Leaving lake Balqash, Amy and the Radish had made great use of the early start and if all went to plan we would all be by the border by nightfall. It didn't.

Usually the gun ho approach of Team Roast Beef can be observed by the 2CV quite often soaring ahead and staying in our view on the horizon. Today things were different. The 2CV on the horizon from the windscreen quickly became the 2CV on the horizon out of our rear view mirror. The Radish was down. Confident that she was going to be back on the road in a jiffy the lads got to work. 3 hours later and lots of noodles eaten the radish was not budging. It was time they bit the bullit and consulted a mechanic.

Back on the road again and a blown tyre from the radish meant play was suspended again for a short while. This fixed we all headed up towards Astana.

Then came the text that would have fit into any Hollywood War film. ''Lads were down, go on without us we can catch u up''. Worried that we werent to make the border before our day left expired in our Visa we had to press on.

After sleeping in a layby we wearily arrived at the Kazakh/Russian border in good time. Probably a good thing too as we had no idea of the chaos that the next 6 hours was to be. We arrived at the border at 13:00 and by 19:00 we were out of Kazakhstan with a five year ban from their country under our belt. Basically what had happened was that our cool approach to paperwork on the entry into Kazakhstan meant that we missed a small print saying we must register...[Read More]