Jake and Dave give Hoot Car Insurance an update from the deserts of Kazakhstan
We're in Kazakhstan, home of Borat, and it's just got hardcore.
‘Proper' roads came to a sudden halt a couple of hundred miles back and since then we've been bumping our way across the desert tracks and navigating our way around the potholes that seem to infest every piece of tarmac in the country.
And when I say potholes, I mean potholes. None of these piddly little things an inch or so deep that we'd moan about back in Britain, but holes, canyons, crevices. Some of these beasts are a foot deep and as wide and as long as a small bus.
In fact, some of the roads are so bad that people simply give up using them and drive alongside, tearing through the desert dust instead. That's what we've been doing – and it's truly awesome.
Anyway, let's rewind a week or so. Apart from increasingly awful roads, what's been happening to us since we were last in touch in Moldova a week ago? A fair bit, to be honest.
Nappies in the Sea
Leaving the beautiful Moldovan countryside behind, we set off towards the Ukraine, hitting the border about midday, before sitting in a sweltering queue for a few hours. A bit of blag and some dollars got us past the guards and, with another new flag adorning our paintwork, we cruised on towards Odessa, managing to keep clear of Transnistria in the process.
Now, Odessa was a place we'd been looking forward to reaching, and we were thinking of it as our trip's first major stop-off. A famous Black Sea beach resort popular with playboys, sun-seeking tourists and packed with women of legendary beauty; we couldn't wait to get a proper shower and chill out on the sand with an ice-cold drink.
But it didn't quite work out like that. There was no Miami-like beach, no Monacoesque harbour and not even a promenade like Blackpool's Golden Mile. In fact, there wasn't even any sea. Well, there was probably all of the above, but our three-hour drive around Odessa failed to find it. All we managed to discover were traffic jams, smog, incomprehensible road signs and increasingly frayed tempers.
Enough was eventually enough and when we circumnavigated the same roundabout for the millionth time we decided to call it a day and head off east.
A few miles out of Odessa we did finally spot a strip of rubbish-strewn sand and some murky looking water, so slammed on the brakes, pulled up on the hard shoulder and went to get our feet wet.
Paddling in the sewage of a huge industrial city has never really been a favourite pastime of mine, however, and after a minute or two we pulled the nappies from around our ankles, scraped the fag butts off our legs and got back in the Polo.
Eastwards we headed again into the Ukranian sunset, passing huge army bases and the swarms of scantily clad ladies that hovered around their gates. Almost every oncoming car flashed us vigorously, either to warn us of the presence of the notorious Ukrainian traffic police, or because our pathetic efforts at felt-tipping out our headlight glare had failed miserably and we were blinding them.
Vodka, Truckers, Ladies and More Vodka
So, it was with some sense of relief that we stumbled across a roadside hotel shortly before midnight and decided that we owed it to ourselves to splash out and stay in a bit of luxury. This particular luxury cost us $25 for a room that came with a tattered double sofa bed and a shower – heaven!
The rest of the night disappeared in a haze of vodka and nonsensical conversations with bemused foreign truckers and we awoke late the next morning with heads that felt like they were about to explode.
But, with time ticking by and an unimaginable amount of miles yet to cover, we washed away our hangovers with boxes of orange juice and climbed back into our sturdy little German car to continue our journey east.
For the rest of the day we sped along on arrow-straight roads under a boiling sun, cruising past scores of roadside stalls selling honey and watermelons, before finally reaching the Russian border just after dark. We'd heard nightmare stories of obscene queues and crazy bureaucracy combining to make fellow ralliers wait, quite literally, days at the crossing, and we weren't looking forward it.
It could actually have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better, as it took a good twelve hours and a lot of shrugging, sign language and idiotic grinning to get us onto Russian soil. It was mid-morning by the time we eventually got through and so, shattered, hot and feeling decidedly grubby, we pulled over under a tree and got a few hours' sleep before pushing on towards Volgograd.
With a bit of help from our dwindling supply of energy drinks we made it to Volgograd in the early evening and, wasting more of our precious bribe money on unnecessary luxury, checked into a posh hotel in the city centre. 
A hot shower and a slap-up meal later we were feeling decidedly revived and, noticing that Volgograd possessed more beautiful ladies than the set of a Lynx advert, decided to hit the town. Next followed clubbing Russian style but that's all I'm allowed to tell Hoot Car Insurance of that crazy night on the banks of the Volga River. Sorry but what goes on tour stays on tour.
Standing in the Footsteps of Heroes
The next morning we put the excesses of the previous night behind us and took a trip to pay our respects at the city's enormous war memorial, a 280-foot tall statue of Mother Russia brandishing a sword. The statue commemorates the 1,500,000 people that died as a result of the vicious fighting in Volgograd (then known as Stalingrad) during the Second World War and is a truly breathtaking monument that towers above the city.
Stalingrad was virtually destroyed by the fighting as the Soviets fought tooth and nail to beat off Hitler's Nazi war machine, and nowhere is this sacrifice better appreciated than when looking down on the city from the hill on which the towering memorial stands.
