We just passed into kazakhstan.

Half of the convoy has left. Tom, dyson, chris from the hilux and paul from the outer mancunians have gone to the airport to fly home via beijing. We had a really good and different day yesterday. After sorting out flights we went to one of the cdpf projects and played some sport with the kids, we had some more yaks milk and then headed out to the mongolian bbq. We had the mancunians, a canadian rallier and another team from the uk with us. We had another night in the night club with the philipino band and had some local vodka, again. Al, steven and i are flying to seoul tonight for a wind down with hopefully a bit less vodka.

We woke up this morning and headed for the border, about ten km from the border our throttle cable broke completely. After a bit of bodging the gun had to be driven using a piece of string through the window to accelerate. We went to the wrong border town first and then back to the correct border. We got through to the mongolian side to find we also couldnt get through and parked up with the rest of the rally cars. We got a lift with a local women who has been sorting out ralliers, she insisted we eat at her house and is acompanying up to UB. We ate at her house and got through two bottles of vodka chatting to a couple of border guards who are jumping in with us on the trip to ulaan bataar. Weve made it.

We had an early start on the road and after fourteen hours, meeting a russian guitar playing singer song writer and some more bad roads were through irkusk and camped up at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Weve made great progress and could by at the border by tomorro night if we resist one more swim in a freezing lake. Were on the final page of the map now and have under six hundre km left before we tackle the hand over at the border!

Bad news for the shogun. After a whole day in the garage the mechanics need to do some welding in order the fit the new springs. Were now having another night at the mitsubishi garage. The clock is now ticking on our russian visas, if were not out of the country by tuesday we get an extended stay at mother russias pleasure.

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from barnoul at around six yesterday. Weve left the hilux to take on the west of mongolia and the 'gun and panda are heading through russia to enter mongolia in ve north. We reached the brilliantly named novirsibirsk by eight thirty this morning and now were heading out of town east aiming for krasnorsk.