Time for an update

Hi everyone, we're in Qostanai today. After leaving the hotel in Oral we got to the other side of town before the Hi-Lux boys decided to break down, so after a trip to a local garage we were on the road. Things have got a bit wild, we saw camels and eagles. Whilst taking a rest at the side of the road a local pulled over to talk to us. As it turned out Boris was heading the same way as us so he said he'd guide us on the terrible roads. We camped by the side of the road, as it turned out Boris used to be in the Red Army and is now involved in a slightly illegal occupation. Good guy. He made us get up at 4 in the morning and hit the chalk and sand road, first Boris got stuck and had to be towed and then the golf. We've got some wicked footage of that. We got to Aktobe where we decided to play some menu roulette, namely pointing at a random word-normally one that sounds slightly phallic and seeing what you get. We ended up with mutton spine stew, which was nice. We hit the road again and camped out on the steppes. Its amazing to wake up and see nothing but the fields. Then we put in a hardcore day of driving we must have done about 700km. And decided that we'd earnt night in a hotel, we managed to get some food at midnight and much drinking followed. As it turns out Lance-the 34year old northerner that has been convoying with us was violently sick over pretty much everything, including a Kazakh woman celebrating her birthday. Not really responsible tourism. The golf is beginning to suffer a bit now, it has the least ground clearance of all the cars in the convoy, when the roads get bad we scrape the bottom of the car almost frequently and as such we've gained a nice rattle, probably from the Catalytic converter. But for the moment she is still running beautifully, and touchwood, we've had no breakdowns. But all in all its been a great few days. Much Love Tom and Phil