Well, we now bid a fond farewell to another member of our expedition - Shitbag 2 (which we accept is an ironic nickname), the 150 quid Rover has fulfilled his part of the bargain and has been set free in the glorious Kyrgyz wilderness to roam the mighty mountains and forage for natures wealth bursting from the countless crystal streams rushing through this idyllic land.

Christmas was a strange event in Almaty - we went out on Christmas eve and there was almost no life whatsoever. We can only assume that the hordes of expats that are supposed to live there must all have gone home, and even the Irish bar was dead. On the other hand we managed to maintain the fish tradition and went to a sushi bar for our evening meal. It was pretty good considering we're about as far from the sea as it's possible to get in the entire world! On Christmas day it actually snowed which was a first for me, and for Christmas lunch we went out and got a rotisserie chicken from a street food stall, not quite roast turkey but very nice all the same.

Boxing day we went skiing in Chimbulak, Almaty's nearby ski resort. It's nothing like as big or as well developed as the European resorts but good fun for an afternoon and Grapes managed a few runs down the nursery slopes to exorcise the demons of her last skiing trip...

We arrived in Bishkek only on Wednesday after a very pleasant journey and the easiest border crossing since we entered Greece. The only scary moment was when we thought we'd done all the border formalities (which took no more than an hour for both sides) when a border guard asked us for our documents just before the last gate. He then asked us to step out of the car - here's where they collect their bribe we thought. He then simply said "Welcome to Kyrgyzstan" and handed us back our documents with a smile and we were in!

Bishkek is actually a fairly dull city, there's almost nothing of note to see except they still have their statue of Lenin, although he has been relegated to a quiet park tucked away from the main square he used to dominate (and I can't help feeling he looks a little bit like my cousin....). We visited all the "sights" in about 2 hours, and finding a decent restaurant here is a little difficult as its the run up to NYE which is the big winter event here and everything's given over to work do's which look even worse than the ones I used to go to. At least when you do find food it's pretty good and absurdly cheap!

On Friday morning we rang Ruslan, the guy Ole suggested we contact in Bishkek to help us sell the car. Amazingly he was round our hotel within 10 minutes, promised he'd help us and proceeded to explain how undesirable our car was (right hand drive, rusty holes, no spares availability, etc). He perked up a bit when I pointed out that's its actually a Honda Accord in diguise (SB2 is a 1995 Rover 620) and mentioned that he had a couple of friends on the lookout for a new car which he'd bring round that evening for a viewing.

In the meantime we disappeared for a few hours to the Ala Archa national park, a stunning valley in the nearby mountains (30 minutes drive when you find the right road and don't get caught driving without your licence Grapes - 2 pound bribe and we're good to go!). These are part of the same range we were skiing in the other day which are all effectively part of the Himalayas. We met some local students on their winter holiday (all from Osh though they're studying in Bishkek) who'd mostly been drinking all day and were in (shall we say) high spirits... They gave us some food but unfortunately no drink as I was now driving though Grapes managed some, well grapes.

In the evening Ruslan turned up with his mate, a young looking chap who got Ruslan to look the car over for him and take it for a test drive. I was after $1000 and the buyer to pay for registration and customs duty (about $600). He wasn't too sure and they estimated that fixing the rusty bits was going to cost around $400 (much cheaper than the UK). While he was pontificating another friend turned up, an enormously fat businessman in a Landcruiser. He had a quick look round (didn't spot the radiator weep) and offered me $800 on the spot. I said 900 and it was a deal.

Today Ruslan took us to the customs place, but after some waiting the big boss decided to leave early and nothing can happen without him as he's the guy who collects the bribes. Ruslan very kindly took us round the houses in Bishkek to get a legal document drawn up that basically absolves me of all ownership of the car and passes the responsibility of paying customs duty onto him. He'll now go back to the customs place on Tuesday to finish the process off and we merely have to be in the city just in case there is a problem. After that we're free of the shackles of car ownership!

