was rankly intimate enough.

I've said it before, but sometimes I wish I was different.

In the end we settle for beer and food, from the bird's shop. The security guard comes in and watches. It all feels a bit weird. She's selling pasties too. We buy one each, although we realise when we watch her chucking them in the microwave that we've just committed the Central Asian equivalent of plumping for a Ginsters. It feels dirty and wrong. I'd be less disappointed in myself if I'd shagged the shop assistant.

The hotel doesn't get any better. In fact it's proper Soviet weird. There's a rancid three-piece suite in our dliapidated room, with a dining room table shoved in the middle, and a cabinet of random glassware in the corner. The mattress is buggered and the place is full of fleas. From the wonders of mountain yurts to this. Modern life is filthy.

Day 33: home from home

2009-08-19T18:56:00.000+01:00

Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyzstani for pasty is 'somsat'. We discover this at lunch, when we pull over in a mountain town and pick up six of these dudes for about £2.50, with a pot of tea thrown in too. Way better than paying about £15 for a fashion pasty at Paddington station.

They cook these somsat in a mental oven, sticking them to the clay walls and scraping them off once they've baked. Aside from the attentions of the local drunk, who's intent on communicating with us via bookmakers' hand signs, it's the perfect lunch.

We walk off the pasty mong with a stroll through the local bazaar. The word bazaar always conjurs exotic images of silk road trading - east meets west in big trousers, to the tune of the snake charmer's flute. But at this bazaar the brilliant fabrics are almost outweighed by fake Chelsea shirts, Barbie bags and David Beckham notebooks. For anyone reading this in Cornwall, it's essentially like topping off your pasty with an amble round Par Market. Albeit with fewer lunatics or people selling hub caps.

We've been very taken with the hats in Kyrgyzstan...

So we seal our lunch break by buying a few of them. The next wedding I attend, I'll be rocking this bad boy...

It's a mileage day today. We've got to power on through Kyrgyzstan as quickly as possible. If we can get in and out in a couple of days, we'll have five days to get across Kazakhstan before our visas run out. That should give us a day's grace for admin issues or car trouble.

It's a shame to effectively bypass an entire country, but Kyrgyzstan is all about the scenery anyway, so driving through it is exactly what we need to be doing. We drive up into the mountains, which are fairly low-lying and pleasant, if a little samey. Hmm, I'd actually expected something more striking than this. Then we drive up into the mountains. Aha. That's better. This is absolutely stunning.

The only downer is the potential death element. All along the twisting mountain road we see the carcasses of old cars that have stacked it on these bends. Many are displayed as part of a 'keep your speed down' campaign.

Others are just left where they landed, completely destroyed then stripped for parts. We see another fresh crash - a truck is completely on its side in a ditch, its windscreen smashed in, cargo being loaded into another truck. Every couple of miles or so there's a wheel-change happening, a truck with a burst tyre, or women wandering around while a bloke tinkers under the motor. Still Mr Wazzboobleyoid rolls along.

We're well off the tourist trail now. It soon gets stormy, and lightning flashes over the mountains ahead, lighting up a spectacular sky. Those mountains are where we were planning on camping. Rain starts smashing down at the windscreen. This is odd. We haven't been anything but sweating our tits off for the past month. Now we're moaning about the rain and cold. Only earlier we were scoffing pasties. Where are we again?

We reach a town recommended in the morning by a huge man at the hotel, a place named Mouse, because the rocks look like cheese. There's nothing here, aside from the odd roadside cafe under the mountains. We pull into one and attempt to order food. We have no idea what's going on, so we just point to three random dishes, much to the amusement of the waitress in the Great Britain tracksuit top. So that'll be sheep's eyes, goat brain and yak nuts then. Actually we've done all right - four bits of chicken, a mutton broth and what looks like deep-fried spam. Ideal.

The place is full of families, and once it empties a little one group starts talking to us. They speak a little English, enough to tell us the town centre is up the road and that there's a hotel there. Then, outside, we go through the whole 'photos on the car' routine again. It takes about half an hour to leave. Lovely.

Then it's up the road a few km, where we spot a motel next to a fast-flowing river, right under the mountains. Those lightning flashes keep happening. The stars are amazing. We take the staff up on the offer of a beer, say hello to a group of Spaniards on a massive cycling trip, and then bed down for the night in a room with a proper power shower, and spiders with unfeasibly long legs.

Day 32: dude puked on my rug

2009-08-18T09:20:00.000+01:00

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.

Day 31: the wedding

2009-08-18T03:14:00.000+01:00

Angren, Uzbekistan. A car pulls up alongside us as we're doing 60 down a dual carriageway. It's part of a wedding party - horns blaring, hazards on, weaving from lane to lane in drunken convoy. An insane carnival. A bloke in a suit leans out the window, waving his arms; he asks where we're from, says his name is Owez, and tells us to join in. Toot toot. On go our hazards, and lo - the madness begins.

Actually the madness began about 10 miles back. We'd just spent ages getting lost in the city of Tashkent, which conveniently has no road signs anywhere ('the Uzbek way' according to a guy at the petrol station), and I'd taken over the driving, ruing the start of yet another potholed B-road. Worse than that, I get pulled over by a policeman - I'm doing around 70, and this Lada overtakes, with its uniformed driver gesturing at me to slow down. He sticks his indicator on, so I pull over. We've never been stopped by cops before. This could be expensive.

He comes to the window.

'English?'

'Yes.'

'Manchester United! Owen! Rooney! Riiiiiio Ferdinand! Sir Alex Ferguson!'

Ok, this won't be expensive.

We chat for a bit in our own languages, then he says he's off to drink tea. He doesn't even mention my driving. We follow him. I'm still a bit cautious - it wouldn't seem right bombing past a copper - but after a while I notice he's dropped down to about 55. He wants us to overtake. So I do. A minute later he comes hooning past us again with a massive grin on his face, pumping his fist, and clasping his hands together in a gesture of utter joy.

Just down the road, mountains now in view, we pull into a little town to buy water. Jeff and I are stunned by the girl in the shop. She's only about 17, and looks so sweet I actually have trouble looking at her. I feel too guilty. Jeff doesn't. I want to buy her. Bring her home, admit I fucked everything up, call it a crisis. Yes my friends, my life has gone awry, so I have married a woman half my age who speaks not a word of my own language, and money has changed hands.

(Given the clothes I'm wearing as I write this, it may actually have to happen. For reasons that will be explained, I have adopted the look of the traveller who has lost all sense of caring about appearances: a pair of bile-green suit trousers, a big ginger beard, and a little round ethnic hat perched on top of my head. Chicks dig it).

By now about 20 blokes have come out to look at the car, and ask what we're up to. We tell them we're driving into Kyrgyzstan through the mountains. One lad makes no sound, but manages to create a mime that perfectly conveys the sense that he deems such an idea absolutely ridiculous. Then he prays for us.

They want us to stay, to eat and drink vodka with them. It's such a shame to have to decline, but we have to drive on - we've only got a week to get to the far side of Kazakhstan before our visas expire, and that's still two countries away. But still it feels wrong to turn people down. They're disappointed but understanding, and there are loads of handshakes as we set off again. As we drive off I wonder whether that was a mistake. Maybe we should have stayed. Two minutes later our wheels are screetching as I skid to avoid a bull that's bolting across the road in front of us, chased by a desperate farmer.

And then we're parked by the side of the road, surrounded by happy people shaking hands, having these bright sashs tied round our waists, and small banknotes thrust into our pockets. What the fuck is going on? The wedding cameraman films interviews with us, then takes me to the lead car, where he opens the back door and films me meeting the bride. She looks petrified, maybe of this stinking red-bearded foreigner, maybe of a looming life of Uzbek wedlock.

Then we're off again, swept up into the middle of this mad motorcade - cars driving three-abreast, straddling lanes, driving with jubilation and a high risk of imminent death. Owez's car has a brilliant horn, it goes up and down a musical scale. A car pulls along our right side, and someone hands me a piece of purple cloth to trail out the window. Other drivers are forced to pick their way through this mess, some look very pissed off. We reach a red light and everyone just bombs through. 'Wedding mafia!' shouts Owez as he bombs past us. 'No red, no green, no problem!'

And this goes on for 30km. Everywhere you look there's someone hanging out of a window, things being passed between swerving cars as they pass bland and knackered concrete apartment blocks. It's nuts. Eventually we arrive at the party, greeted by a trio playing traditional Uzbek tunes, banging a hand-drum, and blowing on a huge horn. How the hell did we get ourselves into this?

I've got a bit of a wardrobe dilemma. I can go for what I'd normally wear, and stink, or go for a clean combo that looks ridiculous. I opt for the latter, figuring it the perfect time to rock my former editor's contribution to the trip - his vile 1984 Miami Vice bile-green suit. The trousers at least. I hope all at MT enjoy the pictures. Still, at least I changed. Steve just rolled in in his sweat-stained Finisterre top and boardies, shades still perched on his cap.

I feel like a bit of a pleb when we stride in to a vast room of about 200 people, all sitting down to eat, now staring at us. It's brilliant. We're quickly ushered to a table, introduced to the bride's dad, and fed - food and vodka. In fact the vodka doesn't stop. Everywhere we go it's another shot, necked straight and in one.

The bride and groom sit with Owez on a stage at one end of the room, a band down the other belting out banging music, Uzbek style. It's ace. A woman does some belly-dancing type stuff wearing a shiny silver hat. Pretty soon a woman is grabbing me and Steve, tying more coloured material to our arms and telling us to kick off the dancing. If someone likes your moves, they'll come up and give you money. I made 4,000 sum in five minutes. That's about £2.

We've been put in the care of the son of the family. He's 17. His latest task is to teach me traditional dancing styles. No problem - I've seen Turkmen karaoke videos, and it's all the same. Stick your arse out, wave your arms about, easy.

I go back for a rest, which means more vodka, then think it'd be a good idea to say hello to a table of old biddies. I shake hands with them all, and I think they appreciate it. Then the last one tells me to get my arse back on the dancefloor again.

Pretty soon we're on stage, and I've got a mic in my hand, delivering our goodwill message to the happpy couple, down the other end of this hall, past 200 baffled Uzbeks. A woman helps them by translating my rubbish. Very odd.

The rest of the night is incredibly hazy. Steve has reminded me that at one point I was on the dancefloor whipping a man with my cloth. I have the vague sense that some degree of breakdancing may have occurred.

Steve has also reminded me that we got chattign to the singer, a dumpy middle-aged woman who's apparently famous in Uzbekistan.

'Do you want to fuck her?' asks a man.

'No,' says Steve. 'Do you?'

'No, I think she's a bitch.'

Ok. The bloke then proceeded to ask Steve, a man intensely dedicated to his wife, if there was anyone there he did want to fuck. The implication being it could be arranged. These countries are weird.

And that's it for me. Apparently we were bundled out of the place fairly hastily at the end - we've no idea why - and one of the guys drove Mr Wazzboobleyoid back for us, with Steve and I sharing the one seat we've still got in the back.

What an incredible evening. It's just a different level of hospitality, something I've never expereinced before. I thought Turkey had it. Then I went to Georgia, and they topped it. And Azerbaijan too. Then Turkmenistan. But the people of Uzbekistan have to be the friendliest people on this trip so far. If it gets any friendlier, we're going to be ODing on good vibes. Even before the insane joy of the wedding party I was already smiling more than a Downs syndrome kid on his 32nd birthday.

Just the concept of inviting three weird-looking blokes to your wedding party in the first place - especially when you only met them by overtaking them on the motorway. And then making them so involved in the celebration. It's amazing. I have made a vow to forget that and revert to my old selfish ways as soon as I get home.

But it wasn't just the wedding incident. All day everyone was stopping to chat to us. We pull up outside the bank, the guy outside chats to us for five minutes. We go in a shop, everyone starts chatting about the rally. Driving through Samarkand, a woman in a minibus is shouting out the window, asking if we're Italian. It's nuts. Everybody talks to us.

And they're big fans of the thumb up. I love the thumb up. How can a gesture that's so quintessentially Cornish be universally understood everywhere else too? A scaffolder from Rescorla could come to Uzbekistan and make friends just by sticking his thumb in the air. He doesn't even need to say 'right boy?'

Earlier...

It was ace sleeping on the roof at Antica, with a lovely cool breeze, and being woken up by the soothing sound of a cock crowing, and the blast of a huge sun rising right in your face.

I'm on the way back from the loo, and Jonny says to take a seat. He then proceeds to start bringing out the breakfast, plate by plate - pancakes, fresh mulberry jam, and what turns out to be officially the best bowl of meusli I've ever eaten. Not sure how they did it, but it was mental. Soft, yoghurty, and full of fresh fruit.

Meusli.

To recap: this was a particularly satisfying bowl of meusli.

By coffee number three I'm joined by a couple of Austrians, Steve and Jeff, the Italian boys from last night and the Belgian girls. It's an ace morning, and we really appreciate the beauty and mellowness of the courtyard. Everyone really seems to have bought into the rally story and are all asking for the blog details. So a big thanks to everyone at Antica - the staff and the guests - for making our stay there really memorable. And a great laugh.

We marvel over the effect of the Lonely Planet. This place has been recommended, so everyone comes here. It's why we came here. What about the place down the road? No different to word of mouth, I guess, but on a huge scale. You can really see the effect of a book channelling everyone down the same roads. One of the Italian dudes is gripping a copy. Soon his mate's girlfriend comes out - she's got one too. We've got one. I reckon much of the planet must be pretty fucking lonely, and possibly pleasantly so, if everyone's crowded into the few places that the book deems worthy.

We're in pretty high spirits when we leave, and they only get higher when we go to the bank. Steve goes in to enter what becomes a full-on scrum at the counter, while Jeff and I stand outside and get chatting to pretty much everyone who comes past. The bloke outside the bank tells us how he'd seen another team here a few days back. A couple of blokes and a girl in a Skoda. Hmm. I ask if it was black, with fire down the side, and he says it was. Sounds like the team we met in Bulgaria. Apparently their transmission went, and this guy's mate tried to sort out a replacement. There were no Skoda garages in the area, so they tried fitting Lada kit instead. It worked, so I guess they're on their merry way. Ideal.

A French guy and his girlfriend stop to chat, saying how they went to Mongolia last year and that it was the nicest place they've ever been. Ace.

Back on the road. Drive on. The sun's out (again), and the rock is loud. Soldiers keep waving us through checkpoints. Everyone's selling watermelons. 'Diversify, you retards,' says Steve. It's becoming a motto.

The roads are generally good, so you can get a steady 60 or 70. But every now and again there's a pothole, or a bump, or a foot-high ridge where the heat and wear has pushed the road up to an arse-scraping point. Sitting here in the back writing my head regularly finds itself mingling gloriously with the ceiling.

There are police checkpoints everywhere. Each time involves the same routine: slow down, turn the rock down, and crawl past fearing the worst. But each time it's a smile when they see the car, and returning our waves. It's mental.

Lunch in roadside kafe. We have a bowl of these noodle things - lagman. It's lovely. It comes to 8,000 sum, or $5 for three, including tea. This is the life. As we're leaving a dude in a France football shirt stops us. He tells us it's his place, then heads inside to get us a bottle of cold drink, on the house.

Soon it's more madness, with sheep caning across the road...

... and then we join the wedding flock, with some bloke whipping us into drinking stupid amounts of vodka. Baa. Ozzie Ideales.

SMS update 13

2009-08-17T15:40:00.000+01:00

Left at 17th August 2009 at 07:40

Recieved by SMS (Location: Samarkand - Uzbekistan)

leaving town after a most hospitable stay where we dined in a local very ornate 19th c silk rd merchants house. Then vodka with the most sound italians you could meet. Slept on the roof terrace where it was actually cool! Off past tashkent today then the mountains of kyrgyzstan tomorrow. X @

Day 30: proper tourists

2009-08-16T09:47:00.000+01:00

Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We wake up early at the Ambar with a mission - I have to go and plug into the matrix, to upload about 10 days of blogs; Steve and Jeff have to meet old boy from last night and take in the sights of Bukhara. Then, that box duly ticked, we can get back in the car and drive the 300km to Samarkand.

My story is fairly dull at this point, aside from jumping in a cab with a guy playing techno, and going to see his mate so I can change some cash. No idea about exchange rates, but it's funny to hit our first country that involves receiving Scarface-style wads of cash for a mere $20. Then I sit at a computer and press buttons.

Meanwhile Steve and Jeff are out with Shahkrat on a guided tour of the town. He's clearly done this before - he takes them round all the hidden gems - guys making book-stands that sit in eight different positions, all from one lump of wood; metal-workers and their kilns; and the inside of the ancient bathhouse. Jeff comes back with reports of naked men laughing at him slipping about in his flip-flops. It's good to hear laughter from naked men.

Steve asks his guide if he has a girlfriend. He does. But he can't marry her. She's Russian and not a virgin. He's going out with her now because she likes shagging a lot.

We grab some lunch among the locals at a restaurant down the road. We go for the noodle broth thing with the fried egg on the top. It's a beauty. Two old dudes next to us pass over a glass of cherry juice, and then start making gestures that say war is pointless and it's ace if we can all just chill out and have a laugh. I raise my cherry juice to that.

We say our goodbyes to the great staff at the hotel, and jump back in Mr Wazzboobleyoid, gunning her all the way to Samarkand. We stay in a place called _____, a lovely back-alley homestay built around an spacious courtyard complete with a loose-bowelled mulberry tree. It's beautiful. Host Jonny explains there's no rooms, but we can take the roof, which is sheltered. We take a look, it looks ace. Ideal.

Soon we're walking down a back alley, part of a procession of tourists going with a guy from the hotel to get food in an old house down the road. After a month of such freedom, it feels weird being led, but it soon turns ace when all the kids in the streets keep saying hello and asking to have their photos taken.

Dinner is ideal, with a couple of Belgian girls, some older French dudes, an Italian couple and some young film-makers from Paris. The house is beautiful too.

We head back. The others go to head up to bed, I figure I'll stay up with a beer and catch up with some blogs. Then I say hello to two Italian guys at the next table, they offer me some vodka, Steve and Jeff come down and join in, their other mate turns up and the sesh continues. They're a really good laugh, and we talk for ages. One has just had a whirlwind romance with a girl from the Ukraine. He seems a bit dazed. We talk about her for ages. What's her name? Barry, I suggest. It goes down far better than I'd have imagined.

Pretty soon we turn in, drunk, back in our RAF sleeping bags, on the roof. The stars are out and all is well with the world.

SMS update 12

2009-08-15T18:52:00.000+01:00

Left at 15th August 2009 at 10:52

Recieved by SMS (Location: Mary - Turkmenistan)

nearing the uzbek border and mr wazz as done her first 5000 miles. We are on the board! Still going strong in the 40+ heat. X

SMS update 11

2009-08-15T16:21:00.000+01:00

Left at 15th August 2009 at 08:21

Recieved by SMS (Location: Mary - Turkmenistan)

just been to see old merv. Hes seen better days but he is ticking over. On our way to uzbekistan now. Till then, ta ta.

Day 29: visiting Merv

2009-08-15T09:46:00.000+01:00

Merv, Turkmenistan. It's with a sore head and a big 10-4 good buddy that we check out of the truck stop and head for Merv, the remains of a brilliantly-named and hugely important old Silk Road city, built and rebuilt over the centuries, as far back as the sixth century BC.

Ghengis Khan came here once and sacked the place:

'What are you staring at?'

'Dunno, it hasn't got a label.'

'Right, I'll slay you for that. You and your 300,000 mates.'

'Oh Ghengis, I love a man with a short fuse.'

