Despite a few issues with money withdrawal back at the Iran-Turkmenistan border, we were able to cross without any serious problems and have since gone across the desert all the way to Turkmenistan. While there we encountered many other teams along the way, and want to give a shoutout thank you to the Kiwis who helped us find a hostel to stay at while our car was almost on it’s last legs. After a couple of nights in a border town hostel we crossed into Uzbekistan. While on the Uzbek side of the border we had some help raising our car up to a new height as we had not anticipated that it would be so difficult to traverse these desert roads which are littered with potholes.

Of course it didn’t end there and we had further problems with the car, but were helped out by some very kind people, who offered to accomodate us in their own home during one of most difficult times. Honestly their kindness was beyond belief, and we want to send our thanks to:
ДЖумамурадова Олтиной , Мирзахмедов Жамшид, Розимова Асал, Розимов Хамдам, Мирзахмедов Зафар and Сийтимов Бахтияр
Hope I got all those right, Cyrillic isn’t the easiest thing for me to follow!

We’d also like to thank the neighbour of the house who saved us on the first day of our breakdown and took us to his house.

Trying so many homemade foods, going fishing together (without catching anything of course) and playing board games. Even being generously greeted with some vodka. It was probably the most interesting cultural experience of the whole trip for us so far and we really are so thankful to our hosts, and hope they see this!

Since then we’ve made on our way and travelled through the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, following the Silk Road along our way towards China.