Things that went wrong with our car in 9500 miles:

• Drivers window mechanism broke - eventually got the window up and unplugged the motor, not a problem when it's below freezing all the time.
• Weep in the radiator.
• Something going 'boing' in the front suspension - loose anti roll bar mount maybe?
• Clutch release bearing going 'screeeech' every so often - didn't on the road test...
• Funny clicking noise when changing gear and taking up drive - never worked out what this was and it was there since we got the car and never got worse - maybe something to do with the gearbox linkage.
• Mashed up wheel trims and dented rims from repeatedly driving into potholes too fast.

Checklist for importing a car into Kyrgyzstan:

• Make sure its German, preferably Mercedes
• Make sure its left hand drive - new laws coming into Russia and Kazakhstan, and possibly Kyrgyzstan banning RHD cars. Already in place in Azerbaijan...
• Make sure it has aircon - 40 degrees in summer here...
• Make sure it's in good condition - buyers here are a little more discerning than those in the Gambia...

So don't buy a rusty old Rover then.

Merry Christmas Everyone !

We're now in Almaty, only 250Km from Bishkek where we attempt to sell the car. The journey here from Astana went smoothly in as much as most of it was on ice rink flat black ice... Somehow we managed on our summer tyres although by the side of the road there were plenty that weren't so fortunate. We have now experienced pretty much everything that the Kazakh roads had to throw at us - blizzards, potholes, rocks, mud, ice, snow, foot deep ruts, fog, freezing rain and finally no hotels for the last 300 miles which caused us to arrive here at about 12 last night. Due to the conditions we had to change our original route via Aralsk and Shymkent to the Astana route and have now covered 2700 miles in 8 days since leaving Aktau.

Sadly it looks like we wont be getting a white Christmas here after all. The weather is unseasonably warm, which is lucky as most of my clothes are being washed after a faulty petrol pump sprayed me from head to foot with the stuff. Thankfully they knocked a few litres off the bill as it never made it into the car!!!!! At least it was 96 octane - I'd really hate to be covered in diesel.

Almaty's hotels are in the main full or overpriced. A hotel porter took pity on us after showing us another rubbish room and rang a friend of his on the sly who has rented an appartment to us for a few days at a reasonable rate. Its actually a really nice place and pretty well located. We've decorated it with a couple of chocolate santas and a piece of tinsel that was kept in the car. The flat also comes with a stereo that we can play christmas music through via the power of ipod.

Next challenge is to find a cinema showing Borat, in english.

OK so on Thursday having bought some thermal underwear, a wintercoat for Rich, a jerry can and snow chains, we ate our last proper meal (Indian curry) and headed into the Kazakhstan steppe.....

The first hurdle was trying to get out of Aktau as absolutely no-one knew how to and there are absolutely no signposts in this part of the world. Yup not the average local, the 4 star marriott hotel or even the petrol station which was actually situated on the road out could point us in the right direction!!!. At first we thought that was strange, funny even but now we know why.... The answer being, if you're going to travel across Kazakhstan you should try every means possible except the road. (In the end we found a helpful Russian who spoke a little english, as he was heading in that general direction we followed him).

After 50 miles the road turned into our worst enemy. Trecherous, non-existent, horrendous, diabolical, dangerous, hell - not even all of these words strung together do the road justice in my opinion. Despite there being only one route, for over a thousand miles and 4 days so far, we have experienced roads which have been littered every couple of metres with pot holes the size of elephants (no joke!), visibility of less than 2 metres during dense fog and snow storms, miles of mud track and miles of sheet black ice (a 360 degree spin was achieved yesterday but thankfully on a very wide and deserted stretch of road). It has been so bad at times that our average speed for the past 4 days has been around 25 miles an hour. Not great when towns are on average 200 miles apart and the temperature outside is on average -5.

On the second day the driving had worsened to such an extent that we enquired about putting the car on a train. Unfortunately the past two days have been a national holiday celebrating independence and everything has been closed. As such we haven't been able to establish whether this is either possible or expensive. Therefore coupled with some local advice that the road gets much better (thankfully it has) and a desire not to spend christmas on a 48 hour train crossing we decided to press on. Last night we made it to Astana, the new capital which looks a bit like a mini Las Vegas - they seriously like their fairy lights and christmas trees here!. Needless to say after days of eating nothing much but crisps, bread and pot noodles we enjoyed a very good Italian last night and feel like we are heading back into civilisation (hey we even found an internet cafe).