Merv is a mental place, a series of walled areas of various degrees of intactitude, out in the middle of the desert. It's hot. The floor is covered in massive ants, zipping about the sand on spindly legs. There's an incredible amount of pottery shards and bits of ancient tile lying strewn across the ground. It's so barren it's hard to picture the place bustling with trade, or to imagine the carnage brought by one rampaging lunatic and his insatiable love of lopping bits off people.

Steve, the team's official Indiana Jones, is in seventh heaven. He vows to come back with a metal detector. I reckon he should bring a whip, a hat and a small Chinese kid too, do it properly.

It's hot. Our bottled water is practically boiling. We marvel over the genius of the watermelon, and then head off down another desert highway. Sand blows across the road. We drive past a bloke lying on his back on a sand dune, in the middle of nowhere. Just the sun beating down on him. Maybe his date has stood him up. Just give her another 10 minutes.

The heat is ridiculous. So we stop off for lunch at another concrete kafe. There's loads of trucks parked outside, and when we get in the girl shows us through a curtain to the bare-walled back room. She flicks a switch, shedding light on a load of dozy truckers, some lying on the floor, others sitting around tables, but all with jaded eyes fixed on the Jean-Claude Van Dam film on the little telly in the corner.

As out-of-the-way places go, this kafe is right up there, and left a bit. Things are different here. Our salams are returned not with a beaming grin, but a stern nod. Men are together, so faces remain straight. If there'd been a juke box, the needle would be scratching its evil way across it as we order our noodles. One guy starts trying to speak to us, and the complete lack of common language forces us back into the familiar role of foreign goon. Pretty soon they're all blatantly taking the piss. 'It's good to hear laughter,' says Jeff. It is. We don't want to be in the middle of the desert with these truckers getting all Van Dam on our arses.

To be honest they seem too docile for that. They've clearly got the right idea lying down. Shows how dumb we are to be driving through this heat. Much better to lie around in a dark room watching violence. But we down our noodles and soldier on. There's no time to laze about like a bunch of pussies - we've got a race to win.

We keep on through the desert. The scenery doesn't change much. Yellow. That's pretty much it. It's hot. Did I mention that? With the windows open it's like sitting in a fan-assisted overn. At one point our drive is interrupted by a load of donkeys and black sheep running across the dual carriageway, followed belatedly by the shepherd kid waving a stick around. Little Bo Peep meets Frogger. It belies a beautifully casual approach to dealing with traffic: 'Fuck it, they'll swerve.'

We reach the town of Turkmenabad, heading for the border with Uzbekistan, and the road becomes an urban three-laner. We're getting some ace reactions. One guy pulls up to our left and drives along side, shouting across from the far side of his car. Not just a hello, but an entire conversation:

'Hello! How are you?!'

'Where are you from? From America?'

'How is everything?'

Ridiculous. Soon it's happening with all the cars. Like these dudes in a red car with matching shirts, and red curtain across the back window.

Another guy pulls alongside us:

'Do you know the Uzbekistan road?' Uh, no. We figured it was just straight. 'Follow me, I'll show you!'

He then takes us off the main drag, left down a load of bumpy lanes winding round a random collection of buildings. The pot holes are mental. Several km later, he pulls up: 'go over the bridge, pay the money, and then 40km later it's Uzbekistan.' Mental. There's no way we'd have found that without him, nor known we were even going the wrong way. Apparently he just likes tourists.

We drive on, heading up the road into more desert. We come to a fork, and with the lack of signs opt for the one that looks the mainest and most straight-on. About two miles down the road we're being flashed by a bus behind us. We pull over. He signals the other way. 'Uzbekistan,' he says.

Soon enough we're at the border. Putting our fate back in the hands of kids with guns. One border guard is very taken with our right-hand drive. He asks if he can get in. Ok. I wonder what he's going to do. He just wiggles the wheel a bit, like a kid in one of those 20p rides you get outside Asda, and helps himself to a toffee.

After the last couple of borders, we're braced for the worst. But it's a doddle. No money changes hands, and you have to visit each window in a logical sequence, starting with the doctor, who shoves a thermometer under our armpits, then makes us sweat before giving us a cheeky thumbs up. We all get through. I'm told to go back to drive the car through. As I leave the building I hear a soldier call me back. Tits.

'What is your name?'

'David.'

'My name is Islam.'

Shit, I've read about you in the papers.

He was just saying hello. Things are just as friendly at the customs office, and the car search, which involves one guy opening a wash bag and quickly getting bored, while the female inspektor chats in fluent English about our car and the trip. Apparently they've had shitloads of rally people through already, so they know the deal.

Our first taste of Uzbekistan - friendly, easy, and handy with the old anglais. This is a relief - it's always a bit weird heading into another unknown territory, but once you get your first beeps and waves and hellos out the way you're away.

We head for Bukara, an old town full of elegant mosques, bazaars and old bath houses. It's also well geared up for tourism - there's loads of hotels everywhere, and we park up outside a flash-looking restaurant next to the river, to work out what to do. A kid comes over and starts naming every footballer in Europe. He's soon joined by an old drunk, who keeps hugging Steve while letting out little tickly coughs. I pop back down the road to a hotel we passed - it turns out to be a lovely old C19 building, forming an octagon round a central brick courtyard. Tis ace .We stay there, in a room with unfeasibly ornate wooden beams.

We eat at the flash restaurant, fearing it's an unnecessary extravagence. Comes out at $5 each. That's ridiculous. On the way back to the hotel, we pass a group of young blokes playing backgammon outside a barbers. One speaks brilliant English, and ends up offering to take us around the town the next morning. 'You look tired,' he says. Yup.

Day 28: truckers and whores

2009-08-14T09:12:00.000+01:00

Mary, Turkmenistan. Jeff nearly got in a fight a minute ago, for holding hands with a whore. What a brilliant trip.

I'm quite pissed as I write this. Something about drinking in the heat. We reckon it was 40-plus today. Bottled water we had in the car was piping hot even when it'd been sitting in the shade, which says something about the ambient temperature. It makes doing anything really hard. Driving saps your energy; even writing is really hard to sustain for more than about 15 minutes. Sweating like a loon and smelling like the old woman who used to sell flowers in Stenalees is, however, piss easy.

We'd been braced for bad things in Turkmenistan. From a quick glance at other rally teams' blogs, everyone seems keen to see the back of the place after run-ins with the police here, picking up fines for innocuous stuff like not having a clean car. And after reading about all the weird officialdom, and tasting the bureaucracy at the border, we'd really feared the worst. But it couldn't be more different.

Take this morning. We got up early at our camp, and drove straight for the underground lake at Kow Atta - a natural sulphur pool 65m under the surface of the earth. It keeps a natural temperature of 36 degrees 'on the celsius'. (The information board there also says you're forbidden from going in if you're 'in drink'. I like this phrase. 'Sorry love, I accept full responsibility for that. But I was in drink.')

We make the most of the soothing qualities of the water. Which was hot. Then coming out, into the heat, we wind up in a prolonged photoshoot with our fellow bathers. It starts with one request for a photo, then works through a thousand permutations of different people and cameras. Then they come to see the car, and it all happens again. The tourists have become the attraction.

People here greet you with a warm two-handed handshake. It's great, and it feels incredibly genuine. They seem truly stoked to see you. Even Azerbaijan had an underlying sense that friendly gestures may be offered with money in mind; here it's all part of the Turkmen nomadic heritage. Two generations back they were still wanderers, and extending a warm welcome to others is a fundamental part of the culture.

Which is ace fun. Ever since Turkey the car has been attracing more interest. But now everyone is beeping and waving at the car, or 'machine' in the language of these parts. People are always keen to see my machine. And when they see my machine, they always point and laugh. Women, kids, men with moustaches - everyone loves my machine.

After the photoshoot we settle onto this outdoor bed thing for a coffee. You're served up a lot of instant Nescafe round here. It's a bit of a disappointment - I figured you'd get cracking coffee thanks to the Turkish influence, but in these parts they're all about the chi.

And bamboozling you with currency. They had manat for ages, then recently decided to modernise it and introduced a new manat. It's 5,000 old manat to one new manat. Which is fine. Except everyone still talks in old manat. And they abbreviate it, showign you a calculator with 145 on it, meaning 145,000. At first I was handing over the equivalent of £200 just to buy a Mars bar. Much mental arithmetic. It's like living in a box-question from our old GCSE maths textbook.

Fully refreshed we set off on a 500km drive to the capital, Ashgabat. The roads are potholed and bumpy in parts, but we're mainly keeping a steady 60, driving in the relentless heat across the desert, the mountains to our right forming the border with Iran. There's not much around, but we're never far from civilisation - trucks, watermelon markets on the side of the road, the occasional petrol station.

We're heading to Ashgabat for cash - we've spent the last of our local currency on petrol, and there's nowhere to withdraw money round here. The only place to use your Visa is at the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs which, like most of the public buildings in Ashgabat, is a deliberately ostentatious edifice. Turkmenbashi isn't a man to hold back. Driving around we see some of his incredible displays of egoism, big gold statues of himself next to lavish waterworks and huge needles. Remember the Rumana, the book he had blasted into space? He's even built a statue of that.

Cash in hand, we drive on again, to the brilliantly-named Mary. We've been recommended a home-stay but struggle to find it in the back-streets of the dusty town. The air smells of sulphur. We pull over to ask directions, and soon I've got a whole crowd trying to help out. One bloke knows it and gives me full directions, but it turns out he's talking about somewhere else - the town's most expensive hotel.

I'm just about to give up when a guy comes over speaking pretty good English - he says if we follow his Suzuki jeep he'll lead us to a cheap hotel. So he drives us about 2km out of town and we pull up in a car park next to a truck stop. Another great act of kindness, which leads us to exactly what we needed - three proper beds, aircon, a shower and a cooked meal. All for 70 manat, or 350,000 manat. Or, in our regular parlance, fuck all. Then the bloke is asking if I can get him a visa for England. I doubt it. He's got a vehicle parts business and he's keen to use us to set something up in England. I'm not sure he knows who he's dealing with. I give him my number anyway, and he actually seems intent on calling it. That'll be weird.

Soon we're all showered, my first proper one in a week, and now out in the yard, tucking into flame-grilled pork, going for a second plate of chicken, and drinking a few cans of Efes lager. Much needed. I notice the clientele. Most of the people eating here are truckers from the adjacent truck stop. There's a lot of big burly dark-skinned men in thier 40s. Each table of men has a woman on it, most wearing clothes that emphasise their chests. People stand in couples talking in the darkness under trees. Definitely a knocking-shop.

One of the girls has the exotic Turkmen look, with jet-black hair and large eyes in an almost oriental face - she walks past our table and fixes me with a very deliberate look, calculated to say 'you definitely want what I'm offering, but there is no way on earth that it's free.' We conclude it's probably cheaper than our friend in Turkey.

Loud Turkmen music is blaring out of the hotel bar. We have to go in to check it out. It's a brown room, pitch black, lit only by the incessant flicker of a strobe-light. The burly trucker types sit around tables, again with a handful of women spread about, a few young and lithe, others a little older and rounder. The TV above the bar plays Turkmen karaoke videos, of blokes in shirts dancing with bended knees and their arms out, while the camera fixes an extended close-up on a woman's ankles.

One of the girls in the bar has started dancing next to our table, winding her body round, slow and sultry, running her hands up and down her flanks. She's fairly ropey, it has to be said. And she's looking in our direction. Is she? She's looking almost past us. Ah, she's watching herself in the mirror next to our heads. That's quite unsettling.

There's a large blond girl here at the other end of the figure scale. She has latched onto me, talking in bits of English. She keeps saying 'sorry, please,' and seems almost too keen to welcome us to her country. She keeps asking what I want. She seems to mean what drink. I hope she means what drink.

The fit one from earlier is at the bar, absolutely hammered. Then she gets up and tries to get Jeff to dance. He's not budging, so she wanders dejectedly back to the bar, upon which she then decides to rest her face. Then she comes round again and beckons Jeff over to her stool, gripping his hand in a tight clutch, and kissing him on the cheek. She's definitely in drink. Suddenly a bloke comes over, grabbing her hand and pushing Jeff away. Scrap on. It's all over pretty quickly - everyone came in to usher him outside.

Two minutes later he's back, shaking our hands and saying 'no problem, no problem, we are friends'. No problem, mate. He says he's having trouble with his girlfriend. I surmise the trouble may be that she seems to be profiting from doing the nasty in truck stops. Then again, maybe it's not a brothel. Perhaps this random collection of burly men and variously-shaped attentive women just happens to be what the Mary nightlife involves on a Friday night. I dunno. Anyway, after nearly getting into a fight (not that near really, but it sounds dramatic), we go to bed under air-con, dreaming of Soviet ferries, customs offices and heavy-blond-induced injuries.

Day 27: the sound of cavalry drums

2009-08-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

Western Union, Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. We turned up at the border last night with no visas and no money. Yes, we are dicks. So now I'm at the bank, trying to explain what I need: $500. Otherwise my friends can't get in the country. Or, I suspect, back out of the country.

The girl speaks no English, which could be a problem. If this doesn't work, we're in the shit. But as the team motto goes: duntwurryboudit.

I'd left Jeff and Steve sleeping in the car, on the tarmac next to the ferry, a couple of hours before. It made for a brilliant introduction to a country - just wandering out of the passport building, crossing some railway tracks and picking an alleyway down the back of a row of crumbling sandstone houses, past dusty back yards formed of bits of wood, home to big dogs, barking their rabies at me. Exactly what makes trips like this so good. Where am I? Turkmenistan. What's going on? I've no idea. But I need a bank.

I've got a proper mission. Namely:

Find the bank.

Work out whether I can wire money to myself.

Failing that, call home and get someone to loan us some, and quick.

Buy some supplies.

Take money and food back to my boys, get the visas and get the fuck out of visa hell.

It's hot already. The sun is coming up over the arid hills, a huge white ball glowing ominously at 8am. Again, there's no air. I've got the sum total of $2 to my name, which I use to get some essential supplies to see me through the mission: a bottle of water, a Mars bar and a can of 7-Up.

I go to the bank, and the security guard tells me I have to wait. Turns out the time is an hour earlier than I thought, thanks to the dual hassles of time zones and the weird clock on my Nokia phone, the battery on which died on the way over.

Which means I'll need to use a public phone to call England. With no money. I just spent everything I had on sugar. Ah, balls. So I'm sitting in front of the bank, in the rapidly rising heat, running through possible options:

Call England from the bank. Unlikely.

Go to the decent hotel where they speak English and explain my predicament, use the phone or internet there. That's fine, but it's 2km in the wrong direction.

Walk the 2km back to Steve and Jeff empty-handed, asking to use Steve's phone. Can't do that.

Somehow charge my mobile. That's not going to happen.

The bank opens and I go up to the Western Union office. This isn't like any bank I'm used to. It's more like an old school, with groups of people hanging out, going in and out of different rooms. There's a snooker table at the top of the stairs. The girl in the Western Union office is pretty, wearing traditional long dress and headscarf. She speaks no English. I'm trying to ask whether I can transfer money there myself, from myself to myself. She has absolutely no idea what I'm on about.

I'm just starting to think it's going to be impossible to do anything, when a bloke comes in who speaks English. I explain my predicament, and he starts warming to me. Ok, he says, you just need to get someone in England to stick $500 in and you'll have it in 15 minutes. That's ideal. Except I can't call anyone in England to organise that. I've got no money. I wave my phone at him, and he scurries off with it, coming back five minutes later with a charger which actually fits. 'Dave,' he says, ushering me into one of the offices. And there I sit, on the chair in front of his desk as he's dealing with an incessant flood of clients cashing in their wages. I'm sitting there the whole time sipping coffee and eating donuts, looking vile, and being waited on by an incredibly fine-looking girl in traditional garb.

Turns out his name is Vepa, and he has a brother living in the UK. He's a lovely bloke. And not just because he's feeding me coffee. He keeps interrupting his work to ask me more questions. He's a life-saver - he hosts me for over an hour, as I wait to connect with Pat & Trev back at home, who come through superbly at 6am and manage to sort it all out. thanks muma and dad. Bingo.

Moolah in hand, I retrace my steps to an area that had a lot of taxis and a few shops. I go into one to buy water, and the kid there starts talking English. He sorts me out some water, and talks me through the weird currency, then even takes me across the road to another shop where I can buy food, and helps me sort out some nibbles. And then he takes me bakc into the street to hail me a cab, something made far trickier here by the fact that no cab has a sign on it. You just have to pick a Lada and guess.

So thanks to the second huge act of kindness of my first few hours in Turkmenistan, I'm soon stocked up with food, sharing a Lada-cab with two other blokes, and treated to a mini tour of Turkmen housing estates - sandstone houses and enormous satellite dishes - before being dumped back at customs.

Unfinished. To come:

Bureaucratic ping-pong. Unbelievable.

Lunch with the border cashier.

Drive. Finally free - four days to leave Azerbaijan.

Through the desert, camels around us.

Really friendly people. Less pushy than Az. Very mellow. Warm hand-shakes.

Cops - friendly. Wave us through after chatting about the car.

End day - driving through darkness again. Heading for underground lake. Won't make it. Pull into cafe. Bloke suggests 5km away spot. Go for 10km to show us. Next to reservior. Beautiful night of stars, if random spot - drive past military compound to get in. Still everyone's fucking melllow. Boys with guns wave us through.

Set up and settle in for an incredibly moist night.

SMS update 10

2009-08-13T14:14:00.000+01:00

Left at 13th August 2009 at 06:14

Recieved by SMS (Location: Turkmenbashi - Turkmenistan)

stuck between borders due to insufficient dollars so the waiting game continues as we try and get money through a western union transfer. This is turning into a hot hot day, no shelter, water, food or progress. Spirits high as we swat flies.

Day 26: we are idiots

2009-08-12T09:04:00.000+01:00

No man's land, Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. We finally get off the Soviet ghost ship, and are looking forward to rediscovering our freedom by exploring the madness of Turkmenistan, when we receive an almighty flick to the balls: they tell us we haven't paid for our visas. $300 for us, $200 for the car. Ouch. And we don't have any money.

This is an incredibly stupid state of affairs when you're trying to enter a country. It's like clinging on to the axle of a French truck for 48 hours, only to discover they have speed bumps in Dover. So we're stuck. Again. Can't go forward, can't go back.

Go back to floating on the ghost ship off the coast of Turkmenbashi. The country is second-to-last in the world's freedom of the press rankings. We haven't even got there yet, and we don't seem to have any say in anything either. We've given ourselves over to time. You can't ask for anything. Just float.

We wake up at 11am. The news? There is none. We're still floating. And so the day passes. 'Is it Wednesday?' asks Steve. Yeah, it is. I go outside. It's already hot. There's no air. One of the moustached truckers points over at some ships and starts talking to me in German. 'Ein, zwei...' he says. Then he points at us. 'Drei.' Twelve hours of floating and we've jumped just one place in the queue.

We go back to Gulags to get coffee. The guys are playing backgammon again. It's a good time to muse over the nature of the trip. The whole thing is a micro version of life. You don't know what's round the next corner - so there's no point in worrying about anything. What's going to happen at the next border? The next police checkpoint? What will the roads be like? Will David Waur land us in trouble? There's not a single thing you can productively concern yourself with other than exactly what's happening at the moment, which is ideal. And the moment means... waiting.

Justin comes in. It looks like we may be docking tomorrow. That's Thursday. 'So what are your plans for today?' I ask. We could join the captain. He seems to be having a wonderful time. A little white-haired bloke in a hawaiian shirt and slacks, he's set up a couple of rods and is fishing off the side.

I lose my Istanbul backgammon crown to Jeff, 3-0. We're still not moving. We suddenly discover they sell beer in the kafe. But it's $5 a bottle. Ridiculous.

At 3.25 Turkmen time (or 25 past Turkmenbashi's massive pendulous cock in the local lingo), we head back to the cabin for more reading and sleep, till 6pm. Then back to the kafe for sausages. And reading. And backgammon outside on the walkway. Azerbaijani music pipes out through a mesh window, quiet and tinny, its chorus looping again and again for 20 minutes of nomadic rousings.

