After a beautiful morning we went over the mountain pass. We passed a ruin which we drove to check out, and met a family who lived down from the ruin. They told us about a waterfall nearby, and after checking out the ruin we continued along the road until we came to an end. Jakob went looking for the waterfall, but as he could not find anything, we decided to drive back.

We had lunch on the steppe, and actually got some rain and thunder today. It was pretty chilly, but I would not define it as cold, before the rain came down upon us.
The roads were better than expected and we got ahead pretty fast. As it started raining even more we decided to eat out instead of cooking our own food.

We met a couple of drunkards at the place, and one of them were pretty annoying, trying to talk with us all the time while waiting for the food.

When backing out, it went pretty slow, and we discovered a puncture in the rear-left tire of the defender.

We started to change the tire, and found out we had a mechanic on the other side. While changing tire, we rolled over the punctured tire to get it fixed on the other side. They did it pretty fast and pretty cheap, and we tried to talk with them in the meantime!

The spot we decided to camp at for the night had a really nice background view to look at while playing some card games.
My shirt had started to rip too much, which was understandable. I got it second hand from one of my hosts during the bike trip, who I lived at in Belgium. I think the sun during those trips has not been nice to it, and weakened it during all this time. I gave it a nice end at least! (Thank you for the shirt, Anne and Didier! The shirt has been a really good travel companion!)

First thing this morning, we drove by a ruin city named Sauran. The city were used during the Silk Road, being a capital city of the Mongols during the 1500s. It was not well taken care of, and I think some parts are re-built afterwards, but it was pretty cool to see.

The next stop were in Turkistan, where we first bought more food and wate. Next, we went to a pharmacy for hand sanitiser and also new earrings for me as I managed to lose one. The guy answered yes on all the questions (Do you speak english? How much are these?), but seemed to know more or less no english. He went to another place to buy earrings, and the second time I followed him there so I could get what I needed. We also bought grilled chicken and bread outside, before a police told us we could not park there, and we had to drive to another place to eat.

One of our later plans were to live in a Yurt camp, so we tried to find a place with wifi so we could book. While filling up gas, I went over to a big Hyundai car saloon to look for wifi, and actually managed to find some. We booked while the locals were talking loudly with us, one of them wanting to guide us to Kyrgyzstan. Michael got to taste fermented horse milk of some friendly local!

When we finally were on our way again, we went outside the city to eat without being disturbed. We managed to find a really good place for bathing, so we could wash ourselves, and also do a quick wash of some clothes! We had a great time, playing in the streams and just relaxing.

Our plan were to take a short cut over the mountains. On the way we saw a really good-looking spot, and after driving around a little we settled down there. The afternoon were spent climbing the mountains, which was really cool. We managed to get to a pretty nice peak, which opened up for some fine photography possibilities!

During dinner, we got swarmed again, but this time by dragonflies! We also got a rainbow for dinner, which showed up really neatly.

We did not do much today, as the earlier days of bad roads took longer than expected. Therefore, this day was more of a transport day!
At lunch time we were close to the Russian rent part of Kazakstan, Baykonur, where every space launch from Russia and Soviet was launched. We ate lunch at the kind of Russian city close by, and drove by close enough to get some photos!

We had some problems buying gas in Kyzylorda, but at the third try we found a petrol station, which of course has a big line as everyone wanted to fill up gas there.
When we tried to find a camp, we first found ourselves following a canal and then going in a circle back to the highway. The second time we went off, we managed to find a secluded place in between some dunes!

When Jakob is too tired to drive, Jackiie takes over!

During the morning we passed really close to the Arak lake. We walked to the salty water, and I have to admit that before yesterday I thought it would be much smaller.

Close to lunch, we passed some sand dunes, and took the chance to drive through them instead of around. It was some fun off road driving, and we stopped for lunch in the middle.

After passing a small town we found a hot spring, which we did not know about! Apparently, the hot water would heal you if you swam 30 minutes in it, or something like that, but you were not supposed to drink it. We met lots of people there, and one of them could speak English. If I recall correctly she were there with her class from school, 11th form. Everyone wanted us to be on photos with them, so I got to take many pictures!

Later, we were closing in on one of the consequences of the rapidly shrinking Aral lake, the ships left stranded when the lake disappeared. On our way out there a motorbike chased us, to tell us to follow them and swim somewhere, we think. They left soon, though.

We got ourselves really cool photos of the ship, and also the camels underneath it!

In the evening I tried myself against Hampus in some wrestling, but of course, I lost. It was fun, at least!

I woke up with a little rumbling in my stomach, and had to go out pretty fast. Apparently it was not only me; more than half the camp were bad. Our thoughts were of the lunch yesterday. As we got served really fast, it may have been pretty bad grilled.

We are pretty used to people coming by and saying hello, even though we don’t understand each other at all. Today, there were a guy on a motorbike driving over the steppe. He even gave me a ride around, which just made me want to take my own motorbike somewhere even more.

We finally arrived at the Aral lake, or what is left of it at least. We had dinner at a small peak with something that looked like a memorial, where you could also spot what looked like old ships. There would be too much of a reroute to visit them, though.

The rest of the day, I just tried to sleep, with the stomach making me well aware of it.

I woke up when we arrived at the stay for the night, at the bottom of a small hill. We went up to take a look, but you could not really see anything. I felt pretty exhausted by that small trip, though. Daniel made a small art piece while on the top.

We ended the evening with discussing the worst/most stupidly things we had done in our lives. It was a great evening, even if I didn’t feel really well.

 I drove down from the mountain, and we continued on the pretty bad road. We passed a small river, so that was the first eye I drove through here!

  
There were not really much to do or see on the way, so we drove until we arrived in a city where we were going to eat lunch, shop and fill up gas in. As we wanted to save on time, we split in three groups; I and Mikael went to order food at a place we saw on the way. On the way there, we saw a pretty cool mosque.

  
We managed to order food for ten people, and then the two guys at the place started talking with us. They wanted to take photos of us with our cameras, and to take selfies with their cameras.

   
We got the food pretty quick, to our surprise. So far, we always had to wait at least half an hour, but today it was fifteen minutes. We contacted the others through radio and SMS so that they would know the lunch was ready.

  
The only small problem, is that we only seemed to get three plates for ten people, which would be nowhere as much as we needed. We tried to order two big plates more, but got one smaller plate, probably for two people. After a third order, we thought it would at least be food enough, and gave up on ordering more.
When we were done eating, we took the chance to fill up our ”shower bags” with tap water, a total of 80 litres of water.
We continued on (or the side of) the not-so-good road. On the way, we picked up every bigger piece of wood we could find, as we were going to grill tonight!

  
As it does not rain much down here, there were dust everywhere in the air, and while driving it really went everywhere.

   
 
When we arrived at our camp for the night out in the nowhere, we started collecting whatever burning material we could find. Emil and I found a big log, pretty dry, which we also brought to the camp. It was really easy to find easy-burning material to start with, which also makes you look like an elk!

  
I started the fire, and then me and Emil grilled the chicken the others had cut up. The log didn’t really burn, but the other material we had were enough!