This afternoon we will head towards Almaty which we suspect will be a 2 day drive. Lots of people have told us that this is the best road in Kazakhstan and many have even described it as a motorway!!! We shall see shortly, although it did at least look like a dual carriage way on our way in late last night so fingers crossed...

Had an interesting few days since the last post and are now in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

The British embassy were actually quite helpful and directed us to the port who suggested (although without any mutually comprehensible language) that we could return with the car on saturday to leave it at the port and take the next ferry on sunday or monday. Afterwards we met up with Paul and Lisa from the visa queue in Tbilisi who had a far smoother journey here on the overnight train. We had a few drinks in the "Old England Pub" complete with HMS Victory bar and a rubbish late night indian. Baku is actually quite a fun city full of expat related bars and restaurants but all quite cheap.

Friday we went to visit the mud volcanoes of Qobustan, 60km south of Baku. On the way we were stopped by police after money. They tried to tell us we were going too fast (surprisingly we actually weren't) and when we asked how fast they told us 30... We laughed and wandered off. The mud volcanoes proved quite difficult to find but eventually after half an hour off road the Lying Planet proved its worth and we were staring at stark little piles of mud with bubbling pools at their summits. It was all rather surreal and quite a lot of fun, although the landscape was treacherous and only Lisa got away without getting significantly muddy. In fact the whole landscape round baku is rather surreal - barren plains with pools of oil and hundreds of old school oil wells, all covered in a network of pipelines and pylons. Its quite eerie in a post apocalyptic kind of way.

Chinese was quite good in the evening although even more MSGey than the guide suggested - I've almost never been so thirsty.

On Saturday we returned to the port, only to find that apparently they can't get us on the ferry and can't look after the car after all. The embassy advises us to get a customs extension at the ferry port so we head down. At first the customs guy seems quite relaxed but goes out of the office to check something and when he returns the atmosphere has changed. We HAVE to get the car out of the country RIGHT NOW. He sends me to pick it up and impounds it on the spot. We go to fetch a guy from the ferry company to speak directly to customs as we can't really communicate with anyone, and suddenly we're on the ferry tonight! Just enough time left to get some food (to eat cold while going through the customs procedure) and we're on the boat. Fortunately we've already checked out of our hotel in readiness for losing the car. To be fair the customs officials in Baku were all above board and never asked for any bribes.

The ferry crossing was 24 hours, and we arrived in Aktau port at around 1am on monday morning. The first night on the boat was rather fun as the crew invited us into their various cabins for food and drinks. They served us the legendary fermented mares milk, a national drink in all central asia. It is even more horrible than it sounds and the neat vodka was easier to down. Before long we were thoroughly drunk on the endless compulsory vodka toasts but no problem - the crew members were now going on duty. In an alcoholic haze I just remember steering the boat and playing with the radar system before passing out in bed. Oh well, one childhood dream has been fulfilled.

On the boat there was a Danish guy, Ole with 1 mongolian and 2 tajik travelling companions. They were good fun playing cards with on the boat to fill the time. He was in potentially quite expensive trouble - left kazakhstan to enter azerbaijan without the required visa and got turned back, but now without a valid kazakh visa either. He was also trying to drive an expensive new car west so had that as an added responsibility. He currently has 2 weeks left on his transit plates to get to Denmark and at the time of writing the authorities are trying to fly him to Baku where he can get a visa on arrival while the Tajiks drive his car back onto the ferry (for the 3rd time!). Nice to know some people have worse problems than us (though his description of the roads in Kazakhstan were not encouraging)...

After the ferry landed we got into the country with relative ease. However the car didn't as the customs guys didn't get back to work till 9 in the morning. By the time we'd ascertained this there was nothing to be done but stay in the port waiting room until they arrived. The waiting room has been deliberately designed to discourage this - metal rows of chairs, concrete floor and no heating (-5 outside).