Steve announces he's 'firmed up', the first time since Bulgaria two weeks ago. That's big news. He wanted that flagged up.

The captain comes past. He's carrying two massive fish.

Then it's back to the cabin for more reading. A thin layer of sweat coats the body. I can see mountains in the distance. The striplight soldiers on by my eye, in its dim electric toil.

Jeff returns to the cabin. 'What have you been doing?' I ask him. It's the sort of thing you ask someone. Jeff laughs at the ridiculous question. 'Nothing.' Oh yeah.

Back to the kafe for dinner. It's meat and rice. We decide to ask if they sell vodka. It's $10 a bottle, which is a better price than the beer. And all are agreed it'd be ridiculous not to drink vodka right now. The woman begrudgingly fetches it. A bottle of Ideal. That is ideal.

We head up to the deck to drink and wile the evening away in the stark shadows of the floodlights. In the distance we notice an orange glow, too random to be city lights, too far away to be a fire. It must be one of Turkmenbashi's statues, given some tasteful uplighting.

We go back to the cabin, where I write this blog with the mosquitos. Surely we'll be moving tomorrow...

... worse than that, we're moving right now. Just when I was settling in for a night's sleep, with a proper bed, albeit a potentially scabetic one, we hear the loud clanking of the anchor coming up. For fuck's sake. They've kept us on this thing for days. Now instead of sleeping we'll be spat through customs and out into a night of driving. No time to dwell on that - a lunatic is storming round rapping on everyone's doors to kick them out the cabins.

Soon we're out on deck, watching the arid town of Turkmenbashi inch closer as we slip up to it in the night. It makes the end of the voyage as eerie as the start, floating out of the darkness dreamlike towards a town of low lights, backlit by that orange fire glow in the desert behind it.

We watch as the ship docks, and people run around the deck pulling frantically on essential things. About 20 people have emerged - they must've been on the boat the whole time, just hiding in their cabins. They clearly knew what they were doing. Bed in, my child, this ride's going to be shit. A cocky youth in a white vest keeps blatantly taking the piss out of us. All his elderly relatives laugh, including a stick-thin woman in traditional garb who's only two feet high.

I suddenly realise the three Azerbiajan truckers have a Three Stooges quality to them. I wish I'd noticed that ages ago. As I think that, one of them hits his mate in the stomach and laughs. He can't be laughing long - it's ages till we're let off the fucking thing. Waiting again, among the hum of engines, the smell of fuel, pockets of chit-chat in foreign tongue dotted around the deck. Transit souls, sharing their low moments with us and the mosquitoes.

Finally they give us the signal - there's no proper way out, so all the passengers trudge down to the train bay. It's 3am. Lorries start their engines early, sending filth into our lungs. The truckers light up cigarettes among the hard metal. Steve goes to reverse Mr W out the bay door - she doesn't start. We give her a push down the ramp and she goes. But we've got a flat tyre. Mr W has slowly started falling to pieces.

In the queue outside the building, we notice that the faces around us have changed once again. There's a definite Asian quality creeping in to the features of the soldiers. Faces are softer, kinder. It's a great thing about the nature of the trip - you may be left with a vague feeling of dashing through a lot of these amazing places and not doing them justice, but you also get to see the span and moulding of cultures, step-by-step, with your own eyes. From china-clay mining villages around a Cornish town built around a shitbag Wetherspoons, to Turkmenistan, a nation built in the image of a complete mentalist whose claims to divinity would surely melt away if someone just gave him a cuddle.

We're getting excited about all this weirdness when the officials deliver the visa bombshell. We' were under the impression we'd paid for the visa like all the others, and that it was just a case of arriving and making the transit visa operational.

Discuss options. Hmm. Thanks to the fact we didn't buy beer on the boat, we happen to have exactly the right money to buy one visa. That person can then go into the country and get cash. But they don't have ATMs. The only options are go 500km to Ashgebat and use visa to make a withdrawal, or to get money sent over from home. There's a Western Union in the nearest town, so that's what we decide: I'll get my visa, and go to the bank when it opens to get Pat&Trev to wire me some bail-out money.

It's weird time. After being stuck on a boat, we're now stuck in no-man's land. Can't go forward, can't go back. Just float. And hope I can get some cash.

Day 25: back in the USSR

2009-08-11T08:56:00.000+01:00

The Caspian Sea. This may be the point at which I have to pack this blog in and admit defeat. I'm not sure I have the words to describe it any more. I'm on the deck of a dilapidated Soviet passenger ferry, sitting under a spotlight as the ship waits in the port at Baku, on the Azerbaijan coast, for a 150-mile voyage across the Caspian Sea. It's 7am, and we've been up for 24 hours just trying to buy a ticket. And now we sit anchored and waiting to set sail, the ghost ship's human cargo.

I concede: the weird is definitely winning.

Jeff has lost the ability to speak. I keep saying things to him, trying to convey my own addled mind's take on what we're seeing - the beige, the brown, the condemned lifeboat - but he can't respond. He's in stunned delirium. 'It's just so fucking...' He shakes his head. The best thing: we paid $500 for this. But in the strangest possible way, it's actually worth it.

I was half-cut and exhausted when I drove on - three hours' kip in two days, and another night in Ernst's van drinking beer, this time topped off with rakia, a weird Croatian spirit. We crawled Mr Wazzboobleyoid into the belly of the ship, one of only two cars parked in the harsh metal shadows cast by the collosal freight trains. There's no service, no information, no way out. We keep trying to get up to the passenger deck - apparently we've got a cabin - but people keep pointing us the other way. Eventually we suss it out, going back off the boat, clambering over huge deathly maritime cables, and back onto the dock - hoping to make it back up the steps and boarding before the thing starts to move off.

A humourless blond woman takes us to get sheets, then barks us in to our cabin - a tiny wood-panelled box held together by stains. Viral mattresses, a rotten ceiling, and a flourescent light full of flies. I can't help laughing.

Where are all the passengers?

Next to our cabin there's an empty lounge area with a few rows of seats sat facing a yellow wall. The plan of the boat is written in Russian, but among the incomprehensible symbols I spot the words 'restauran' and 'music hull'. I imagine a skeleton band of Stalin's fallen soldiers, playing a death waltz, animated by Ray Harryhausen. We're still drunk, and this place is ridiculous.

Jeff and I are still marvelling from the deck when Steve runs up shouting - apparently Mr Wazzboobleyoid's hazards have come on again, her impulsive blinking lighting up the iron flanks of the trains in the gloom of the hull. A cry for help perhaps. We disembark again and run down the steps to stop it, and then finally turn in.

We wake up at around 6pm. Totally confused. The boat is moving, and the desert mountains of Turkmenistan are looming large in the distance. We go up to the deck and watch. The ship aims itself through a gap in a natural spit - two banks of sand so big there's room for a large military-looking compound on it, and a load of camels roaming around. Yes. Camels.

Pretty soon word comes in that the boat won't be getting in for a while. We've stopped. It's 12 hours since we set off. The port at Turkmenbashi is closed. Estimates vary - it could be three hours, it may be two days. Of course you figure it'll be the former, but you also know that time moves differently here. The whole thing has a beautiful symmetry. You arrive at the port, and no-one can tell you when the boat is going to leave. You're on the boat, and can see the other port, and no-one can tell you when you'll be getting off the fucking thing.

Of course the waiting gives us some rare time to read up on where we're going. And it seems the weirdness of the boat is just a taste of what's waiting for us the other side of those mountains. Turkmenistan has been built in the image of its dictator, now deceased, who got everyone to call him Turkmenbashi - prince of the Turkmen. He demolished half the capital's residential areas to build theme parks and statues of himself, banned freedom of the press, bugged hotel rooms, and wrote a book of nonsensical spiritual thinkings that he forced everyone to read, saying if you read it 100 times it guaranteed a spot in heaven. It's since been sent into space, to orbit the earth for 150 years. There's also footage on YouTube of interviews with Turkmen architects, pronouncing Turkmenbashi to be 'the greatest architect in the history of the universe,' because he 'designed and built all the world's great buildings.' Turkmenbashi's slogan: 'People, nation, me'. A humble man.

Looking out the porthole I can still see his eponymous city in the distance. It seems we're already floating in his eddies.

We're starting to feel incredibly rank, but of course there are no showers. Jess and Justin were told there was one in their room. It turns out to be a piece of piping. There isn't even a gents' toilet. We're using the women's, where they've taken a tiny regular toilet and converted into a squatter by installing a high metal footplate on either side. Jeff gets his aim wrong.

Still we wait. It looks like we'll be getting in in the morning. We sit in the restaurant, opposite three Azerbaijan blokes playing lightning backgammon and pouring tea into their guts. There's a constant electric hum, and striplights douse the room in beige. It's a room of Soviet shadows. Interrogation yellow. On the wall someone's stuck a row of cheap posters, building an artist's impression of paradise - waterfalls, fresh fruit, palm trees. One is titled 'The Milky Way and the Hightest Heavens', while 'The Beauty of Nature' depicts two stags hovering above a stream. It's awful. You too may dream of that while dining on a bowl of potatoes, in a floating gulag of nicotine and asbestos.

A bloke on the boat demands our passports. This is a grey-area of travel that it's hard to get your head around. We've heard of rally teams fighting to keep them, and of people being charged to have them back. Then again, people need to send passenger details ahead. In the end you really have no choice but to hand these things over. Our passports are down in the car. Another oddity of this boat - it's fine to wander back down, unattended in the darkness of the floating train yard, to get them.

Jeff gets the passports and hands them over, and the bloke just takes them to the office and photocopies them and hands them straight back. You feel like a dick arguing with someone who's just doing their job.

Back in the KAFE, our blond hostess is surly as she delivers us more chi. She is capable of the odd smile, she's just been soured by her job. What does working on a ghost ship do to a woman? Spending your life crawling across the same 150 miles of sea, sweating at the arid centre of the world, on an empty boat who's greatest days are far far behind her, and the memories of which are brown at best.

We spend the rest of the night on our bunks reading, and turn in around 1am. Surely we'll be moving tomorrow...

Day 24: we wait...

2009-08-10T08:53:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer: I'm too hot to write this up properly, but I just re-read my notes, and it sums it up perfectly. So here it is in note form)...

The port, Baku, Azerbaijan. I sit waiting for the endless train to finish, so I can half-drunkenly drive the punto onto the boat and finally get some sleep.

Wake up in van.

Suss out ticket information. Office is just empty room. One man sits by desk. Go in and he puts you on a mobile. Bloke speaks pigeon english says to come back at 12.

We go off to hunt dollars to pay for the boat. Need to make a visa withdrawal, as no-one's taking our cards. Steve and I waiting ages in a massive bank, two scruffy twats. Get it eventually, go back to the port.

They say to come back at 6.

Steve opts for sleeping in the car at the port, Jeff and I have a ramble round the city. Get past the manicured facade to see some pretty old streets. Ambling and talking. Stop and get a coffee. This place won't be like this for long - indiscriminately caning the old buildings to build the oil shrine.

Get back for 6. I speak to the bloke on the phone. 'I see you at 2 today night. Boat coming in then. You go Turkmenistan. 2 today night. Maybe 12. maybe one. I see you at customs office. I see you.' I keep trying to ask how to buy a ticket. 'I see you at 2 today night. I see you.' Ok.

Jess and Justin. Start chatting. They've got beer. We go for beer and kebaps. And a shisha. Get quite a sesh in.

Go back and Ernst and Ollie have arrived. Cooks tajine, more food. Get quitars out, blues about shepherd's sex disc blues. I go car for 15 mins kip. Then news comes in - there's a boat.

Ticket rigmorale.

When we do that it turns out to be the bloke from the morning who sorts it all out. Why didnt' he just give a ticket when you arrive? OR put a sign up or something. But there's nothing. Nothing.

Soon we'll be on the boat.

Day 23: police and thieves in the street

2009-08-09T08:49:00.000+01:00

Baku, Azerbaijan. It's deep in the night. We've driven the breadth of the country and finally reached the Caspian Sea at Baku, a soulless shrine to oil money, where we've heard the bars are full of drunk Scottish rig workers fighting, and the police patrol the streets in phat BMWs.

After scouring the fading alleyways of the old town, we finally find the Thousand Camels hostel. We step over the bodies of travellers sleeping on thin mattresses in the lobby, and a young Russian-looking bloke in white vest and jeans shows us to a dusty old sofa. A day's drive across Azerbaijan to find our sage.

He sparks up a cigarette.

The room is dark, the silences long. We talk in hushed tones.

'We are going to Turkmenbashi,' I say.

The sage offers a barely discernable nod.

'Do you... know... when the boat leaves?'

He takes a drag on his cigarette.

He exhales the smoke.

'The boat?'

'Yes.'

He taps the ash. I watch it fall slowly to the ash tray.

'No.'

We've been following Ollie and Ernst in the van to Baku, which we reckon is about 600km from last night's camping spot at restauran Palid. It's all open countryside and one long road. Jeff recalls the road with the bend in it back in Bulgaria. The road to Baku beats that. 'It's a fucking straight road,' he says.

We've got lush mountains in distance ahead of us as we drive across the plains. The territory looks unforgiving, but watching the dusty road is fascinating. It's full of old Russian cars and trucks, and little dudes riding past overloaded on little mutant scooter-trucks. We see three-wheeled tractors. At one point we're on a main highway entirely engulfed by cows. Everyone's selling watermelons. We see a truck rammed full of cattle. Steve's suspects they're actually dead.

I hear a loud toot, and look up to see four dudes driving past in a tiny blue Lada. They give us a big thumbs up, flashing huge grins as they overtake. It's a happy feeling. The tunes are on and everything is well with the world. And it's a world away from that gated military compound at the border last night.

There couldn't be a starker contrast between the warmth of the regular people here and the b'stardity of the law. The whole system is screwed. Ernst tells us he heard that you have to pay a small fortune to become a policeman. Then in your first year you basically work for yourself. Any money you get, you get to keep. No wonder they're keen to abuse their power to rinse westerners.

It's not too long till we're on the receiving end. We hit a police checkpoint, and the van boys are pulled in ahead of us. The cops wave us in too. One comes over and asks for Steve's 'driver document'. Before Steve can even dig out his licence, the cop leans in and traces a 60 on the steering wheel with his finger. He means dollars. We fumble our way through it and give him 30. He lets us go. We drive up the road to wait for the others, and have a discussion about the right approach. You can treat the whole bribe thing as a complete and unjust pain in the arse, or just part of the way things work here. However you look at it, you can either pay up, or choose to sit it out and wait for them to get bored with the whole charade. There's probably no right answer.

The van boys pull up beside us. Turns out they had a hell of a time. Ernst got hammered for not wearing his seatbelt properly. He tried to play the game with the cop, turning his empty pockets out and playing dumb, but he was taken off into an office - which the captain promptly left, leaving two blokes standing really close to Ernst's face, really tearing strips off him. They tried to get him for $250. Crazy. And once it gets that aggressive, it starts seeming less of a game and suddenly very real. 'Not a good experience,' says Ernst afterwards. He gave the bastards all he had - $80. But what about the next checkpoint? This country could end up costing a packet. And to make it worse, we've only got $14 left. And no local money at all.

All you can do is drive on. And enjoy the locals. Guys by the road are jumping up and down waving at us. Roadworkers wave to us from their lunchbreak. We watch a line of cattle herders cross in front of us on manky little horses. The views are amazing: rainclouds spreading shadows on felt fields.

Every now and again we see a billboard advertising a drink called Extra Dad. It's marketed in other countries as Mummy's Special Friend.

As we're driving we hear that Gabi from Romania is following this blog. Hi Gabi. Great to hear from you. We're still going. But Azerbaijan police: BIG PROBLEM...

We reach another checkpoint not 50km from the last one. The van gets pulled again, but we get past unnoticed, and again wait up the road for them to get through. This time Ernst has been done for a dodgy overtaking manouevre he didn't make. And this in a country built on suicidal driving. Again, the fee is over $200. But his cop is softer this time and his pleading works, and he gets it down to $10. It all seems painfully random. It could be $200, it could be $10. And technically if someone's willing to shout at you in the face for a crime you didn't commit, there's no reason why they wouldn't be prepared to stick you in jail for a while. Look what happened to the A-Team.

I wonder what these people are like when they go home from their jobs carrying unfeasible piles of watermelons on top of small cars.

'You should have seen how many watermelons I had on the Lada today, love.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Loads. Put the kettle on, I'm gasping.'

Our convoy continues for a bit, then the van pulls off the road outside a couple of concrete buildings. Ernst is still a bit riled from his run-ins with the cops. 'I need a positive experience,' he says. That means drinking tea with the locals. We go inside. The building looks like a cold concrete shell from the outside, and it's a cold concrete shell on the inside too. Just a couple of tables - moustached men playing backgammon on one, and a little moustached man on the other. We join him for tea.

Again, the warmth from everyone is ace. We're surrounded by smiles. A teenager stares in through the window with a big grin on his face. I see casual sweaters everywhere. I bemoan the fact I can't communicate with anyone here, beyond the words hello, thank you, and Manchester United. 'Manchester United?' The little moustached man has heard the magic words. He waves two youngsters across. 'Manchester United,' he says. They bring over a printed sheet and begin frantically pointing at some squiggles. 'Manchester United,' they say. I don't even know what it means. I meant to write that as a joke, but it's actually true. We have a linguistical common ground which, once you've said it, still has absolutely no relevance to anything. I can imagine my Manchester United is different to theirs. Jesper Olsen. Prawn sandwich. Trawlers and seagulls.

I love speaking to these people. Even if we can't understand each other. This morning at restauran Palid, a guy excitedly handed me his mobile. I took it.

'Hello?' I asked, curious as to who in this country would need to speak to me.

'Hellooo! My name Ahled!'

Ah, it's Ahled.

'Hello Ahled.'

I didn't understand anything else, so I just handed the phone back.

We buy some eggs and tomatoes and stop off up the road for feed in the van. Ollie's cooking while the rest of us chat with the locals. The watermelon salesman comes over from his spot across the road, as does the local shepherd. He shows off his mastery of twirling his stick, martial-arts style. Then he spots his sheep wandering onto the road, so he lobs his stick at them - across two lanes of traffic. He's a nice kid for a bit, then he just gets annoying. He keeps drawing circles and talking about 'sex discs'. We work out he wants us to give him porn DVDs. That wasn't top of my packing list. I note that it's unusual to have a litttle foreign chap asking you for illegal DVDs when you're trying to have dinner.

Ernst starts getting a bit pissy with this kid, which is fair enough. As he points out, he starts off friendly, then he's just taking liberties. He's soon trying to peel the stickers of some of our attractive female friends (and one team member's spouse) off the car. There's only room for one randy little bastard on this trip. It's a shame, as we get nothing but hospitality from the locals, true to their roots as nomadic people, but we're left with no choice but to begrudgingly tolerate this chap because he's being a knob.

Later we discover the extent of his twattery: Doug, our duck-dog mascot who has guided us for 4,000 miles, has disappeared from our bonnet. We check the photos and realise he was still with us when we met the shepherd. Never leave a man behind, goes the military motto. We're tempted to turn around, and instruct Ernst and Ollie to kick this sheep-shagger's arse on their drive back through.

After dinner we leave, refusing to rise to the shepherd's challenge to box him, and drive for another few km looking for a cash machine. We really need some cash. We pull in at the next town. Steve goes after the money, Jeff and I hang out by the car, which soon has about 20 blokes hanging around outside it. We exchange salams. Everyone just likes to mill about and take a look at things. Jeff's drawn a map in the layers of dust on the back windscreen, telling people what we're doing. Everyone thinks we're ace. Right now we're so damn cool I'm fairly sure any of these moustached men would happily do me. The shepherd could watch.

