Day 22

Distance Covered: 161 miles

Total Distance Covered: 4164 miles

Got up early down to the exceedingly high temperature in the van and had a swift breakfast. Two of the group snuck off for a rural shit in an open desert with nothing to hide behind but unfortunately because of their crafty timing no-one had time to get the camera’s out! A few miles down the road and it was time to part company with our MCR friends, a sad time for all, after our tearful farewells we set off on our long drive south heading for the Uzbek border. The roads through Kazakhstan were surprisingly good until we reached Beyneu, from here to the border it was a nasty, in between something you really wanted to crawl along yet with patches of moderate smoothness so getting a constant comfortable speed was out of the question, a good introduction for what is to come no-doubt, consequently however, by the time we reached the border we were totally spent. Arriving there at 5ish we expected to be through and camped for the night in Uzbekistan fairly early, this however was not to be. We were entertained by Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore for a short while before moving on to ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy’ audio book, unfortunately not even this was enough to take our minds of the sweltering heat and overly inquisitive by-standers. After finally letting us through we were fortunately helped through the customs process by a friendly off duty officer and were eventually on our way. 5km down the road we stopped for the night as by this time it was coming on half 10 and way to dark to tackle Uzbekistan roads. Too tired to cook after our long day we had a quick cuppa’ soup, an episode of southland and hit the hay. Unfortunately on getting into bed one of our prized pipe cots ripped and Hugh was forced to take the stretcher… not the best end to a tiring day.