At 9 a fixer from the port authority arrived. He was actually extremely helpful and got the car sorted with a minimum of fuss if not delay - some of the staff there were still mired in the Soviet mentality. We got our first look at Aktau at about 11. Its a fascinating place, 100s of miles from anywhere designed as a utopian soviet city of the future. I love it! Its kind of like a milton keynes meets skegness with a nuclear powered desalination plant as a water supply and no grass whatsoever. Less endearlingly all the hotels are full, but we're not sure why. We eventually got in the soviet era (in every sense) Hotel Aktau which was the last option outside the 5* $300 per night one...

Today we're attempting to buy warmer clothes for the expected siberian temperatures, apparently down to -30 at night. We shall also be buying jerry cans as petrol stations are few and far between. Finally snow chains sound like a good idea...

Tomorrow we shall head off again to Almaty, around 2500-3000km away with very little in between. Thankfully the ipod still works!

Finally arrived in Baku late last night after a rather trying journey from Tbilisi. We left Tbilisi after breakfast 2 days ago, got lost on the way to the border and when we finally did make it had to wait a ridiculous 24 hours before nearly being turned back for having an illegal right hand drive car.

The rest of our stay in Georgia was pleasant enough - met a few fellow travellers in the hotel and Azeri visa queue. We also managed a couple of days away in the Caucasus mountains and in Stalins home town Gori. The mountains were nothing short of spectacular, huge granite peaks with a dusting of snow just making them look even more dramatic. The day we arrived the weather was overcast and gloomy which just added to the effect. We stayed the night in the only hotel in Kazbegi (which might be the only open hotel in the whole of the Caucasus) which itself was only just open. On arrival we were informed that there were no restaurants in town but they were happy in the end for us to buy food and cook it in their restaurant kitchen. We came up with "egg fried pasta" which was surprisingly tolerable.

The next morning we woke up to find 6" of snow had fallen overnight, and guess which muppet doesn't have any snow chains for their front wheel drive shitter? The flat bits surprisingly still proved drivable but the small problem of a 2300m pass on the only road home soon became a bigger problem - a run up can take you a few hundred metres to the first hairpin but no further... Some less than helpful Russians offered to tow us to the top for a very charitable $100 so we told them to piss off. Eventually in the last village at the foot of the pass we wandered into a house whose yard contained nothing but heavy diesel machinery to see if they could help. After a few rounds of vodka they happily got a snowplough up and running and off we went at a stately 8mph all the way up. They didn't want payment but we gave them a generous tip anyway, and this, ladies and gentlemen is the difference between Russians and Georgians!

Gori was our next stop purely because I wanted to see the Stalin Museum. Being the only famous Georgian ever (Georgi Kinkladze doesn't count) they still venerate him as a great leader. The museum exhudes a fascinating religeous zeal for the man and manages to completely gloss over some trivialities such as the millions of his own people that he had murdered, etc. The guide that took us round seemed especially misty eyed when describing the great success of collectivisation ("some problems" roughly translates as "10 million die from starvation").

We had lunch in unpronouncable Mtskheta, the pretty former capital 10km from Tbilisi. A popular spot for Sunday lunchers we ate Lobia (lentil stew in a clay pot), huge pork gyoza type things and bbqed lamb. All delicious and eaten with the hands after a local ticked us off for using cutlery.

Picking up our visa was quite straightforward, until we came to deposit the dollars in the bank. Put simply the bank almost doesn't exist, and neither does the street its on and when you do eventually find the correct spelling of the street the door's round the corner on another street and in any case its not even a bank but an office so no one's heard of it anyway.

We set off on Tuesday morning to the Azeri border. Of course because we're leaving from Tbilisi there's no latin signposts to the border (they assume you've used the bypass as its actually illegal to transit through the city) so we end up taking the wrong road out of town. Every local we asked kept telling us that we were OK to proceed and eventually sent us down the most awful road which was somewhat akin to navigating the battleground at Ypres. To make sure we were still going the right way we shouted "Krasny Most" (the border) at someone who simply leapt into the back of the car gesticulating and babbling wildly. Fortunately he wasn't an escaped loony and we eventually ascertained that he was an Azeri living in Georgia and we were being invited for lunch at his on the way to the border. Lunch was fantastic - lovely homemade bread, chicken pieces, a sort of home made salsa and syrupy fruit. Also accompanied by an ever increasing crowd of friends and relatives none of whom could speak more than about 5 words of English. Eventually there were about 15 of us in this 1 room house toasting something(?) with slightly sparkly homemade wine. They also gave us a bottle as a parting gift (in return we gave the children a large packet of crisps - a move we came to regret....!).