We make the plan to plough on to Baku. It's now about 280km according to one local. At normal speed that's nothing, but it's turned into an all-dayer for us, on crappy roads following a lumbering van.

Driving through the black behind a Mercedes van, deeper into Azerbaijan. Just like last night. Jeff driving, eyes fixed intently on the darkness, trying to focus on the shapes.

It's approaching midnight, we pull into a service station to stretch our legs. But this is Azerbaijan, so that soon turns into an invite for coffee. Who with? None other than the local police chief. In a land of intensely friendly people, and impossibly corrupt officials, we finally manage to bridge the two worlds, sitting here in the corner of a highway cafe. The chief talks no English, but that doesn't stop him talking - about how he trained at the police academy in Moscow, and how he has four kids. We talk for half an hour, while all the security guards and everyone else in the place stand around watching, staring intently at Steve's eyebrow ring, and laughing at our inept attempts at communication. After the experiences we've had of the police in this country, there couldn't be a better way to end the day.

Especially when the copper picks up the tab, as we figure ours did. At least we hope he did - we realise that none of us paid. Plus that'd mean there's more to the police here than we thought. At least he's human. Either that or he's radio'd ahead to his mates: 'Three idiots in a Punto coming your way. And they owe the state of Azerbaijan five coffees. I make that $1,500.'

And so to Baku. Pulling in at a garage we look up at the hills and see a huge TV tower looming over the town. The entire thing glows a deep red, which morphs slowly to purple, then green, as it shoots spots of light into the warm night sky. It's probably meant to symbolise hope, to instil a sense of joy whenever the town's populace looks up and see its pretty colours. To me it's a giant surveillance stick, shooting cancer at the clouds.

There's no room at the hostel, so we trawl our way round the town's manicured and polished sea front seeking supplies, and decide to sleep in the vehicles at the port. It's a strange night, especially as we find a bar called Princess Diana's and choose for some reason not to go in. Instead we sit in the back of Ernst's van at the port eating sausages and drinking beer until 7am, and end up with three hours' kip.

It's good to be tired - ours is a task that suits a mangled brain. Tomorrow we must unravel the mysteries of the infamous Caspian Sea ferry. No one knows when it leaves. No one knows when it arrives. And when we awake in the morning, we will be entirely at its mercy.

SMS update 9

2009-08-08T19:16:00.000+01:00

Left at 8th August 2009 at 11:16

Recieved by SMS (Location: Tbilisi - Georgia)

Mr wazboobleyoid is refusing to leave. No starting. Now we are surrounded by helpful locals all with different ideas. We could do with a jump i think.

Day 22: into Azerbaijan

2009-08-08T08:43:00.000+01:00

Tbilisi, Georgia. We're in Dodo's courtyard, supping on coffee and getting ready to hit the road again, when the unmanned Mr Wazzboobleyoid suddenly starts blinking its hazard lights at us. It's our Space Odyssey moment. The machines have started thinking for themselves.

This is its first step on the road to becoming a fully sentient being. We stand outside and hatch a plan to disable the electronics, but Mr Wazzboobleyoid sees our lips moving in the rear view mirror. 'I can't allow that, Dave,' it says. And then it refuses to start for an hour.

It's like we're destined never to get any momentum on this trip. We're stuck in the courtyard, a bit weary from Jeff's birthday do last night, and the car won't budge. Steve's got the Haynes manual out, and Dodo's translating between us and the 12-year-old mechanic who lives next door. We drain the battery trying to get Mr W going, and no-one can work out the problem.

Suddenly Steve remembers a nugget of wisdom given us by the pottery team three weeks back at the Goodwood campsite: the Punto has a weird button in the front footwell that acts as a safety feature to cut the fuel supply in the event of a crash. Sometimes it malfunctions and blocks your fuel off randomly. We try that. It's not that. Turns out Jeff hadn't put the electronics panel back in properly after fiddling with the hazards. Boom. She starts immediately and we're back on. Mr W has been tamed. Almost. Every now and again she displays ominous glimmers of consciousness by randomly blinking her hazards at passing Georgians. Setting us up for a sequel maybe.

And so, after a few problems orienting ourselves on roads that bear no signage, to the border with Azerbaijan. Holy shit. This is the point at which we realise we may have shot our bolt too soon with the overuse of the phrases 'weird' and 'mental'. Half-way into our six-hour wait to get into the country, parked in the twilight on a narrow dirt track leading to a gated compound manned by young soldiers with Ak47s, we're all strung out on how mad everything suddenly looks. 'And we're not even in weird yet,' says Jeff. 'We're just waiting to get in.'

Before that we'd been split up - Steve went one way with the car. Jeff and I herded into a long cattleshed-type structure, from which we emerged an hour later thinking that, aside from urgently needing the loo, it was a relatively smooth entry into the country. We meet up with Steve again. He sits in the car looking serious. 'That was just leaving Georgia,' he says. Ah. 'Entering Azerbaijan is over there. And it takes fucking hours.'

We pee into bottles in the back of the car.

Steve has some more bad news for us. In our time apart he's met with a couple of guys driving a Mercedes camper, Ollie from England and his Dutch mate Ernest. Ollie tried to drive Ernest's van in a couple of days ago, while Ernest was in Iran, but he got told to sod off back to Georgia because he wasn't the registered owner. Several hours wasted just to be told to turn around.

This is a potentially big problem. One of my documents from back in the UK has a typo on it. One of those things which, several months ago back in England in the midst of an admin circus, was easily dismissed by saying 'oh it'll be all right'. So on one paper I'm no longer David Waller, but David Waur. It's small enough to probably be ok, but if the Azerbaijanis want to be dicks about it they will be.

We drive across no-man's land, and join a queue of cars on this little track leading to the compound. And wait. Things don't move. Time passes. All the while my sun-hit head has started to mull this typo issue and all the possible permutations. We may have to turn around. Which probably means end of trip. And we may not be able to get it back into Georgia. Which means a huge pain in the arse. And all because of my laidback/slack/clueless attitude back in the UK. An armed soldier pulls the gate opens. One car goes in. The gate shuts.

Time passes. The others are quiet, and my mindstate gradually deteriorates. I'm going to hate myself if that one ridiculous detail means the boys' trip is finished. The worst thing - even if we get through Azerbaijan, we still have six more borders to go. And that includes the Russians, who are bastards. Three letters.

Time passes.

All around us it's chaos. Impatient drivers are caning down the outside, in the exit road, blocking the traffic out and getting shouted at by soldiers into god-awful acts of reversing back up the slope.

Time passes.

Eventually we get to the front. Jeff is out chatting to the police kids. They're nice blokes. It's one guy's birthday. When the chief is away they ask for cigarettes and food. Jeff gives them sweets. There's something weird about giving an armed man sweets. It's like giving a kid with a lollypop a gun. They're happy to take them.

Time passes.

And then we're in. Steve and Jeff go off to the fairly swift pedestrian entrance. David Waur has to drive the car in, and then sign up for the festival of red tape. First up a pee in a proper toilet, which turns out to be a big brick room full of shit and flies, and an elevated squatter toilet with no door. Or cubicle. Rough.

I'm directed to the cabins, praying that the typo isn't going to screw us up. Luckily the dreadlocked Ernest is there too - we queue together and get to know each other, which proves to be a laugh. It's nice to share this kind of thing. Across the compound we see Steve, Jeff and Ollie - they're through and are now leaning on the barred fence, waiting for us.

By now it's pitch black. A bloke walks through the pedestrian entrance carrying a car door. That makes no sense. Then, from outside compound there's a gut-wrenching scraping sound.A coach driver fails to see a little black car parked next to it. This place is madness. Wads of notes slip into military hands.

Ernest and I get in to our first cabin, bare walls, one bare light bulb, one desk. On the far side the moustached captain ploughs on with filling and stamping my entry forms. Next to me is his young protege, whose face has yet to have the spark beaten out of it by a life of ball-shrinking bureaucracy. He's holding my travel document. I watch his eyes scan the name at the top. David Waur. Then back to my passport. David Waller. Here it comes. He doesn't know what to do. Uhm, he holds it up to his boss. He looks at it. He looks at me. Mistake I say, ready to show him six forms of ID with my address on it to prove it's the same me.

He looks at me. Then he waves the problem away and gets back to stamping.

Ozzy fucking Idealez. The relief is intense.

Ernest and I are in there for hours. Given some papers, asked for some dollars, sent to the cabin next door. Given more papers, asked for more dollars, sent back. Sit down. Ernest has the right idea - he's using his basic grasp of Turkish to talk to get on the officials' level and talk to them as people. They're nice enough blokes, it's just that they're stuck in a shit system. One guy tells me to stand up, then he flops into my seat. We ask him what time he finishes. He writes it down. 9am. It's 10pm now.

While all this is going on, Steve Jeff and Ollie are still outside, still leaning on the gate. They've got to endure all the same waiting, but none of the knowing what's going on. I don't know what's going on either, but at least I get to experience the weirdness directly. Plus I know the typo isn't an issue. After what seems like an age, I'm given the all clear. Yes. And told to head to passport control. No.

I get in the car, drive it towards the gate, and a guy takes my passport and recently-filled forms into another cabin to stamp them. A senior-looking cop comes over. I get out the car. He looks at the roofrack, where our instruments sit hidden by tarpaulin. He motions for me to unpack it. I protest, saying it's just guitars. He walks towards the front of the car whistling. And then singing. 'Mo-nnn-eey'. How much? '$20'. $20 and I drive? 'Yes.' Right now that seems sweet to me. I pay up, jump in the car and make the best drive I've done in a long time - about 10 yards through an open gate and away from admin. Back to my boys.

We head up the road to a roadside cafe and join Ollie and Ernest for a round of teas and a Snickers. Fucking hell. The others pick up on a buzz that Ernest and I have. It may be a ball-ache, but there's a genuine kick that comes from turning into a piece of cattle and enduring a process entirely at the whim of self-serving corrupt officials, and emerging from the other end unscathed.

What an introduction to a country. It's now past midnight. Down an arrow-straight pot-hole of a dirt track, in utter darkness, following Ernest and Ollie. The plan is to find a restaurant and ask if we can camp outside. That way we've got permission and security.

After an hour or more they pull off into the grounds of Restauran Palid, a bungalow surrounded by trees. It's 1am. The owner ambles over. Handshakes. Azerbaijani hellos. He's happy for us to camp. We set up, then round the night off in his version of a restaurant: sitting round a table in one of their big bland rectangular private dining rooms, eating strips of salty cheese and huge chunks of sublime meat, and toasting an amazing day with an Azerbaijani pint.

We are now officially in weird.

SMS update 8

2009-08-07T17:33:00.000+01:00

Left at 7th August 2009 at 09:33

Recieved by SMS (Location: Tbilisi - Georgia)

Just got azer visas that cost 100 dollars each without a voucher. Then afterward told by the dude that with further visas we needed only pay 20 and didnt need voucher. What a txxt! Anyway done now jefs bday on. Gonna find some meat and beer. Thunder storms across the city today buggering up drying laundry.

Day 21: anniversary of Jeff. And war

2009-08-07T08:34:00.000+01:00

Tbilisi, Georgia. Jeff's birthday today, and first up we've got him a real treat - a trip to the Azerbaijan embassy to sort out visas. The good news is this involves riding the bus deep into the chaos that is Tbilisi's road network.

We're waiting at the stop when Jeff's miniature dumpling woman shows up. She's laughing loads through her gurny face, and keeps making a weird gesture, flicking her neck with her finger, and making a little hand signal while looking at me. The chaps surmise she's offering me sexual favours. It's not even my birthday.

This city is lovely. One of those where everyone helps out when you're being a complete flid trying to use the ticket machine on the bus, rather than what would typically happen in London - tutting and/or stabbing. Jeff is ushered into the front seat next to the driver, and spends the journey pissing himself over the driver's approach to chit-chat with anyone within ear-shot.

The embassy is a similar story. The police outside are unbelievably mellow. One sports his cap at a jaunty angle. And the dude inside the embassy the same. He spends ages explaining to us that we didn't need the $100 letter of invitation we were instructed to buy back in England, nor the $100 full visa. If we had proof of an on-going journey in our passport, we only need a $20 transit visa. Of course, he tells us that after we've paid, and we wonder whether he's just pocketing the difference. He then tells us to spread the word, so that others don't make the same mistake. It's the nicest case of apparent corruption we'll encounter this trip, we're sure.

All done, we go on an amble around the town. It's completely fucked. Where we're staying is really fucked, we established that straight away. The embassy area is better, next to a main strip of banks, tanning joints and new restaurants. But even that is built literally right beside ruined housing blocks which look entirely uninhabitable. As if Butlins' chalets had been liberated by the American military.

We're about to step onto a zebra crossing when a massive BMW turns in and canes past us. 'I'm sorry guys!' shouts the driver, leaning out the window. Jeff and I marvel at a city where people: 1. apologise for such things, and: 2. do so in your own language.

What a place. Just down the road we see a guy in a 4x4 getting pulled over by the cops. The cop gets out, of course giving us a quick wave as he approaches the car. What do you have to do in this town, of utterly mental driving and lovely policemen, to get pulled over? We watch with interest: the policeman strides over, kisses the motorist on the cheek and gives him a big hug.

Later it's time to hit the town. By now we've hooked up with a couple of Swiss guys, Omar and Louis, who are up for sharing in the Elf Child's birthday joy. So's Marika. We get lost on the tube to the old part of the town, which in its swankiness gives yet another head-scratching contrast to the rest of the place. The mood is especially weird tonight. It's one year since the Russians invaded Georgia over South Ossetia, and the main square has been turned into a make-shift gallery full of billboards of photography from the war. Happy birthday, Jeff.

We walk down a narrow alley of swanky restaurants, all of us starving. Jeff picks one. We sit outside and end up with a phenomenal spread of Georgian food. I bond with Omar over a shared love of Golden Era hip-hop (1988-1991). Then we go to a crap bar cranking house music. The birthday sesh is taking a while to crank up, even with the obligatory mass consumption of pricey G&Ts. Then we head up ot the rooftop bar, which is better, looking down on a Georgian rock for peace gig, playing to a dedicated if small crowd including two amazing headbangers.

And then out to try and find a club. The Lonely Planet had mentioned a place called the Tunnel Club, in an old nuclear bunker at the foot of Mother Georgia, this massive statue of a woman holding a sword, on a hilloverlooking the city. Steve heads back with Marika, Jeff Omar and I drag Louis along and we go on a mission to find it. Up darkened alleyways, up steps past a church and apartments, to the foot of Mother Georgia. No sign of the club, but the views of the city are tranquil and stunning. The statue's ace too.

On the way back down we say hello to a bloke and his girlfriend. They ask us to join them as they take in the view. They speak barely any English. He's in military uniform, which makes me think today must be hugely poignant. He's probably nursing some very fresh scars. His mate and girlfriend join us too. He's also in the army, and is carrying a gun. A weird thing to notice at 3am. He and I inhabit different worlds.

I know nothing of Tbilisi's story, but it's a pretty city at night.

Day 20: Tbilisi - beautiful and f***ed

2009-08-06T23:31:00.000+01:00

Tbilisi, Georgia. We're on the approach to the Georgian capital. All the way along one side of an entire town, people are sitting on the pavement selling hammocks. 'Diversify, you retards,' says Steve. He's in subtle mode. 'War-zone!' he shouts, pointing to our left towards South Ossetia. We are Brits abroad.

There are no roadsigns whatsoever in Tbilisi. We have to use complete guesswork to get where we want to go. Steve slots right into rally mode - watching everything, sliding into gaps, creating gaps when you need to. And performing blatantly illegal manoeuvres to spin it left and follow Jeff's direction when the signs are saying he has to turn right.

The driving here is mental. Cars fly everywhere, a violent free-for-all set among leafy and elegant streets that have been left to die. The place would have been stunning in its day, and it is still gives out a vibrancy, but the stonework is now so dilapidated it provides an odd and sad backdrop for the people's doings.

We find our way to a recommended homestay, the local form of budget accommodation, half-way to being a hostel but with more of a personal touch. It turns out to be absolutely ideal - we can park the car in the mellow courtyard, covered with people's washing and shaded by vines. The place is run by a lovely little pensioner called Dodo. She's a favourite among backpackers.

Meet Alan, our first American. He is in his mid-60s, and travels alone every summer. 'I have an exploding ego,' he warns us, before pointing out he's been to 133 countries. That explains the permanent beatifik smile he has on his face. He reminds me of football pundit Ian St John, but an Ian St John who still likes to spin yarns about his time at Woodstock. It's great to meet people out there living life in their own way.

I love talking to Americans about football. Alan's face erupts into one of utter amazement as he describes watching Christiano Ronaldo doing a diving header, when Man Utd played Tot-ting-ham.

Later we go out to grab some food. It's our first glimpse of the city proper and it is hectic. Dodo is unfeasibly helpful and has written down the name of a decent Georgian restaurant down the road. We head down there with Alan and Philip, a young German dude. We go in, it's full of Georgians, which is a good sign. Jeff likens the place to Nandos.

At least the food turns out to be decent, if unnaturally weighted towards meat and dumplings. That's once we suss out how to order off a menu that has even more ridiculous alphabet than Bulgaria:

'I'll have a pint of Kazbeci please.'
'Kazbeci? How do you spell that?'
'Uhm, Y, J, ampersand, door key, backward C, duck showing me his arse, N.'

I say suss out how to order, but that did involve some members of our group actually using the Lonely Planet to pick their dinner. Later I overhear Alan talking about a stunning place he's visited. Then he cites the Good Book's verdict on it. Not having a pop at him - he's an ace bloke - but The Book has a lot to answer for. Put it down for a minute.

On the way back we stop to buy wine. There's a tiny old woman in the shop, and Jeff offers her a dumpling from our doggy bag. She's reluctant at first but soon tucks in, working her toothless face around the dough. She's unfeasibly smiley. It's ace.

We end up back at Dodo's, and get into a session of wine and speech. One highlight is Jean-Claude, a Frenchman who's been living in New Zealand the past 20 years. I am addicted to Corrie,' he says, with the slightest French accent. 'Although I have my own reasons for that.' Does this mean some twisted masturbatory fixation on Jack Duckworth? Dunno. Someone apologies that they don't speak French. 'That's ok,' he says. 'I do.'

I talk a lot to a Japanese girl called Marika. She tells me that five rally teams stayed here last week. Didn't go down too well apparently - they came in hammered and shouting in the early morning, and one even managed to puke on Dodo's bed. This explains her blatant lack of enthusiasm when we showed up. She admits as much when I point it out.

She's an interesting character, a freelance translator who travels alone for two months every year. Last year it was Lithuania - she's thinking of moving there next year. That's the strange thing about Japan - it's hugely conformist, but those who get out tend to be more open-minded than anyone. She used to live in Bristol. I assume, from the fact she looks my age, that it must have been recently. Turns out it was in 1986. Jesus.

SMS update 7

2009-08-06T02:24:00.000+01:00

Left at 5th August 2009 at 18:21

Recieved by SMS (Location: Tbilisi - Georgia)

havent quite made tblisi but are camped in a beautiful valley with a 10th c cave city founded by st george and a ruined fortress all within view. The main roads here vary between ok tarmac and mentau off road. Mr wazzbooblyoid has taken his first real spanking and showed his metal. Quite literally. @

Day 19: Let's offroad

2009-08-05T23:18:00.000+01:00

The road to Vardzia, the mountains, Georgia. Utterly beautiful scenery. As Jeff says, you could take thousands of amazing pictures here, but you'd be stopping the car every 20 feet. Driving through the mountains in blazing sunshine. Marvelling over farmhouses built in isolation on what look like sheer faces. But then the tarmac runs out. Shit.

