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...