Furnished with directions to the border we made our way there for about 4pm. And settled into the queue.

By 9 in the morning some Azeris also queuing had come to chat and decided to give us a hand and talked the border guard "managing" the queue into letting us jump to the front of the car queue (trucks seem to get special treatment and the border crossing seems completely unable to cope with the volume of imported German cars). By 10 we had reached the Georgian side of the control which went smoothly apart from the slightly concerning "you wont be allowed to take a right hand drive car into Azerbiajan". As I know that it has been done I chose to ignore that and we'd been waiting for 18 hours in a car in sub zero temperatures without any food so I wasn't going to give up so easily.

Things didn't get off to a flying start - we waited another 5 hours to get into Azeri customs at which point we were helped to jump to the front of the queue again (this time everyones tempers were getting frayed after so long waiting and several people were rather vocal in expressing their disgust though the presence of armed border guards prevented them getting too agressive).

It is at this point that (as the registered owner) I'm invited through the gate to have a chat to the customs guy. There's only one person on the whole border who speaks English and he's a young soldier (actually a really nice chap). Through him they tell me that we have to turn back as the car is illegal but after a bit of pleading and cajoling (and showing our Kazakh visas) the official relents and allows us to take the car into the country for 72 hours. The $20 worth of bribes probably also helped although I got the impression that everyone had to pay $10 to each official anyway.

And the front window seems to have broken for the last time - something went snap and the window went all floppy - may have a look at some point but haven't had the time.

We finally escaped the border at 4 - a full 24 hours after joining the queue but our joy was short lived. Hungry, tired and thirsty we were pulled over at a police checkpoint after about 5km. They proceeded to make up a "computer check" while going through all our belongings looking for money and items to steal (classily the first thing they mentioned to me was how many guns they all had - i.e. highwaymen...). Thankfully most of the money we had was hidden and we only carry a little and use ATMs instead. The bastards made off with our torch (we watched as the officer oh-so-subtly slipped it up his sleeve) and possibly 20 euros (wish I'd counted the money in my wallet before entering this stinking corrupt police state). He went right through our car and was reduced to eventually just asking where we kept our money. Fortunately he eventually gave up after going through the most obvious places, clearly annoyed that he didn't get as much as he'd wanted. We only made it another 10 or 15km when we were stopped again, this time by an officer with a car. He had nowhere to take us for questioning and by playing the dumb tourist much more effectively this time he gave up after a few minutes.

In spite of our tiredness we were positively seething and although you can prepare and expect this kind of treatment it still makes the blood boil. Faced with a whole 400 more km to go to Baku we decided to do it by night as our oncoming car is almost impossible to clock as foreign in the dark. Luckily it worked and after taking an overly long route in the dark on some implausibly bumpy main road, often averaging only 30mph, we made it to Baku by midnight and followed a friendly taxi driver to the hotel we intended to stay at.

Today we were awoken by a lot of noise as it turns out our hotel is full of refugees but at least its reasonably clean and cheap. As we hadn't had a proper meal for 48 hours we thought we'd extend that a little longer and went for McDonalds. At the moment we're just waiting for the British Embassy to repoen after their civil servant size lunch break - we need some advice about the customs documents that I signed to get into the country at all. Hope it all goes well...

It is at this point I would like to mention Grapes' "word of the week". We have quite an effective barometer of the success of the trip:

Eastern Europe: "Peckish"
Ankara visa chase: "Worst case scenario"
Georgia: "Dodgy"
Azerbaijan: "***********&^!(*^#$&^$!&%#$!*&(^#$*&%!&$ police"

Also a final note about HSBC - the World's local bank. They are not the world's local bank - they are merely everywhere like a particularly annoying bad penny. In spite of being "local" they still charge me just as much commission for international withdrawals as everyone else so I am now particularly careful to not use them ever again and spread my money around the banking world a little more.