Earlier

We woke up on the beach to more company - three teenagers coming down for a swim. What time is it? 7am. Fuck. Everyone here is nuts.

The beach is little prettier in the daylight, but with the sun shimmering enticingly on the water we put Jeff's turd experience behind us and freshen up with a dip. Then we get the hell out of here as quickly as we can - we're aiming for the capital Tbilisi today, stopping off on-route to see an ancient cave city up in the mountains. What an ace Wednesday.

We're about to set off when the little bald bloke who'd been inspecting our car last night comes hurrying over to us, carrying a bowl of fruit. He tips it into the well on our dashboard, then scurries off again. We are falling in love with this country already.

Then it's upwards, climbing into the mountains, all eyes out the window totally melting at the scenery. We drive through little villages, past roadworks, past farmers, getting overtaken by Transit vans that provide the local public transport, past dilapidated old Soviet buildings. Everyone waves. Stern-looking road workers break into huge grins when we wave at them. One bloke drives past on a digger and lets out a yell. Later we're parked by the roadside, and a truck steams past beeping, arm out the window waving. First instinct is to think you've done something wrong, then you remember where you are and realise people are just genuinely happy to see you.

All is beautiful. And then the tarmac runs out. Suddenly you're not able to look anywhere except the road in front, and a heavenly cruise round the mountains becomes a royal pain in the arse. And the transformation is that instant. You're cruising happily in fourth or fifth, along lovely smooth curves, when suddenly there's a bump and a crash and you're on a dirt track dodging suspension-smashing holes and potentially crippling rocks.

Or if you subscribe to my school of offroad wheelmanship, you're not dodging them. You're managing to hit them. Much to the understandable chagrin of your team-mates. We make one river crossing, accompanied by a hideous scraping sound as the bottom of Mr Wazzboobleyoid has her first genuine encounter with Georgian soil. React by sitting there grimacing. Then do it again 10 minutes later.

I guess this is the introduction to the more serious side of the trip - one mistake like that could easily mean the end of the car. And the end of the journey. The latter part of the trip is going to be like this constantly, which is disheartening, especially when the sun comes up higher and starts cooking your head. You're driving along, concentrating on hazards, berating yourself for being a dick, with the sun beating down on your head, which is swimming with the thought that the next few weeks could suddenly turn incredibly tough.

So in these conditions, our little detour to see an old cave complex seems a mite ambitious - especially as for huge stretches of the journey we can't get out of second, and the fact that we're probably trebling the distance we have to go with all the erratic weaving. And this is a road marked on the map as a red road - the best kind. A major route. We'd hate to see what a yellow road is like. But we figure with all the effort, better reward ourselves by having a break and seeing something, rather than just ploughing on with an endless drive.

Turns out to be hell of a decision. Vardzia. Drive down more of those roads. Through more gorges. More shitty roads, following the river all round. Then on the left, a load of holes carved into the cave, halfway up the cliff-face. Absolutely mind-blowing. But couldn't be less accessible as a tourist destination.

This is brilliant, as there's no touts, only one other group of people leaving as we arrive. And we've got the whole place to ourselves. No rules about where you can and can't go. Unless you do what I do - stumble into a sleeping monk's bedroom and see his feet asleep on the bed. Other than that - roam, into holes, explore passageways, leading up stooped until you come to a huge hole leading three or four floors down - traps for invading armies, like the Persians who came here in the 12th Century. Incredible. We wander into one cave that still has a big metal door on it. And behind that another door, leading into a still-active church. Covered in frescos and original iconography.

Incredible.

The only downer - Steve's been suffering from chest pains the past few days, in fact since he got over his other illness. Probably from being punched flat into a marble slab by a muscley Turk. And my bout of concentration in the sun has wiped me out. I'm there going 'I know this is incredible, but I can't handle it.'

We leave having found full reward for our driving marathon. Then decide to camp nearby. It's a breathtaking valley.

Just up the road we find a flat area and park up for dinner of army ration curried lamb and beef casserole.It's spoilt only slightly by a young bull, who has left the rest of the herd to come and rub his snot around our dirty saucepan.

Then the farmer turns up, dropped off by one of the transits. In England this is where you get told to sod off. We wave, he gives a wave back, and then marches off to rescue his livestock. After dinner we put the tent up, the others take in the stars, and I go to the side of an old stone shed and have my first puke of the trip. You can't beat a good bit of sun-baked nausia.

Day 18: into Georgia

2009-08-04T23:11:00.000+01:00

Batumi, Georgia. This country is absolutely beautiful. I don't have the words to describe it any better than that. It is stunning - steep-sided wooded hills, winding mountain roads, rivers, gorges.

We spend our first night in the country sleeping out in the open, on the Black Sea coast, under a canopy of stars.

On a turd of a beach, next to a pile of rubbish, in the harsh orange glow of the street-lights from the road behind our heads.

Bollocks.

That's the problem with maps. You look at it and see the road running right up the coast, and just figure there could be nothing better than pitching up, cooking some grub and sleeping outside. And when you've been driving all day and it's getting dark, you don't have time to sort anything else out once you've realised that the place is a shit-hole. And we don't know where we are. For all we know it may be like arriving in London and camping on a Stockwell housing estate.

We're not beaten though. Jeff points out to the horizon, and says that our nights spent camping with Gabi back in Bulgaria were all the way over there. We've just driven half-way round the Black Sea. We toast our efforts with a hard-earned dip. Or Jeff does. I'm about to go in when he comes back out looking distressed. 'A turd just floated right past my face,' he says.

We figure this place will be as safe as any, but following the experience of losing the Punto in Bulgaria we don't want to take any chances. So after a subdued stove-cooked tuna pasta dinner, Jeff sleeps in the car. Steve and I lay our sleeping bags out on the beach, and settle in for what feels bound to be a very weird sleep.

And it is. I'm in and out of sleep constantly, dreaming about dog biscuits, the street-lights making it seem like someone has parked up and is spotlighting us in their car headlamps. The cops arrive at some point - I'm woken by the distinctive funk-fart sound of the Georgian police siren, and a few sharp words barked through a megaphone. But by the time I've woken properly and turned around, they've gone. The next thing I know I'm waking up staring up at 20 stone of woman. This big blond woman in a summer dress is talking at me and laughing these huge gutteral laughs. And doing little mimes. Seems like she almost trod on me, then got a shock when she saw my face peering out the sleeping bag. She keeps talking. And laughing. It's brilliant. Steve tells me it's 4am. Her name is Natalia, she lives up the road, and she's out for a swim. What a lunatic.

But that's just a measure of Georgia. Get woken up by a mentalist on the beach at 4am, and they have no intention of slicing you up. They just want to stand there laughing. And talking beyond the point where you'd really like to be going back to sleep.

We were hit by the Georgian attitude even at the border, which has to be the friendliest introducition to any country. I was stuck in some more admin hell (watching the Georgian border bloke repeatedly trying to type in the registration of the car in front with a D instead of a P), and when I finally got back to the car, Jeff was chatting to some bloke and Steve was on the phone - to this bloke's mate, who'd apparently just sorted another rally team out with a load of spare parts. Now he was online, looking over all the maps and stuff to see where the other teams were. He asks Steve our team name. 'Oh, I've been reading about you,' he says.

We then go through more border controls, where we suffer a few more procedural problems. The customs girl is suitably serious - just trying to do a good job - but when Steve gives her a madlob - thank you in Georgian - her face completely changes and breaks into a huge grin. Others wish us a great stay in Georgia.

Driving into the country there's a noticable change, even after Turkey's friendliness. Here everyone stares at the car, driving past eyes fixed on it. There's so much beeping and waving. Park the car, and within minutes you'll have someone doing a full inspection. When we finally park up by the beach, one guy does a full 360 of the vehicle, looking at every picture. It's brilliant. I go over to say hello. There's no English here, but say hello and thank you in their language and everything is peachy.

But there's a huge difference in conditions between here and Turkey too. The roads in Turkey were really good. Georgia is pretty fucked. As well as pot-holes, the roads also have huge square chunks taken out of them. People sell watermelons from the roadside, while cows walk around in the middle of the street - not only in the countryside as we saw in Romania, but in the centre of busy towns. The border town has the feel of the South Coast, but with a Soviet twist. Imagine Brighton full of uniformly bright green tower blocks.

So I guess our final camping spot is fitting - almost idyllic, but actually fucked. But in just a few hours here we've seen enough of Georgia - of the people, the countryside and the quirks -to expect amazing things in the next few days. We'll just be kicking off a little bleary-eyed.

Day 17: Turkey - gobble gobble

2009-08-03T23:06:00.000+01:00

PARENTAL ADVISORY: ALMOST EXPLICIT CONTENT

Terme, the Black Sea, Turkey. I'm sitting with Jeff at a table at a campsite, outside a Turkish family's celebration for their kid's 16th birthday. Steve's back in the tent, ill again. Everyone's in the hall drinking pop and dancing around with their arms out. Out here things are turning seedier.

I've been talking to one of the brothers, Birol (the guy front left) about Turkish girls. Now he's on the phone to one of his female friends. I pick up the fact he's talking about English guys, so I assume he's lining up a night out for me and Jeff at the local discotheque. This would be absolutely brilliant, especially as we'd only pulled up at this place looking for a decent night's sleep. I can hear her voice coming out of the phone, and I start to imagine a night of glory spent impressing the locals by acting like a knob on a weird Turkish dancefloor. Then he turns to me and asks how many acts of oral pleasure I'd like her to give me. Be careful though - it's $100 a pop.

Sometimes I wish I was different.

I'm intrigued as to how he has this girl's number in his phone. He explains that such deeds aren't at all uncommon. Unlike those of most western cultures, Turkish girls don't believe in sex before marriage. Which is an admirable stance. Unless you pay for it. I relay all this later to Steve. 'So they're both extreme marriagephiles,' he says, 'and whores.'

If this isn't already surreal enough, it gets weirder: the conversation with Birol takes place entirely in Japanese. He doesn't speak a word of English, and the only Turkish I know is 'thank you' (which I guess would have been more than sufficient to avoid any gross faux-pas with that Turkish girl), but he tells me he's just come back from five years in Japan, which gives us some linguistic middle ground to play with.

Even before the mention of casual whoring, I was already completely taken with this discussion. It's hard to convey the joy of being on the Black Sea coast talking to a Turkish bloke in Japanese under any circumstances. But when he starts describing such delightfully twisted stuff as the best way to con a girl into acts of fellatio, it only gets better. Here's his tip, chaps: on a night like this, they'll be drunk by now, so all you need to do is pretend that you haven't seen them for ages. They'll be too pissed to realise they've never seen you before in their life, and you're away. For a country that clearly retains a strong moral foundation, Turkey seems brilliant.

This whole episode sums up how ace this trip is. You don't leave a place like Istanbul looking forward to finding a random campsite that night. But you should. Thanks to the warmth and welcome from the family that runs the place, we end up having a far more genuinely amusing and insightful time there than we did in the city.

Not that the city isn't great. It was actually a bit of a pain leaving, especially in the knowledge there's so much more to see there. But we're still only 3,000 miles from the UK. Seven thousand more to go. The Bosphoros beckons, and we realise that driving over the bridge into Asia marks a beautifully significant point in the trip - where things that are essentially simple twists on the familiar make way for the big unknown.

At least we're making that trip together. We bumped into another team in Istanbul, after we saw their car parked outside their hotel. We met up with one of the guys - Beads - that morning, and he told us how all his team had, for various reasons, all had to bail out of the trip along the way. So he's now on his own, and seems fairly upbeat about the prospect of driving the toughest 7,000 miles of the trip solo. He appears a sensible chap, but he's clearly a loon.

We say goodbye to Beads, making loose arrangements to keep him company later on, timings permitting, and then rescue Mr Wazzboobleyoid from her secure parking spot and set off. Steve drives us out through the city and into Asia, with mountains steep to our left flank and ocean to the right. Picture Out Run, for anyone who remembers 1980s arcade games.

I take over later for the best drive of my life, along fast undulating roads cutting through wooded mountains, past fertile lowlands with cattle grazing and vast epic scrubland, the mountains stretching off into the distance. And then Jeff drives on as the sun sets, taking us up to the suburbanised coast road, to the point where all eyes are fixed scanning the blackness for somewhere to pitch up.

Just before we find our spot, we pull into a petrol station. Again, the attendant is unfeasibly friendly, and starts looking at the pictures on the car. He takes particular interest in Lynsey, Steve's wife, and makes a gesture implying she's hot. Steve smiles and points out his wedding ring, and the guy turns hugely apologetic. We laugh, but he keeps displaying his humility. There's nothing like culturally offending yourself.

Luckily we found this place. I have to thank the camp's English speaker, Yusuf, for his hospitality. He could easily have left us to it, but instead insisted we join him for Turkish tea, and then made a point of inviting us to his brother's party. What a nice thing to do. It was all a bit awkward at first - with the complete lack of shared language. But soon Morad, a 40-year-old bloke who looked like a Turkish accountant, was taking us under his wing, leading us outside for beer, and offering to show us around the next day in his boat. Mental. At least their welcome was more impressive than their showers...

We pass a long evening with the guys chatting till about 2am. They bring out the unfeasibly tender lamb at around 1.30. They're all lovely people, even if one is fixated on exploiting loopholes in the Turkish singleton system. We go to bed happy - hopefully this has been a glimpse of what's to come. We're guessing that such acts of hospitality, even the non-oral ones, are only going to increase the more we head east. Just because something is unknown, doesn't mean it isn't going to be brilliant.

Day 16: I hope this isn't a happy-ender

2009-08-02T23:01:00.000+01:00

Istanbul, Turkey. I'm lying on hot a marble floor, naked save for a towel, sweating my tits off and watching my two semi-nude friends get a soapy rub-down from a squat man with a powerful moustache and giant hairy hands.

Soon it'll be my turn. I remember my last massage, in Malta, when I was praying I'd get the less attractive of the two Mediterranean girls, fearing that there was no way my pathetic brain could've coped with being subjected to half an hour of devoted attention from the other one. This is very different. If I find this arousing there is something clearly wrong with me. And I'll be moving to Turkey.

I'd certainly be tempted by the vibe. Wandering around on a tourist sweep in the morning, everyone we encountered was upbeat and friendly. Yeah we're in the tourist part of town, but at least they're fairly mellow about being pushy. 'Hello! How can I rip you off?' shouts one shopkeeper.

We walk around the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque. Jeff points out it's not as blue as he was expecting. 'How blue did you expect it to be?' I ask. 'Blue,' he says. It reminds me of the time I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam with G-Man, and he described the paintings as 'a bit blotchy'.

Not that I can talk. My level of knowledge of anything is embarrassing. As we're wandering around Sultanahmet Square, an area steeped in thousands of years of blending between east and west, I berate the fact that my entire history degree went in one ear and out the other, while thousands of useless facts from my youth as a football fan remain perfectly to hand - ready for that time I'm definitely going to need them. What was Byzantium? I dunno. What territory did the Ottoman empire encompass? Hmmm. Who was the first England player to be sent off in a World Cup match? Easy - Ray 'Butch' Wilkins, Mexico '86.

Tourism is weird though. We spend our free time trooping around looking at remains of older cultures.That's our culture. It's fair enough, as they are fascinating (the square's perfectly-preserved Egyptian obelisk gets us all going) but it makes me wonder what kind of legacy we'll be leaving the travellers of the future, who'll have to settle for tours round the ruins of our tourist information offices.

We soon abandon the tourism for more Zen navigation, wandering around the cobbled streets as the mood takes us, which is my preferred way of seeing stuff. I like the hapzard, 'just chuck it there' nature of the streets and the buildings. A few holes in the wall reveal a glimpse of impressive gravestones, and then we find ourselves tentatively entering the courtyard surrounding a mosque. It's unbelievably peaceful. A guy reclining outside in the sun in his socks beckons us across. We go inside for a look and it's stunning, built in the C13, and full of incredible detail. We find out later that it's something you're meant to see anyway. See us do Istanbul.

And so to the evening, staring up at the old stone ceiling from a pool of other men's sweat. We're lying there prone, letting the heat of the marble floor relax our limbs ready for what's coming. And judging from the reaction of the Turkish bloke who's currently taking a pasting, it's going to be quite the muscular onslaught. We watch as he's ordered to sit on a stone slab next to a little font, and the bloke chucks a bowl of cold water over him. He screams like a child. Hmm. Then during the whole massage he lets out these almighty cries. Jesus. The bloke giving the massage carries on regardless, whistling like a sadist. I feel like I'm next up in a holistic remake of the Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene.

Turns out the bloke was just a bit wet. Jeff and I both enjoy our massage, with the elbow digging around in the back, and the slap of the hand on the thighs, but we're both left feeling he could have kicked our arse a little more. It's a bit like getting all the rubber gear on, getting the big plastic ball strapped into your mouth and having yourself chained to the dungeon wall only to receive a light tickling with a feather, rather than a good spine-tingling 240v of current butterfly-clipped on to the ol' testes.

I'm guessing.

Steve was luckier - he got the more sadistic chap. And he says the bloke found every knot, pushing it into the muscle, into the bone and then out into the marble. He looks a little weary. But we all walk back out into the Istanbul streets refreshed, stopping off with a few cans of Cappy juice to watch a bit of dervish. We're left disappointed by the lack of whirling.

And then it's back for more backgammon and smoking, and trying to wean ourselves off the coffees. I'm crowned undisputed lord of backgammon, which is a far more important role on this epic trip than 'bloke who remembers to buy water', 'king of car packing', or 'dude who doesn't keep losing the car keys'.

We end the day back on the hostel roof, drinking G&Ts. We've had the tiniest glimpse of what is clearly a vibrant, diverse and history-dipped city. Hang on, what am I saying? We've done Istanbul. And so it's off to a final sweaty night in the dorm, and the hairy-handed land of nod.

SMS update 7

2009-08-02T01:28:00.000+01:00

Left at 1st August 2009 at 17:28

Recieved by SMS (Location: Istanbul - Turkey)

THE DRIVE IN TO ISTANBUL WAS ACE FUN. Now on the hostels rooftop terrace overlooking the old city and harbour waiting for some grub. Big fat chill on. Tomorrow checking out turkish baths, massive mosques, general sightseeing and probably some local grog. Ace.

Day 15: Turkish customs

2009-08-01T22:59:00.000+01:00

The road to Istanbul. Our first tiny taste of bureaucracy. Heading out of Bulgaria at the border, we're stopped at three separate barriers where self-important officials leave us waiting as they pore over our documents in their little dens. We do all the waiting, then figure we're through, only to drive round the corner and find yet another cabin. The barrier's up, so we figure we should just drive through. Don't do that. There's an angry little man inside who will tear strips off you. 'You did not go to the salon!' he barks. I didn't realise having a Vidal Sassoon barnet was a pre-requisite for a smooth border crossing.

We drive back and realise we'd missed out an entire buiding, where you have to get three separate stamps in your passport, for reasons we don't quite understand. All processed by uniformed Turks wearing swine flu masks, for reasons we don't quite understand.

The salon is a green concrete bunker, where the pampering is all done with luxurious amounts of red tape. You have to queue at the second window first, at the first one second, and at the third one third. And it's obligatory to forget to get papers from the car that mean having to trot back while the queue builds and becomes increasingly tuttworthy. Looking down on all this is the portrait of some proud military Willy Wonka-style trickster, whose phenomenal eyebrows quietly state: 'I set all this up'.

In the middle of this process you can easily start feeling like there's no way you'll ever get let in. But when I finally reach the window, the guy keeps asking me really nice questions. 'What does that say on your t-shirt? Oh, you're in a band? Have a wonderful trip.' If the rest of Turkey is this friendly it's going to be ace.