A little humbled by the statue and the guarded memorial flame that burns eternally in an open crypt beneath her feet, we climbed back into our car and joined up with two other spluttering rally vehicles heading off towards Kazakhstan.
Six or seven hours later night began to fall and we got lost in the darkness as we went round and round Astrakhan – the last Russian city before the Kazakh border – desperately looking for a cash machine and a petrol station.
Just as it felt like we were going to run out of fuel and get eaten by the rabid looking dogs that seemed to be running everywhere, we stumbled across a cash point and a petrol station and so, with fistfuls of notes stashed in the car's upholstery and our jerry cans topped up to the max, we headed east out of the city towards the border.
Not far down the road we were stopped in our tracks at a road block manned by drunken gun-toting Russian soldiers. I think they were a bit bemused by the midnight appearance of six grubby foreigners in broken cars and we managed to bribe our way past with the offering of a two pence coin. If only all former Soviet squaddies could be so easily pleased!
Tired, hungry and feeling decidedly skanky, we didn't fancy tackling another border crossing at silly o'clock and so pulled up at the side of the road to get some noodles on the go and then get our heads down for a few hours.
Into the Unknown
When morning came we made a surprising discovery; we'd spent the night parked on the edge of a ganja field. But considering we had to push on and remembering how close we were to an international border, we decided to avoid a spot of botany and so hopped back in the car and went to find more AK-47-waving, bribe-seeking soldiers.
We duly discovered them at the border crossing, where we spent several hours sweating in the sun, playing football with some locals (including a border guard who gave his machine gun to a ten-year-old to hold while he booted our ball around) and waiting for an extortionately priced rickety car ferry to take us across the river that separates Russia from Kazakhstan.
Off the ferry and we were in Kazakhstan at last. Well, almost. First came more form-filling and more attempted bribes from the soldiers manning the border post, all in a zillion degrees of midday sun. This time the border guards were a little more exotic in their demands and wanted us to supply them with certain little blue pills, the name of which I can't mention on Hoot's young driver car insurance website!
When they finally realised that Brits, especially stinking ones living in cars with other stinking men, don't regularly take 'performance' enhancing drugs on road trips, they stole our football instead and told us to be on our way.
Now we were properly in Kazakhstan and it was instantly obvious how different it was; like another world. In fact, staring out of the window as Dave drove through the desert dust (the tarmac stopped abruptly about half a mile past the border), I couldn't help but notice everything looked like how I imagined the Biblical lands of the New Testament to be. There was desert as far as the eye could see, salt lakes, a blazing hot sun in the sky and little square homes with flat roofs.
And so passed the rest of the day, us cruising through the desert in wonder that we'd actually driven a car to Kazakhstan; I guess not many people can say that. This was the day when it really hit us that we were well and truly on our way and there was definitely no turning back now. But it was a good feeling, a really good feeling!
That good feeling disappeared occasionally when the dusty ‘roads' gave way to tarmac and we were forced to bump our way over and around the evil potholes, but you can't have everything your way, can you?
An Amazing Week
Potholes aside, the last few days we've spent driving through Kazakhstan have been truly awesome. We've spent nights camped by beautiful lakes, witnessed horses stampeding past our tents in the moonlight, eaten what we thought was cheese (but was probably a firelighter) that some crazed old desert woman gave us, and we've ridden on the roof of our cars as we tore, Paris to Dakar style, through the desert sands.
We've also swum in eerily murky lakes, watched (from a distance) as a smoking mechanic welded a sump guard to our Polo while it leaked petrol everywhere, slept in the desert surrounded by vicious camel spiders and lived on a diet of raw jelly and energy drinks.
All in all it's been absolutely cracking and definitely not what, four months ago, I thought I'd be doing with my summer.
You'll be glad to hear that the car's still holding up well, although we have lost a few tyres to the Kazakh potholes and our exhaust is now held on by a combination of zip ties, gaffer tape and para cord.
The fuel leak that appeared before we left the UK hasn't got any worse and, as long as we park up at night with the driver's side slightly higher than the passenger's side, we've still got juice in the tank in the morning.
It's impossible to tell but I reckon we're coming on for the midway point of trip now. There's still a hell of a long way to go of course – around 5,000 miles – and most of it's going to be on roads even worse than those that we've been driving on for the last few days. But, considering how far we've come and the battering that these Kazakh ‘roads' have given our beautiful little 14-year-old Volkswagen, it's not doing bad at all.
Dave and I are still in one piece too, although we are sporting grubby beards and probably stink worse than a tramp's crotch. In fact, so awesome is Dave's ability to grow facial hair that the guards at the Kazakh border affectionately nicknamed him Osama. It probably didn't help that he was wearing a pair of combat shorts and had a shemagh wrapped around his head, and, if they'd lent him an AK-47, no doubt a US spy satellite would have spotted him and sent an airstrike our way.
Anyway, my hands are aching and my belly's rumbling; it's time for more raw jelly and Red Bull I think. So, Hoot Car Insurance visitors, from halfway through the Mongol Rally, I bid you goodbye.
If we're still alive in a week we'll drop you another update. Please do keep your fingers crossed for us, somehow I think we're gonna need it…
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