Some days just go thoroughly pear-shaped. This one did. And yet is started with such promise - Sardi and Karen enjoying the bush camp bathroom and shower facilities of being in an open field (the photo above explains all).
Several hours in to driving in 40 degree heat, we saw a body of water that we realised for once actually wasn't a mirage - and of course if screaming at us all to go and swim. Big mistake.
Fast forward 15 minutes we have managed to bog all 3 cars in the sand. OK, so maybe we need to take a little break from driving and try walking down to the water's edge for once.
Fast forward 2 hours and we are just finishing getting the third vehicle out of the sand and now drenched in sweat from the heat of the day, rather than jump in the water, we have to drive off and make a hasty exit as we've attracted too much attention from some locals who are on a mission to whisk us away to drink vodka.
Fast forward another 30 minutes and we are now foraging by the side of the road for a stray jerry can that's come off Team Top Gun's car. The jerry can is the same colour and conveniently the same colour as the shrubs.
Fast forward several more hours, getting to the end of the day, we're stopped by the Police. Twice. And this time they want to take pink-mohawk Chris' pink aviator sunglasses as a 'gift'. Except the two emus aren't happy about this as we gave them to Chris as a gift - and so the two emus get out of our car, march over to the Police and start an academy-award winning performance of outrage and hysteria in order to get the sunglasses back. We win. We retrieve the sunglasses. Chris is happy to have an all-girl team trump card for future Police encounters.
Fast forward 30 minutes - time to stop for dinner at the most fly-infested truck stop in all of Kazakhstan. Fortunately they do an excellent unidentified meat pattie with fried egg and we are all happy campers once again. The unidentified meat substance brings out the hunter instinct in the guys and an enormous fire is the result when we camp that night - so enormous that we nearly melt one of the cars' headlights and none of us will need to shave for the next 3 months - which is fine for the girls, but the guys will look a bit strange....