We drive back to that final barrier ready to show the livid bloke how well we've done. Jeff parks close to the window so I can just pass the stuff to him. This annoys the bloke even more, as he wants me to get out. I can't open the door. My spastic sense starts tingling. Jeff reverses for a wider approach, whereupon there's a god-awful panicked honking sound as the bloke in the car behind reacts to the sight of a Punto flying blind towards him. And to think Britain used to have an empire and everything.

As usual we're a little behind schedule. The plan was to get up and be on the road from the Black Sea early to beat the hot part of the day. So we're up at seven, after only five hours' kip. We clean up, go for a dip in the sea in the sparkle of the morning sun, then have a leisurely breakfast to use up the Bulgarian cash we've got left. And finally drive off just as the sun starts getting hot. Perfect.

Gabi had woken up a bit pissy that his mate from work, who was camping next to him, upped sticks and fucked off at six in the morning without saying goodbye. 'Big problems,' he says.

It's sad saying goodbye to Gabi. He's been ace. But he's still preoccupied with our trip:
'Turkmenistan? Big big problems.'
'Oh it'll be ok.'
'No ok.'
'Ok.'
'NO OK.'

We swap addresses. He's well up for showing us Romania. That'd be brilliant. And ridiculous, inevitably involving being manly with weapons, shooting things and skinning stuff. If you're reading this Gabi, we'd really like to thank you and your lovely family for being so friendly, helpful and entertaining. It was great to meet you, and if you're ever in England you have to come and stay with us. Idiot vacation.

The mountain road out of Bulgaria into Turkey is the worst we've driven on yet - unbelievably twisty, and riddled with pot-holes. Jeff describes it as 'an impressively fucked road'. At least the sun's still shining, and it's quiet. We don't see any traffic until a minibus comes round a bend - hammering it towards us on our side of the road.

Typing on these roads is a nightmare. Driving on them is no easier. Jeff's driving. He's saying it keeps you focused, like caning it down a mountain-bike track - you have to scan the road all the time for hazards to dodge, looking far ahead and straight in front of you at the same time. With my eyes are down at the screen, I can just feel the car tipping and swerving erratically, and every now and again I hear Jeff burst into loud hysterics.

After crossing the border I take over the driving, at which point the road goes from being a pot-holed death trap to a seemingly endless stretch of brand new smooth empty motorway. We're still in the mountains, but the verdant forest has suddenly turned dustier and scrubbier. We cruise through villages full of people with beaten up trucks and chickens. Stop at a petrol station and everyone's unbelievably friendly. We're getting waves and toots everywhere. This is brilliant. Even taking a leak in a bush gets a nod of approval and shout of 'no problem!' from the petrol attendant. Turkey's ace already.

After a few quiet days on the purile place-name front, we have a new contender. Kumburgaz. We laugh a lot at that one.

Steve takes over for his first drive in several days, guiding us into the heart of Istanbul. We figure this is going to be an utterly stupid experience but it works out really well. We drive past huge Turkey flags, and start seeing the first minarets and mosques of the trip. The Med simmers to our right the whole time. Steve points out the window at all the levels of madness going on, on multi-layered roads weaving underneath the one we're on. It looks hectic.

The Punto's still getting toots and waves, from cars squashed full of moustached men. This is something we'd wondered about - M Waller's on the back window giving the double thumbs up, and I know from being in Israel that in some countries this is the equivalent of sticking your finger up at someone. So when we're overtaken by a car-full of blokes giving our car the thumbs up, I'm paying special attention to the look on their faces. Seems like they're smiling, which suggests we're in the clear. Either that or showing your teeth is Turkish motorist for 'I'm going to ram you and your stinky Italian sweatbox into the wall of that post office'.

Soon we're flying from three-lane motorway to roundabouts, where little kids start washing the windscreen in a desperate scrounge for cash, and then up into tiny cobbled streets lined with people lounging under large moustaches, and straight to the hostel, which is in the Sultanahmet section of the city, the old town, near the Aya Sophia. Should never have been that easy.

And suddenly we're in backpacker land. We check in with the studiously hip multilingual dudes behind the desk, behind posters offering pub crawls and turkish bath experiences.Young lads with massive sacks ask about shuttle buses. Others look slightly bored.

Then we're on the roof of the hostel eating a sublime dinner of lamb and aubergine, a view of the ocean and sprawling city on one side, and a chuffing great mosque on the other looming over a panorama of ramshackle roofs. Ice-cold beer in hand. The call to prayer going off all around us. A Bulgarian campsite this morning, now it's the gateway to Asia.

Dinner done we express no interest in sitting around in backpacker bars - exactly, we're waaay to real for that - so we go for an amble, again employing Zen navigation, and end up walking through amazing dark streets full of locals hanging out, and stray cats getting all scrappy.

On the way we pass a rug shop. They look amazing, and Jeff starts a long excited description of how the rugs are made, saying how each one is bacically a full-time job for a team of people for ages. That's what makes it so unique. Then he turns around and sees the same rug in the shop opposite. 'I'm a dick,' he says.

We stumble upon a cool smoking lounge thing covered floor to ceiling in old rugs, and full of old dudes with pipes playing backgammon. We sit at a balcony table, overlooking the ocean. This is exactly what we wanted from a couple of nights in Istanbul.

The owner gives a quick refresher in how to play backgammon, then we sit drinking far too much Turkish coffee, busitng out a few hard rounds of backgammon while tugging on a shisha pipe the size of an equine phallus.

We like Turkey.

Day 14: Gabi's world

2009-07-31T22:34:00.000+01:00

Who is this Taiwanese child? And why am I boarding his boat?

Sozopol, Bulgaria. The beard-growing competition is hotting up. Steve and I are neck and neck, while Jeff's is so pathetic he's clinging desperately to claims of 'most stylish growth'. He's like a teenage boy doing a Craig David. Meanwhile he's decided mine makes me look like a Flump - 'because they had big lips poking out of their flumpy faces'.

We're supposed to be heading to Istanbul today, but we figure it too special to enter without everyone on full form, so with Steve still suffering we're going to stay at the campsite one more night and let him recover. This frees us up to chill out. The trip hasn't been the same since his body turned weird, and things have hit a little lull. But suddenly being able to forget about going anywhere and enjoy where we are makes us appreciate that we're actually in a pretty interesting place, and one where I can once again bust out my trump card of being 'blatantly the palest person here. By miles'.

We head down for a dip in the Black Sea, which marks a special moment after crossing the whole of Europe, which is pretty exclusively solid. We're not too into a day in sweltering heat on the beach and are about to head back to the campsite when the whirlwind Gabi and his family show up, and then as usual we're swept along into his world. He's calling me over: 'Dave! Come! We buy beer.' I'm really confused, because as he says that he's ushering me into a motorboat - which is being driven by a small Taiwanese boy. At whom he's waving a 50 note. What's going on? Who is this boy? And where are we going to buy beer out to sea?

I wave a helpless goodbye to my peers, and head off across the ocean. The boy seems as confused as me that fate has deemed him part of Gabi's plans. In the end we just take the boat right to other end of the beach, being waved in by a 60-year-old German called Holger. Turns out the boatman is Yo Yo, his son. None of this makes any sense.

Steve, the man who's been out of it since we arrived in the country, has to walk the mile and a half across the sand to meet us. As does Jeff, and Gabi's wife Laura, who's carrying all their beach stuff. Gabi is definitely mental. And we still don't have any beer. So he sends his two under-age sons, Meh and Cosmin, off in a boat with Yo Yo to go and buy us a few bottles.

When they get back we get stuck into a game of beer-fuelled beach footie, in the sweltering heat, fulfilling the ambition we had back in Romania of having a kickabout with the kids in the name of international harmony. The only snag - I'd never imagined that game being interrupted by a middle-aged Bulgarian man jogging across the pitch wearing nothing but a red baseball cap. That's the trouble with imagination: it doesn't prepare you for such brilliant detail.

We head back for more prison food and a mong, and before the sun sets we go for international football round two, again in the sweltering heat, this time on the campsite's run-down concrete court. Gabi coerces two fear-struck Russian kids to play with us. Then a grown man appears on the touchline, trainers in hand, waiting to be asked to join in. He's Bulgarian, and utterly mental - he's so into his football he's running at Mario, the chubby eight-year-old Russian, full pelt, steamrollering him out the way so he can show off his back-heels and clever little flicks, before unleashing full-welly blasts at Steve's face from about four yards. He may be taking it a mite seriously. It's unbelievably hot, but we play on till it's pitch black, like summer nights long gone.

The exertion has totally destroyed Steve, so he crashes out again while Jeff and I explore the beach bars. Friday night, beach resort, height of summer - there's bound to be something happening. Also, since witnessing the effects of illness on our bretheren and noting the importance of keeping your fluids up, I've spent all day drinking beer and coffee and running around in the sun, so it's important to carry on.

We go to a bar where we saw a bird with a pointless rat-dog earlier. She'd scowled at me for sitting near her laptop. The bar is completely empty, save for the two people working there. In fact all the bars we passed on the way there were empty. It's a weird resort.

The staff turn out to be husband and wife. They tell us how it's the bar's first summer, and that with business as it is it may well be the last. The guy's name is Jorge - his Engish is ace, and we enjoy the chance to get to know Bulgarians. The couple aren't happy here - they like the winter, when they work as ski instructors. And we get on really well - despite knowing them for only an hour or so, they're already inviting us back to check out the snow.

Turns out the bird with the weird dog is the incumbent Bulgarian Playmate - she's on the cover this month. Jorge tells us she's mental. Later we catch a look at the screensaver on his laptop. It's a sultry brunette posing in the shoreline in a bikini. We figure it's the Playboy woman. No, he says, it's my wife. Jesus. She looks pleased at our reaction.

We say our goodbyes, and his wife offers her hand for a shake. Jeff wants more. 'Can I kiss your face?' he asks. He's being overly polite because she's foreign, but still it makes no sense and he just ends up sounding weird. I'm quite taken with the phrase, so I ask it too. 'Can I kiss your face?' We walk back up the beach laughing. Can I kiss your face? She must think we're mental.

When we get back to the campsite, Gabi's light and TV are still on, but we can see him lolling on his airbed. We're really quiet, fearing that if we wake the giant we'll be sent spinning yet again into an increasingly familiar world of weirdness. But he stirs and stomps about a bit, and is soon inviting us over. 'Sit'. We sit. Then we're treated to more home-made wine, and a great long chat till the depths of the morning, about life under Ceausescu, and Big Problems in general. At one point he sits there graphically imitating someone with mental illness. I'm not quite sure why.

Gabi decides I'm the biggest idiot of the three of us. I can't really argue with that. Then he looks at Jeff, who's having a quiet moment. 'You have problems,' he says. 'What kind of problems?' asks Jeff. 'Problems in general.' How can a man so clearly mental be so astute?

Gabi is getting increasingly into learning about our trip, and once we get the maps out and show him the plan in all its gruesome detail there's no stopping him. 'Big Problems, Big Problems.' He dubs it the Idiot Rally. Pretty soon he's uttering dire warnings about what we (or more specifically Steve and Jeff) can expect to happen in Turkmenistan. Suffice to say I'm not upset at my random exclusion. Gabi is so pleased with his observation he keeps folding into childlike bursts of gleeful laughter. He is mental, but he's brilliant.

SMS update 6

2009-07-31T03:24:00.000+01:00

Left at 30th July 2009 at 19:24

Recieved by SMS (Location: Plovdiv - Bulgaria)

not at plovdiv really. Actually sozapol. Dave and jeff lost the car while i was 'mal dans le mer'. The black sea will never be the same. Happy boozey local family feeding dave and jeff fire water. Ill stick to dioralyte for now me thinks. Fwarp.

Day 13: I'm sure this is where we parked the car...

2009-07-30T22:31:00.000+01:00

When your whole life is inside a Fiat Punto, best not lose it.

Sozopol, Bulgaria. I wake up early to the sound of 4 Play Nice's Skoda pulling away from the campsite. They're heading to Istanbul ahead of us, which makes us prime candidates for being last again. Ace. We make vague plans to meet there and cover the Turkish coast in mini-convoy, like Kris Kristofferson, the Rubber Ducky. I give them a big 10-4 and they sod off waving.

All plans depend on the condition of our team. Which is buggered. While I'm over at Gabi's family's table, getting fed a bleary-eyed early morning shot of plum booze, Jeff emerges from the tent saying we need to get Steve some drugs, as he's suffering debilitating headaches and stomach cramps. That's not good. We'd figured he'd be past it by now. Maybe it's food poisoning, not a sun thing after all. Top theory is that it's the rotten slice of pizza those bastards gave us in Romania. Gabi's wife is a nurse, and she gives Steve pills she reckons will sort him out. They're such a friendly couple, who keep giving us stuff. What's particularly handy is that this stuff is exactly what we need to hamper their countrymen's attempts to see us off.

I talk more to Gabi and Laura, asking why we had such an unfriendly experience in Romania, while trying to force their drink down my throat without ending up with a face like the campsite's loo cleaner after one of Steve's incidents. Gabi doesn't seem surprised by the reaction we got in Oradea - he suggests the area isn't really Romania, that the Hungarian influence is strong, and that if he went to that area himself he wouldn't even be able to speak Romanian.

It's hard to tell whether he's exaggerating. Everything with him is 'problems'. Big Problems.
Hungaria - Big Problems. His caravan's electricity supply - Big Problems. I ask why he does for a job. My job? Oh, Big Problems.

He keeps banging on about Prince Charles. Diana was a great woman. I ask what he thinks of Camilla. 'Phhfff! Problems. Why when there are millions of women in the world, why Camilla? She is horse princess.'

Meanwhile Steve has discovered the pleasures of shitting in the ocean. Failing to find a loo that isn't an old-school squat job, he makes a beeline for the Black Sea. 'There's something really nice about crapping in the sea,' he says. 'You can't miss, like you can with a squatter. And it washes you at the same time.' Just like a swimming pool then.

Steve's still out of action, so the other two thirds of us drive into Sozopol for a mooch about. We park on the street outside a hotel, next to a big wheelie bin, and wander in. It's essentially a tourist resort, but one where pretty much everything is written in Bulgarian. Imagine Newquay invaded by the number 3 and weird right angles. Jeff is tempted to buy a towel with a print of a phenomenally-breasted naked woman on it. That'll go down well in Azerbaijan.

A few hours later we go back to the car, and get a bit of a shock. Looking at the space outside the hotel, next to the wheelie bin, we discover it's filled not by a Fiat Punto covered in idiots and containing everything we own, but a small clapped out green Lada. That's not our car. The Fiat is not there. A clapped-out green Lada. Where is our car? A clapped-out green Lada. That's definitely where we parked the car. A blue Fiat Punto, which contains everything we own and is fairly essential for getting to Mongolia. A clapped-out green Lada. Tits.

I have to say I can't help finding it quite funny. I figure it has either been towed, which means we'll get it back, or it's been nicked, which means getting to Mongolia is going to be incredibly interesting. The only genuine problem is having no passports. Then Jeff points out they're at the campsite. Oh, that's all right then. I start looking forward to seeing how we'll wind up making it to the finish line.

We go across to the hotel to ask if they saw anything. The receptionist is friendly - as the average Bulgarian seems to be - but he's only just started his shift. He goes out to ask the chef, who says he did see a truck come along earlier and scoop up a Punto. Brilliant. The receptionist books us a cab to take us to the pound, which turns out to be only five minutes down the road.

We get there and quickly realise it's basically a car-park scam - the dude in the booth points us to the other side of the car park and tells us we have to speak to the guys under the umbrella.

We walk over to find a load of shirtless blokes sitting around playing cards. It couldn't look less official. Feeling pretty gormless, we give them the £20 for the fine, they laugh at us, and then we ask if we can have the Punto back. Ridiculous. I point to a huge speedboat parked on a trailer next to our car. 'That's ours too,' I say. He doesn't laugh at that.

We get back and Gabi gives us shit for not listening to him. Apparently this is a scam the police have with tourists - plucking easy targets from the street and getting them to cough up fines - and he reckons he warned us about it yesterday. He's livid. Big Problems. This convinces him that we're idiots, and he won't let up on that for the rest of our stay.

The day ends with Gabi coming over and slating our gas stove cooking - 'Prison food: Big Problems' - before closing a rant about Afghanistan by deftly waving a huge knife around and nearly dropping it through his foot. When we've finished our slop he and his wife insist we join them for dinner, which means more wine and ace sausages, and his dad's home-made goat's cheese, while Steua Bucharest play Motherwell in the Europa League on his telly. His son Meh is getting quite into it: 'Fuck you!' he shouts at the screen when Bucharest are denied a penalty. Gabi just laughs. Soon Gabi is teaching me the Romanian for performing a certain deed on a certain area of a certain relative.

He is convinced we are cretins.

Day 12: the Black Death. I mean Sea

2009-07-29T22:06:00.000+01:00

Sozopol, Bulgaria. Making our way across Bulgaria is all fairly event-free, just enjoying the tunes and more sun as we wind our way through gentle forest climbs, with the sea veering into view every now and then below us to our left. I haven't seen that big wet beast since I left Cornwall. Of course there's plenty to keep the bored motorist entertained - loads more insane overtaking on blind bends, and the occasional game of layby whore-spotting. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with: 'hello handsome, fancy a good time with these mams?'

Steve's still out of it, but we have to make up a load of miles, so we have decided to plough on and hoof it from the Romania/Buglaria border to the Black Sea. He says he's fine in the back, as long as we can stop for him to throw up. Bloody backseat drivers.

Another team from the rally - 4 Play Nice - have been in touch via this blog, saying they'll be on the Black Sea coast around the same time as us. In one way this is a pain - we'd really expected to be last by miles by now, so they've kind of stolen our glory. But given that we haven't spoken to any Fellow Rallyers since the Czech party last week we figure it'd be good to hook up. They say they're heading for Sozopol, a small beach resort towards the border with Turkey, so we agree to meet them there.

The good thing about Bulgarian billboards is that they seem disproportionately weighted towards Bruce Willis. He's in all these vodka ads, declaring - or, I like to think, defending - 'the truth about vodka'. In one he does so by resting his elbow on a sword and looking very bald. This seems to be the key to selling products in Bulgaria, judging by the other ads. One features a bald man in a huge fur coat, surrounded by dogs. Forget sex. Selling here is all about war, hunting and hair loss.

It's not such an epic drive, and we turn up in Sozopol by five, seeking the campsite. Turns out it's way easier in the light. We find the campsite without any trouble and drive around a bit looking for a pitch, before settling for one next to a caravan with about three porch extensions. The owner waves hello, then gets up and comes over to advise us where to set up, making all sorts of Steve-style calculations about where the sun will be at what time. Then he gets stuck in helping stick the tent up. And brings out some tools to help us. And blows up our airbeds. Of course he does. He's Romanian.

Turns out his name is Gabi, a big gregarious tanned chap in a white vest who's here with his family. He's really chatty, but his English, while good enough to understand, is patchy, so as he gets deeper into conversation he keeps calling on his wife for help. She's in the caravan. So throughout our chat with him he keeps pausing, then you hear the odd word - 'chicken', 'plum', 'war' - roaring out with a Romanian accent from a slit in the caravan curtains.

Jeff wanders over behind the tent and suddenly throws up. Then he feels better again. This trip is still weird. Once he's recovered, he makes the point that he'd never considered the concept of Bulgarian caravaners before. He'd only ever thought of it as typically English. But they're all here. Most of them have brought TVs. Gabi's rigged up his own satellite dish. So basically they're all squashed in, in confined rows, having brought all their mod-cons, deftly recreating for their holiday all the realities of suburban life. One guy has a huge flatscreen TV in his two-man tent. I'm surprised no-one's brought a lawn mower.

