Ze Status

So, what's happened since our last update?

First of all, we've worked out our route in more details. We spent an entire afternoon pouring over our maps, working our way backwards from Ulan Bator to London. It's actually quite easy to pick a route in Central Asia, because the number of main roads is remarkably small. Sometimes a quick check of satellite imagery reveals even these "main roads" to be little more than glorified dirt tracks.

We're also finally getting our Visas applications out the door. We couldn't start this process earlier, because I still needed my passport for Rio. This means we have to pay quite a bit of extra money to expedite the processing at the various embassies, but we'll just have to suck it up. It's going to be close, but I think we'll make it. There was also a bit of a scary moment, when we realized that Germans can only apply for single-entry visa to Kazakhstan. That would make our planned routed impossible and would have forced us to skip Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Fortunately we were able to find two possible solutions to that problem. Let's hope the one we picked works out.

I've also taken a test drive in our car. It doesn't feel quite as cramped as I thought it would and drives quite well. Unfortunately it has a tendency to drift to the right. Let's hope that this not a symptom of something serious. The battery also needs to be replaced, but that's not a big deal.

If the visas work out, there's no stopping us now, so we're moving on to buying equipment. Space is going to be limiting factor there, because the car is, well, small. We'll keep you updated how things are going. As long as we take a year's supply of duct tape we should be fine.