We take a wander along the beach, which is peppered with open-sided bars playing house music. There's not more than three or four people in any one. It's a bit odd. Pete Tong was apparently playing here last week. We wander back via a shortcut, which leads us into another area full of little wooden shacks. I wish I had the balls to walk up to people and stick a camera in their face, as this place would make a wonderful photo essay - holidaying Bulgarians and their little colourful boxes. We sit around chatting to the guys from the other team - they actually brought chairs. One of them has a gran who lives in Hemmick, the stunning beach down the road from where Jeff and I live.

They're a bunch of engineering graduates from Nottingham University, doing the rally, in a rusted Skoda, to get some fun in before they start work. Makes it all sound so ominous. We're way older than them and we're out doing the same thing. Looks like someone has a mistaken perception about the working world. I'm not sure whether it's us or them. With one man still well and truly down, and another been all weird and pukey, the night is another quiet one for us. Budapest nights seem so far away. I lie down to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, a book recommended to me by Steve Roe, lord and master of Hoopla impro. With the way things are going with the team, it's looking increasingly prescient.

Day 11: have you seen our lion?

2009-07-28T19:52:00.000+01:00

We get the maps and internet out and plan our way down towards Turkey, which involves a massive day of driving. It all starts in the Casa Delureni drive-way, where we pass an old Romanian guy carrying a scythe. He eyes us from behind yet another of the countryside's impenetrable poker faces. At least he didn't try to kill us. He must like us.

Romania has been a little odd. To be honest it's all been a bit sour. Apart from Christina bringing us our delicious breakfasts.

But the countryside is beautiful. Weaving round mountain roads we watch in awe at the Romanian deathwish, expressed through reckless overtaking at high speed on blind bends. Several times we find ourselves driving with a guy on our side of the road heading straight for us, then tucking in at the last minute. Whores wait in laybys next to fields, wearing skimpy bikinis. Cows wander around in the road.

We make what turns out to be a several-hour detour to visit a castle that may or may not have had anything to do with Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration behind Dracula. Not that anyone cares about its claims - the tourist vendors are out in force peddling crap vampire masks.

It's an ace castle regardless - dating back to the C13, and up on a massive hill. Then we're off into even more amazing mountain scenery, Jeff behind the wheel, forests stretching off everywhere. Then suddenly into Bucharest - rude boys wheel-spinning a u-turn in a huge beemer. Chaos. No road markings - massive junctions. Jeff belts it round. Grey apartment blocks everywhere. One guy comes over to give us cards flogging a strip club. 'You don't like?' he laughs. It's the first warm chat we've had since we arrived in the country. It's the opposite of England - everyone in the city is full of warmth, and people you meet in the countryside are humourless pricks.Then we hit the straightest motorway ever towards the border. Or as it should be known 'the road with the bend in it'. We pull in just before the border. We stop off at a little change money shed to see if we need one of those motorway tickets to get through Bulgaria. The bloke there grunts at us. Jeff tries to ask him a question. He shoves him off the step. Okay then, let's just get back in the car.

We're lost. With a man down in the back. Steve's babbling incomprehensible shit from the back seat. Slight sense of urgency here - need to get to a campsite on the other side before the sun goes down. But the sun's almost down. And now another border crossing, which in Romania is bound to be a huge pain in the arse. We crawl up to the little booth. This could be a nightmare. 'Hello! How are you?!' Ah, it's the chirpiest official we've ever seen, just as we're leaving the bloody country. Maybe he can afford to be happy, knowing we're on the way out. 'Have a great trip!'

Nothing makes any sense. We roll into Bulgaria, get stuck behind a load of trucks at a weigh-in. It's now dark, and Steve is talking to the goblins. It's down to Jeff and I to get this man to a campsite as quickly as possible. So I promptly get us hopelessly lost in an alien border town in the early night.

We're totally lost, and on the few signs that are there everything's in cyrillic writing that looks like 3s. right-angles and the symbol for pi. Jeff comes to a junction, with no idea about anything. Left or right? Right. He takes us right. HOOOOOOOONK! Uhm, left. I gather right's a one-way street. Laboured u-turn, including stalling. Soon we're stuck. I decide to ask a family for directions, pointing at the map and asking for the road to Varna. They do better than tell us - they jump in their people carrier and tell us to follow them, and drive us 15 minutes across town to deliver us to our escape route. Of course they do. They're Romanian.

We follow the road out of the city, which should just be a straight road, the E70 all the way out, until it suddenly turns into the E87 with no warning. We go to a garage for help, and the girl there turns out really friendly. She tells us how to get back on the E70, and writes down some town names in cyrillics as well as the bulgarian for please and hello. All we need now is for her to give us some money and we'd have it all locked down. We heed her directions, going down another potholed lane and coming onto the E70. Just then I realise we're where we were trying to get to all along - opposite a little lane marked on the map with a campsite symbol. Wow. It's easy when you're not trying.

We check it out, it turns out not to be a campsite but a hotel. The owner comes out, with a girl who's translating for him. He's trying to get us to stay, and willing to let us set the price. It could be a con, but the girl insists he just wants to help us out. The price for three in a room is usually 45 euros. He asks what we'd be prepared to pay. We say 45 is fine. He haggles us down to 40. I try to get him up to 50. He won't take anything above 40. He's one tough customer. Done.

By now Steve seems to be mumbling whole diatribes at the pixie folk, so he's just happy to have a bed. And in a hotel too. Turned out way better than driving round for the next hour looking for a campsite that doesn't exist, and then struggling to whack the tent up in the dark. Instead we've got a room with aircon and showers, and what turns out to be a massive hotel all to ourselves.

The girl shows us to our room. On the way she asks a simple question. 'Have you seen our lion?' Uhm, no... Oh, yes, there it is. There's the lion. In its cage. In the hotel carpark.

We talk to the girl, Niya. We tell her about the rally. Her eyes light up. She's genuinely taken with it, and makes a note of the organisers' website. She seems a little sad. Who knows? I get the sense she wants to talk more, but can't because of her boss. Either that or she's fucked off with working in a hotel and would rather sod off halfway round the world just for the hell of it. If we hadn't ripped half the back seat out to accomodate more of our crap, she'd probably be leaving Bulgaria with us.

Jeff and I spend the rest of the night at the bar by the pool like a couple holidaying in Majorca, being waited on exclusively by the bar staff and serenaded by the Bulgarian band. I accidentally make eye-contact with the guitarist as he launches into his saccharine solo on 'We Are Sailing'. He marks our moment by giving the neck of his guitar a little rock lift.

This rally is weird.

Day 10: rotten luck in Romania

2009-07-27T19:45:00.000+01:00

Modern travel is weird. Have a problem? Just ring up your local Cornish vicar. No-one at the retreat speaks any English, and we're the only guests here. It's all a bit of a mystery. Apparently our room's already been paid for and everything. So I ring Pat the vicar, back in Cornwall, to ask her a few things, not least what the hell is going on. Not in those exact words. She's a vicar. So I slip a couple of expletives in too.

She tells me that, as we knew, they'd been expecting us three days before, but adds that most of them have been away at a wedding. The English speakers should be back soon. She also confirms she has indeed paid for the room, to save things getting confusing. Which is ace, and very nearly worked. But at least we can expect a bit of banter soon - it'd be nice to get the lowdown on the retreat and the area in general, to see what it's all about. For now Pat recommends a woodland walk nearby, which leads you to a waterfall you can chuck yourselves into, which sounds like the perfect thing to do after yet another blisteringly hot day in a row (sorry England). Also, she says, if you want to pack a picnic, pop into the shop on the way and pick up some bread and stuff. That sounds ruradyllic.

We jump in the car and head to the shop, which gives us our first taste of the Romanian countryside. In through the beaded curtains to find a tiny timewarp grocery, stacked with packets of incomprehensible things. And Pringles.

There is no humour here. One poker-faced punter pushes me out of the way with his beerbelly. Then the similarly squat owner comes round and stands about six inches in front of Jeff's face. He just stares at him. Jeff smiles. Nothing. Jeff waves. Which looks ridiculous. 'Pizza,' says the shop owner, pointing into the cabinet. We leave the shop carrying our pizza. Jeff succinctly describes the experience as: 'Romanian as fuck.'

It's good to be out in the countryside. Again, there's too much for the eye to take in. Driving through valleys with steep hills on either side, overtaking more old country women, and men on carts carrying sticks. It's a beautiful area, even if we'd really rather be out walking in it, not driving again to go walking in it.

We follow Pat's directions, down a dirt track next to the railway line, and follow the river. The dirt track is nothing but a dusty lane full of pot holes, but that doesn't stop people coming the other way driving massive trucks. The faces covering our car take a proper pasting (sorry people).

We can't help noticing that people seem distinctly indifferent to the sight of a rallified Fiat Punto covered in the faces of lots of pale people. Not that we're expecting a huge reaction everywhere we go, or for people to react differently because we're English, but given the looks, laughs and winks we'd got in countries on the way, we'd have thought that would only increase when we got out to some proper countryside.

It's not that people are negative necessarily, they just couldn't give a fuck. As Jeff points out, they're probably a bit miffed to have gone from an entirely traditional rural existence to having a big main road shoved through with massive billboards advertising Lexus. Or Lexi, for Partridge fans. Steve, usually an immovable rock of understanding, sums it up by saying: 'I would call it ignorance, if they weren't so stupid.'

We totally fail to find the waterfall, but pull up at another part of the river. Steve gets out to guide us in, walking past a house that contains the worst smell he's ever smelt. He figures there has to be a dead body, of human or cow, inside. Then we go to tuck into the pizza which the kindly shopkeeper had passed our way earlier. I tuck in. Steve points out that it's rotten. Oh shit.We drive back. Again, we're blown away by the countryside. We pass more Jesus statues, and an old woman completely crashed out in a hedge.

When we return, the staff are all back, and they serve us a delicious meal of pork cutlets and incredible herby potato. But not a single word beyond the basic pleasantries. Is it shyness? Or is it aggressive? Are they just tired, or is it just that they can't be arsed? Does a group of English blokes abroad have a reputation preceding them? Or is it just that our time-keeping is appalling? The hard part is just not knowing, which means you can't do anything about it. You start thinking you don't deserve friendliness, or that we're doing something wrong.
The ones who speak English are the worst. It's like they've learnt our language so they can ignore us more fluently.

We recover our sanity by lounging in the grounds of the retreat, taking in the views.

Then Jeff skips about the meadow and gets the horn over nature again.

We end the day with an evening kick-about among the hay bails. In a perfect world we'd now be surrounded by a load of Romanian kids, helping to foster international understanding through the language of visionary through-balls and sweetly-struck volleys. As it is we have to suffer our inelegant hoofs alone.

SMS update 5

2009-07-27T15:23:00.000+01:00

Left at 27th July 2009 at 07:23

Recieved by SMS (Location: Oradea - Romania)

60k in from oradea at casa delureni retreat- please look online for this place as its very special. Nearly a week late for breakfast. Beautiful. Gonna go get lost now and take some photos.@

Day nine: Romania is weird

2009-07-26T19:39:00.000+01:00

We really have to get out of Budapest, so we get high on more of Marta's coffee and pack up to set off. Before we leave, we chat to Mary and the Manchester Mob, a middle-aged hippyish couple on on a month's family driving holiday to Greece.

They understand where we're coming from, but Mary is mock despairing that we've just pulled another 6am finish. And that we lost one of us. 'Do you think Ranulph Feinnes stopped off for action on his way to the pole?' she asks. It's a good point, especially when we're still about 9,000 miles from Mongolia. Steve points out that Ranulph probably would have done if he'd found any. Mary seems more approving of our time spent grooving. 'You don't get old and stop dancing,' she says, 'you stop dancing and get old.'

Steve volunteers to drive, which is brave after a second consecutive night of three hours' sleep. Still, not as brave as letting me drive. Jeff's in the back sleeping. I navigate, helping to get us lost on Budapest's highways trying to find a park of Communist-era statues, and then Steve sorts us out again by using the sun. Clever bastard.

And so for another long haul, covering hundreds more miles down the E60 under the still glorious European sky. The good news is the driving hasn't become boring. Jeff points out it's actually nice to get back on the road after a couple of days in one place, and the Punto is still proving remarkably comfortable. Decent tunes and Steve's wired brain power us ahead. I'm awake the whole way, but at I'm so tired I keep drifting into that strange place between consciousness and sleep, and at one point my mind delivers me a crystal-clear image of Price's mum amending a pair of trousers. Weird. In six hours or so we're at the Romanian border which, especially when you're in that state, is far far weirder.

As soon as we cross it feels for the first time this trip like we've entered an alien world. The road is bumpy and full of potholes, and the needle on the littlecommiecarometer is whizzing round in circles. The 'tiny men in big hats' count also soars. Steve weaves cautiously ahead, crawling past decrepit power stations and giant refineries, and we gawp at the crumbling apartment blocks built right in their shadows. Imagine the estate agents who have to shift those.

Pretty soon we're past that and into a series of villages, which are full of so much ramshackle stimulus it's impossible to take it all in. Old women walk down the road in headscarves and scratchy tunics, fruit stands line the roadside beneath lamp-posts topped by giant stork nests, and every mile or so there's a large image by the roadside of Jesus, our lord and saviour, nailed to a cross. Then a horse and cart trots past. In an EU country.

We drive for 60km or so, eyes out the window the whole time, through the 'cosmoplitan' town of Oradea and on to the village of Borod, and Casa Delureni. This is the retreat/guesthouse that my parents suggested we visit - it's co-run by Pat Robson, the vicar from Gorran, and was set up by the White Cross Mission, a Cornish charity to help support the orphans of the Ceauscescu regime.

It's an utterly beautiful place, a series of chalets dotted about with views stretching across a beautifully etched valley, and complete with its own meadow. We meet one of the staff, Christina, a smiley youngster who's outside pushing her mate around in a wheelbarrow.

The only snag is that we were meant to be here on Thursday, and it's now Sunday. Bloody Budapest. We're the only guests here, and apparently the chef only comes in when needed. The guy who greets us seems pretty blunt, and no-one speaks much English, so we're left fearing they've been twiddling their thumbs for two days while we were pratting about in Hungarian night spots.

There's not much we can do about that now, we shrug, and chalk it up as just another case of our genuine cluelessness. I'd always assumed we'd end up doing some research on this trip, but that hasn't happened yet. We've been rolling across borders with no idea of what currency people use, or how to say thank you, or even what time zone we're in. It's shocking really. When they ask us what time we'd like the chef to prepare our dinner, we say 7.30, thinking that's in an hour and a half.

So they're probably a bit pissy when they have to come and get us at 8.30 because we haven't shown up yet - for a dinner we've actually given them only 30 minutes to make. Three days late to the place, one hour late to our first meal. Later Steve sets the alarm so we can make the next day's breakfast at our suggested time of 8am. It doesn't go off, as he's set it for Monday 3 August. So very nearly a week late for breakfast too.

It all sounds like the worst case of Brits abroad. Pretty soon we'll be smashing people's heads in with bits of pavement. In our defence it is tricky when you have 15 or so countries to get through and you're spending most of the time in the car. But having learned the basics in Romanian and seen the effect it has, we vow to take a different approach and look them up for each country from now on. Steve starts with the Bulgarian for 'my hovercraft is full of eels'.

Still, Christina seems happy enough. She brings out a delicious meal and warms us with her 'your welcome' and 'finish?', and her shouting of 'hello' when she means 'goodbye'. She's a lovely kid, but she clearly walks with the fragility of someone who has had to learn how to be happy.

We round off the day on the guesthouse veranda, watching the sun set over the stunning valley, sipping fruit tea and water. The contrast with Budapest is perfect. Nothing but the sound of dogs barking in the distance, and the promise of our first night in real beds. So if Mary's reading this, she'll be pleased to see we've stopped dancing - now we can start sleeping.

SMS update 4

2009-07-26T16:47:00.000+01:00

Left at 26th July 2009 at 08:47

Recieved by SMS (Location: Budapest - Hungary)

the web of budapest may have caught a fly, can only give it 4 out of 5 and a half now. Coffee on. Drive on. We may still win this race yet!

Day eight: what the hell does driving slow have to do with being in the Mongol Rally?

2009-07-25T19:26:00.000+01:00

We've just heard from another Cornish team, the Penzance Pirates, that they're in Kazakhstan already. That's mental. We're still back in Budapest. They'll be at the finish in no time, toasting Mongolia with weird moonshine supped from a yak-herder's pelt posing-pouch, and we're still here trying to work out how many euros there are in a florence, which doesn't even exist.

We really are trying to leave, but driving a huge lump of potentially lethal Wazboobleyoid isn't the wisest thing to try after a debilitating birthday do. Which means we have to stick around. Oh well... We manage to wake up after three hours kip to snag the free breakfast, then shuffle over to the campsite's bar to upload some more of this self-indulgent blog nonsense. At around 12 Steve half-jokingly asks if I want a beer. Yes. And so we do absolutely sod-all all day.

While Jeff sleeps, we force more booze down ourselves and go over the events of the previous night, repeatedly watching the videos and giggling like idiots. Then Jeff joins us, and we get gradually more wired there till the evening, missing out on the Turkish baths again, and failing to watch the travelling Belgian minstrels doing a gig in the street. Looks like we could be rounding off our first week away with the first uneventful day of the trip...

Then the Dutch girls get in touch - they're heading to an outdoor club on the banks of the Danube, in the centre of the city. We decide to meet them for a couple of quiet beers. That way we'll be in decent shape for getting back on the road and driving to Romania tomorrow.

After a sensible pizza, we find a bar that's covered in sand, where a Belgian rocker shares with us his love for Black Sabbath. I'm almost asleep, but it's obligatory we plough on with the beer and the fruit polenkas. 'I've totally given up on water,' says Steve, in a rare moment of lucidity. 'It's bollocks.'

It's weird going out at midnight on the back of a mere three hours' kip, especially when you're still an hour's walk down the river bank from the party. But we yomp there and arrive to find this huge fairground-style promenade full of carnival game stands and dancefloor areas. Standing in the middle you can hear a naff house remix of the Beastie Boys in one ear, and naff house remixes of Billie Jean and Nirvana in the other two. It's great being abroad.

We also suffer another barrage of fine eastern European figures, but these are controlled by brains that are young enough to be my daughter. (Is it possible to have a daughter who's just a brain? I'm 32 now and need to start thinking about such things. It would be pretty ace.)

I notice that while all the women are dolled right up, the blokes look like John Travolta and Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction when they get blood on their suits and have to borrow shorts and t-shirts from Quentin Tarantino that make them look like volleyball players. 'You look like a couple of dorks,' he says. I'm happy when I notice this, mainly because it's good to see guys succeeding while wearing what is essentially my wardrobe. Steve's advice: 'Be that dork.'

Before long we realise the Dutch girls aren't here. They're in Rio, the club across the road. This turns out to be the best-club-I-blatantly-hate that I've ever been to. Right on the river, serving G&Ts in real glasses, and about three quid to get in. And populated by that increasingly pleasant and characteristic blend of mellowness and attractiviticity. At one point I suddenly imagine the little man whose job it is to drive my penis. I picture him sitting in a tiny pilot's chair, wailing as he repeatedly smashes his head into the steering wheel.

We spend most of the night pretending to be into house music. And blowing half the trip's budget on Hungarian gin. Turns out the previous evening's conversations went down well with the Dutch girls. They'd bought me a birthday present - a tub of butter - but it had melted. I ask what they did last night, and Tess, the brunette, replies that she'd had 33 things which also relate to what we spoke about yesterday.

Pretty soon Jeff's wowing her with his dancefloor prowess. Which is an improvement on the day before, when he'd had to offer her an apology. 'Sorry,' he'd said in response to a look she gave him. 'When I've had a few beers I get a bit starey.'

The night ends with Steve and I leaving the club with no idea how to get back to the campsite, and we embark on that hour-long walk back up the Danube as the sun comes up. Jeff reappears in time to pack up, which is lucky: we'd concocted a plan to eradicate all traces of him from this trip - wiping out any mention of him from the blog, and replacing him with dwarf-shaped holes in the photos.

Budapest has been a real laugh, and given us an unbelievable weekend, but we really have to leave soon - we've got a race to win. We will exit the city in a happy daze, and for that we've awarded it the Stenalees Surf Club maximum score of five-and-a-half thumbs up.Apologies for the continued decent into tedious hedonism. There's probably plenty of proper adventure to come...

Day seven: birthday mess in Budapest

2009-07-24T19:23:00.000+01:00

It's around 10pm, I'm at a beer garden built from an old playground, complete with swings, in a rundown part of Budapest. Queueing at the bar, I step on a local bloke's flip-flopped foot. Twice. I apologise, he asks where I'm from, and a brilliant night begins. In the words of my former colleague James Taylor: incredible scenes. Come the dawn of the new day, I've turned into this...

The day starts with Marta's incredible free breakfast, and as much coffee as we can physically handle. We remember the episode of Futurama, where Fry decides to spend his tax rebate on 100 cups of coffee, and by the end of the day he's gone beyond the shakes to the point where he can actually control time. We get close, but we're not there yet.

Back at the tent we meet an English couple who are on a month's tour of eastern Europe. They've been here for a few days, and have worked out where to go at night. The guy recommends an area full of decent bars, and marks on the map the street where we can find the one made from an old playground.

This makes me confident that our time in Budapest will be spent well. When you've only got one night in a city, you can very easily end up passing the whole thing in some tacky tourist hole that you'd never go anywhere near if you were back at home. My criteria for a decent stay: by day, go up to the highest point you can and check out the city from above, then spend the daylight hours wandering around, ending up where you end up, and walking so much that your feet feel weird and heavy like deathbed Elvis. By night, somehow find your way to pubs that make you feel like you've had a genuinely ace night out. And that's it. Pretty simple really.

Still, when we set out in the morning on a chair lift up the mountain next to the campsite, for an amazing panoramic look at the city sprawling out amid miles of forest beneath us, it's hard to picture how the night could possibly be anything other than the superficial norm. Only that tiny glimmer of faith in how stuff always sorts itself out stops us digging out the hawaiian shirts and bum bags there and then.

We head into town for an incredible lunch, based almost entirely on meat. Then on the classic city bimble in the 37-degree heat, Jeff gets the shits, which dictates our direction for much of the afternoon. We amble around the historic Pest, and marvel over how mellow everything is. Then we scale a load of steps to check out some castle, where we watch a bloke rinsing tourists for cash playing that game where you guess which cup is hiding the ball. One bloke strides over, announces that he knows where it is, and slaps down a $100 bill. He doesn't know where it is. What a twat. Steve gets it right five times in a row, but just didn't want to play. We try to encourage Jeff to have a go - he's renowned for having the fox-like mind of a shrewd gambler.

(As I type this the sounds drift across the campsite from the tuba and squeeze box played by members of an 11-piece Belgian merengue band who are driving the length of the Danube, busking along the way).

Soon the heat is getting to us, so it's time to cool off by jumping in a really hot bath. Unfortunately we get to the spa 10 minutes after it shuts, which means we don't get the chance to lounge around looking furry in a moist loin hanky. And that means more time walking around feeling clammy, as if we were in a hot Fiat Punto. Hot sticky sucks, hot sticky sucks.

We stop for a beer at a random cafe, where Jeff is convinced he's getting the eye from this brunette at the next table. We don't believe him, but then he agrees to go and speak to them if we stay for another pint. We're impressed when he actually does so. Turns out they're Dutch students spending a month inter-railing. We get on well, even if they're unsure of my comments about my experiences riding the trains in Poland, 'with the cabin door open, naked and covered in butter'. But they warm to it - by the time I'm requesting 32 cocks for my 32nd birthday, they're on board, and when we're discussing the fact that Steve's been aged by smoking (he's only six years old, he has mortgage and he can't even read), it looks like we've properly made friends.

We go our separate ways, and the three of us take a long walk to find the bar we'd been recommended, leaving the tourist drag to wander off into somewhere far more dilapidated. Oooh, the 'real' Budapest. Soon we're walking down an alleyway, flanked by elegant crumbling facades, in total darkness. Real travelling, man - yes, we're in danger of getting raped, but at least we don't feel like tourists. Until we get the map out. Yep. Then a lovely woman in a long black dress comes over from the other side of the crossroads to see if we need help. She gives directions to her favourite pub, which turns out to be the playground one we were looking for anyway. Suddenly I picture God looking down at us, flopping back and forth on one of those little kids' cars on a spring, laughing.

The bar is ace. It has the feel of being somewhere decent, surrounded by locals. It's the Budapest equivalent of somewhere like Shoreditch, but without the need to express your individuality in exactly the same way as everyone else. The people are just being themselves, which is lovely.

And so we come to the part where I introduce myself to the dude by stepping on his foot. Turns out his name is Tomasz, a Hungarian who now lives in Warsaw and is back for a holiday. He also lived in Shepperton for a couple of years, to improve his perfect English. We offer him a gin fizz.

Tomasz takes us over to his table, where we meet his mates and neck black cherry polenks. His mates are an international bunch - which seems to be the way in central Europe. We talk about the history of the region. As a representative of Great Britain, I apologise profusely for fucking the whole thing up. The guy in the stripey top is a TV chef, the white Hungarian version of Ainsley Harriot. His girlfriend is an olympian pistol shooter. I spend most of the time talking to Anya, a beautiful down-to-earth 34-year-old Polish mother, who's over with her French boyfriend. She is a delight, and says the word 'fuck' in a brilliant way.

Memories of Dortmund - we're bowled over by how this group take us under their wing and make everything ruddy special. We get royally trashed together and say our goodbyes, and then Tomasz and Kabo take us to get a kebab. Steve says it's the best he's ever had. He chats to Kabo, who drops in the fact he is product manager of biggest vehicle parts distributor in Hungary. Which is handy when you're driving a 1.2-litre Fiat Punto to Mongolia. He says he'll give us anything we need. We're picking up one of his fuel filters in Romania. All free. Kabo, that's ace.

Jeff spends a while explaining to Kabo and Tomasz what we mean by the words 'mental' and 'ace'. They crop up a lot apparently. I hadn't noticed.

I'm making demands for more birthday beer, so Tomasz takes us on - into a totally anonymous iron-clad, sound-proofed grey block in the middle of the city. It looks the kind of place that, had you entered 20 years ago, you'd never have come out. It's certainly not the kind of place you'd walk past and think, 'let's pop in there for a boogie'. We go up endless flights of red steps to the top two floors, and emerge into what Steve describes as:

'The best club anyone's ever seen, full of people from every nationality going mental to decent funky techno coming out of the best soundsystem you've ever heard.'

Yep, the vibe and everything was ace. People friendly, open, attractive, and having a good time. We dance till 5.30am, stopping every now and again to get a view of the city from the roof. Surrounded by honeys.

We go outside and say our goodbyes to Tomasz, who is an absolutely brilliant bloke. As Steve puts it: 'I've always thought of myself as quite open-minded, but these are levels of openness and human acceptance and a love of life I've never seen before. And I never want to forget.'

I told Tomasz he had given us an amazing evening. His response:

'The really amazing thing is to meet three guys who are volunteering to drive to Mongolia, for charity. This is my volunteering - everything will go much better if they drive away from here with a smile on their face.' I'm starting to think this is all turning a bit gay, but then Steve points out how, embarking on a nine-hour drive after a night out with Tomasz, it's not smiles we'll have on our faces.

We decide to stay another day.

SMS update 3

2009-07-24T03:36:00.000+01:00

Left at 23rd July 2009 at 19:36

Recieved by SMS

Yeah. Its cold and doug is dead. Must. reach. sword....... :) x

Day six: here's to chance

2009-07-23T19:20:00.000+01:00

Woke up at Stalins. Went for a run round the lake. Jumped in the lake. Packed up. Got lost driving round Bratislava, for this is a city that doesn't believe in signs. Went to Tesco. Drove around 200km to Budapest, en route picking up our first fine, from a Slovak border guard with a brilliant sense of humour: 'I can give you the minimum fine, which is 20 euros, or the maximum, which is 95. Are you happy with the 20?'

Jeff's tired.

Approaching the city, and realising we'd need to operate somewhat more effectively than the previous night in Bratislava, at least if we didn't want to end up with another night of commie headbanging, Steve asked for an idea where to go, so I pointed at near random to one town just outside the city. Once you've randomly picked one place there's no point in trying to drum up another one, so we went there, and were guided by a giant red squirrel to an amazing campsite at the base of a mountain, full of rustic wooden buildings centred around an old railway house.

I am now starting to get properly excited about how chance is guiding us. This is what the whole trip is about: being open and seeing where it leads. Within reason of course. I have very little interest ending up chained to a wall in a Hungarian S&M den, for example. I'll leave that to Jeff.

The campsite is run by a motherly middle-aged woman called Marta, who knows how to make friends - offering a free welcome beer. And decent facilities and quiet, all 20 minutes' bus ride from the centre of Budapest. She even gives her guests free bus tickets for their first trip to town. We're stunned that you can camp in such tranquility within a stone's throw of a European capital. So here we are - delicious goulash soup and gypsy pork for dinner, a few beers, a wi-fi connection for media Dave - and shitloads more mosquitos.

The plan is to have a couple of days in Budapest, take in the odd Turkish bath, and then hit the town for the big birthday celebration tomorrow night. I'm 32.

I sit typing this outside the tent, in the media Punto, thinking how things couldn't have gone any better. It's been a really good laugh already, and luck has played a beautiful part, here in the pleasant pedestrian lands of central Europe. Now for another night of sweltering heat in an MoD-issue sweat bag...

SMS update 2

2009-07-23T10:46:00.000+01:00

Left at 23rd July 2009 at 09:19

Recieved by SMS (Location: Bratislava - Slovakia)

stayed in local equivalent to butlins. Had a rock band on until late - crazy swines they are! and dave got drunk on local medicinal cola that contained no alcohol. By a big lake so swimming this morning was v nice. Scorchio.

Day five: hallo Comrades, hi-de-hi

2009-07-22T18:51:00.000+01:00

We kicked off Wednesday by packing up and waving goodbye to the serenity of Paradijs. But it soon got all Carry On Camping again - the day ending with us getting shamefully over-excited at the shrieks of Slovakian girls taking cold showers together at Bratislava's version of Butlins. Or Stalins, as we named it. And then a band busted out hours of classic rock.

How do we end up at a place like this? It makes no sense. Coming off a long road trip to wind up there was like the scene in Apocalypse Now where they float out of the Cambodian river darkness into a party full of booze and Playboy bunnies.

Zlate Piesky, a Communist-era relick nestled just off one of the main flyovers leading out of the city, next to a chuffing great lake. Views of the water, nice trees and plenty of perfectly-toned and bronzed locals to subject to the farmer-tan. But it also has this strange fug hanging over it - its grey past leers out at you everywhere, from the derelict concrete BUFET building to the spartan crazy golf course:

'You are permitted one hour of hitting ze ball through ze hole in ze concrete block. Oh what a krazy fun time you will heff. And then you must toil in salt-mine bureaucracy until death.'

We were up for that, but it was shut.

We were sitting at one of the outside bars there into the early morning, having a few beers, utterly agog. The band was absolutely tearing up the rock - ACDC's Highway to Hell, and some local Slovakian metal that involved repeatedly shouting what seemed like the word 'A-hole' in the chorus. Things were more mainstream over at the other bar, where the band was busting out a patchy Slovak rendition of Agadoo: 'push ze pineapple... uhm... tree'.

A crowd of souls clad in vests and small shorts (men and women alike) joined in with the keyboard player's exuberant hair-swinging. Who are these people? Who actually holidays under a motorway? IT MAKES NO SENSE. But holiday they did, and party they will.

I was queueing for a beer when an irate man stormed over and asked the massive barman when the music would stop.

'The music doesn't stop,' he replied.
'But this is a campsite, not a nightclub. How do we stop the music?'
'You can't stop the music.'

Indeed. If those dirty Commies couldn't prevent these crazy east Europeans from partying, it'd take more than a stroppy bloke in a pair of flip-flops to do so. And so the band rocked on.

It's hard to get a grip on the people here. One girl at the bar is breathing helium from a balloon, and her tattooed boyfriend is laughing and smiling over at us. I figure it'd be funny to film her on Steve's phone, whereupon the boyfriend suddenly gets incredibly aggro and shoves me aside with an outstreched palm to the face. Ok, fair enough. I start walking away. But then her and her other two friends say it's ok to film her. Oh, ideal. Oops, there's that hand to the face again. That's perfect.

Later we take a bottle of wine to the side of the lake. A few people are sitting by a table there, under a gazebo thing. 'Do you want to come and drink?' asks one guy in English. Ideal. We walk over and his mate just grunts what we discerned to be a 'no'. Ok, fair enough. About five minutes later, we're down by the water, and he suddenly runs in naked and goes for a swim in front of us. Then he emerges from the depths, Godzilla-like, an absolute beast of perfectly-toned man. 'What does this all mean?' I whisper.

All I know is that him shielding his modesty with his cupped hands is quite ridiculous - he is bound to be brutally built down there, and would only gain more of our respect by striding over and waving the thing in our faces. We've decided it was an apology. But I still don't get it.

And that's the only flaw with the incredibly attractive healthy-looking Slovakian women: they tend to be attached to utterly well-built and healthy-looking Slovakian blokes. We imagined a conversation:

'I see you staring at my girlfriend. Would you like to have try with her?'
'Yes please.'
'Well you can't. She think you're an idiot.'
'Ok.'
'I have big hands and can make fire with my eyes. You are small and pale and clearly have small dick.'
'Oh-keeeey.'

The Brit abroad look is one that's only enhanced by having about 900 mosquito bites. Two nights' camping has provided quite the probiscal feast, and all three of us have taken a decent caning. At least we're in disease-free lands for now. Steve was initially the front-runner - he has a weird reaction whenever insect teeth come near, swelling up like a loaf. But it looks like I'm now the firm favourite among the blood-suckers. My back looks ridiculous.

Other news: we're now very much in the land of the toilet shelf. This is something that I first marvelled over many years ago with Barn and G-Man when we went interrailing. I like the idea that the toilet has a shelf on to which you distribute your effluvia, before a press of the handle sweeps it all away. Could this be another Communist echo? Stern figures from the Politburo inspecting your stool for insubordinate sweetcorn before granting you licence to flush.

I'm aware of this blog's shamelessly base tone, the constant references to toilets, and the total lack of culture, or any interaction with locals beyond grunts and minor acts of hostility. It's pathetic really. But it hasn't been that kind of trip, at least since the antics of Dortmund and the Czech party. Days are spent on the road, perhaps seeing a place, then getting from A to B and setting up for the night. It's the Easy Rider rhythm - long stretches of cruising around to an amazing soundtrack, giving each other long meaningful looks, and then eventually pulling out into a place that has stuff in it that we can eat and drink and put a tent on.

But it has all been a real laugh, especially as we're shifting ourselves without maps or guidebooks. Reliant entirely on chance. Even navigating by the sun half the time. Steve says stuff like 'that's south' a lot. It worked for Paradijs, and if weird campsites that throb to the rhythms of Bratislavan dregs are your thing, as they are for us, it worked again this time.

(As I write this, incredibly weird stuff has just happened again, and an entirely arbitrary pointing at the map has guided us to the perfect campsite on the edge of Budapest, run by a wonderful woman called Marta. But that's tomorrow's update).

So how did we find ourselves at Stalins? After spending the morning at Cesky Krumlov, a stunning Unesco heritage site based on a Medieval citadel on the bend of a river...

... where we took a funny picture of Jeff:

... before the rest of the day built around getting hopelessly lost. Mainly thanks to Czech roadworks and a complete lack of signs. But getting lost is ace, and we ended up driving through an hour's worth of sun-bathed Czech countryside that we'd never have seen if we'd been blessed by the gods of satellite navigation.

We found the Bratislavan Butlins in similarly seat-of-pant fashion. After a long drive and one near-death experience, courtesy of moi when driving around Vienna, we decided we'd need to camp in Bratislava, which is an incredibly tricky feat to pull off in any strange city, especially against the pressure of the setting sun. After cruising round the town a bit, we found a reservoir on the map, and had a hunch we should camp near there. We ended up in a weird little suburb, which we drove around for ages lost like a bunch of rems until we saw a girl cycling towards us and asked her for directions. Her sister was the family's English speaker, so she went to fetch her out of the house, and she told us to head a few kilometers to Dannubia. This we did, and found ourselves asking a load of kayakers for a camping place. They pointed us back to the north side of Bratislava - and to an oh-my-god middle of city waterpark lake Soviet version of Minehead Butlins. All a perfect example of what Douglas Adams described as 'Zen navigation'. Clueless but effortless.

I genuinely love how this stuff works out, especially given the place where we've just arrived. To be honest we're going to need a lot more of such freak luck the further into the trip we get. But I trust that it'll work - it has to - and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

A quick word from our sponsors. Steve has fallen in love with his Finisterre base layer, despite his initial misgivings about the homosexual overtones of the sky blue colourings. After a week of wearing these things, they still don't smell. Steve says that one day in a regular t-shirt showed how impressive they are - he was humming. That car is starting to get properly warm. 'I fucking love this top,' he said earlier. So to Eric and all the chaps at Finisterre, you have three happy customers. Now you just need to get round to emailing us and we can start earning our keep.

We'll keep you updated on all manner of manly stenches as they develop.

The Punto-powered Kernow-Mongolia Minstrel Tour

All right?

Day 50: never any doubt

Day 49: the end?

Day 48: masters of our domain

Day 47: plight of the navigators

Day 46: onward Mongol soldiers

Day 45: the ghosts of rally future

Day 44: tears of a marmot

Day 43: pimp my Boobleyoid

**SMS update 19**

Day 42: into the wild

Day 41: purgatory

Day 40: to the border

Day 39: the Sirens' call

Day 38: Russian cops

**SMS update 18**

Day 37: sitting on bricks

**SMS update 17**

Day 36: shock and awe

**SMS update 16**

**SMS update 15**

Day 35: across Kazakhstan

**SMS update 14**

Day 34: the wonderful and the weird

Day 33: home from home

Day 32: dude puked on my rug

Day 31: the wedding

**SMS update 13**

Day 30: proper tourists

**SMS update 12**

**SMS update 11**

Day 29: visiting Merv

Day 28: truckers and whores

Day 27: the sound of cavalry drums

**SMS update 10**

Day 26: we are idiots

Day 25: back in the USSR

Day 24: we wait...

Day 23: police and thieves in the street

**SMS update 9**

Day 22: into Azerbaijan

**SMS update 8**

Day 21: anniversary of Jeff. And war

Day 20: Tbilisi - beautiful and f***ed

**SMS update 7**

Day 19: Let's offroad

Day 18: into Georgia

Day 17: Turkey - gobble gobble

Day 16: I hope this isn't a happy-ender

**SMS update 7**

Day 15: Turkish customs

Day 14: Gabi's world

**SMS update 6**

Day 13: I'm sure this is where we parked the car...

Day 12: the Black Death. I mean Sea

Day 11: have you seen our lion?

Day 10: rotten luck in Romania

**SMS update 5**

Day nine: Romania is weird

**SMS update 4**

Day eight: what the hell does driving slow have to do with being in the Mongol Rally?

Day seven: birthday mess in Budapest

**SMS update 3**

Day six: here's to chance

**SMS update 2**

Day five: hallo Comrades, hi-de-hi

SMS update 19

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SMS update 15

SMS update 14

SMS update 13

SMS update 12

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