Despite being welcomed to the hostel by a pack of rabid dogs, the rest of the evening wasn't as exciting since we all went straight to sleep. In the morning we were woken up by Wangers at the door to our room saying that if we weren't ready to go in 10 minutes there would be no trip to McDonald's. Obviously this new wake up tactic worked a treat and we were by the cars in 5 minutes, only to find there was no one else there but us. While we waited for another half hour, I noticed something different about the car, something horribly different - someone had written on our bonnet with tip-ex. If the "10 minute" wake up didn't put us on a downer, "Korday" from Kazakhstan sure pushed us over the edge. There were four cars in the car park, three of which have been collecting signatures from people along the way but lack a tip-exed "Korday Kazakhstan". Our car is in mint condition, apart from the various body panels currently being held on with duct tape. If we had our time again I might have been tempted to let people write on our car but it's too late to start now - well that's our opinion, "Korday" clearly had other ideas. If you are reading this Korday, you're a terrible human being and I dislike you immensely. I tried scraping off the tip-ex with my keys but that didn't work, so we sat weeping like little girls instead. Once the others finally arrived, and laughed at our new decorations, we set off to find McDonald's for breakfast. We got a mile down the road before we pulled over at a random cafe, which was in no way a McDonald's. Despite the front of the shop being plastered with the word "Coffee", there was no coffee. I begrudgingly ate one of my stale cupcakes while Mrs Sharkey, in Australia, scoured the internet for an address to try and stop the impending temper tantrum. She didn't find any evidence that there was actually a McDonald's anywhere in this stupid city.
Needless to say we were not happy campers while we drove out of Almaty towards Russia. We reacted to the lack of McDonald's in a similar way a toddler might throw all their toys out the pram, only we had a car and biscuits. We threw biscuits at each car until they ran out, and I was left with my last stale cupcake from "breakfast". I offered Adam the cupcake but for some reason he wasn't very pleased, but that might have something to do with us travelling at 50 mph during the offering between cars. When we pulled over for petrol he declared war - I want that noted down in the history books that Adam is the one who declared war, we are in no way responsible for our defensive actions. While waiting for the final car to be filled up he smooshed the cupcake all over our window, and out of nowhere the Mongoliers started tossing branches into our car. That's another thing to note down before reading later blogs from Mongolia, the Mongoliers also made the first act of war. Back on the road the new war escalated, I was shot in the face by Sharkey before Adam threw a coke bottle of rubbish into our car. Needless to say I had little choice but to top my remaining stale cupcake with sun-cream and throw it straight at the Yaris' window. The war settled down due to a lack of projectiles and BB pellets. I searched around the car looking for the next thing to throw when a plan formed in my mind.
We were at the back on the convoy, and we were passing a lot of fruit stalls by the side of the road. We slowed down and "accidentally" lost sight of the convoy, this gave us the opportunity to pull over at the next stall. There was a wide range of fruits available, but one stood out as the funniest thing to throw out of a moving car.- a large watermelon. The choice of watermelons was impressive, we could have bought smaller cheaper watermelons but I opted for the largest watermelon. Of course this was a little more expensive, but we only wanted the best to share with our new friends. We got back on the road and debated the best tactic, do we throw the entire thing or slices. As hilarious as throwing an entire watermelon at a car would be, it would also be pretty stupid and dangerous. I sliced the watermelon into three discs, one for each car, then cut the rest up into manageable chunks. We found the convoy waiting for us at the side of the road but sped past to keep the element of surprise. They were clueless right until the first slice came flying out the window as the Mongoliers went to overtake. The lion boys were hesitant to overtake, but eventually they each had their individual slice of watermelon smear across their windscreen. Once the slices were gone I moved onto the chunks, while the others tried to run away. We chased them along the motorway throwing a chunk at the windows at any opportunity, I decided not to throw it inside the car - this may be war, but I'm not a monster. I'm sure the Kazakhstan public are used to watching four British cars fight with watermelon on their highways, or at least they are now. After an hour or so, it was a big watermelon, we finally ran out of chunks. All the other cars were plastered in red watermelon flesh, but the Mongoliers' 4x4 had definitely fared the worse and looked like it had been driving through every piece of wildlife in the Kazakh countryside - Which by the way, is a pretty bland countryside.
The afternoon passed by in an uneasy standoff, the three other teams had formed an alliance for an act of revenge. Which is not something we had considered while adrenaline was flowing in our blood during the heat of the battle. Chris opted to ruin any chance of reconciliation and topped up a half empty tomato sauce tub with sun-cream. As we drove past Red Lion he threw the tub out of the window and scored a perfect hit. The tub exploded on impact with the windscreen and sprayed its filling all over the car. Obviously they had to pull over to the side of the road to clean their windscreen, apparently you need to be able to see outside to drive a car. While stopped we discussed camping up for the night in another hour. The Khan boys spotted a turn off from the main road, and upon inspection decided it was a perfect location. Just off the main road was a large sand bank which hid a flat area. After a few attempts all cars made it over the sand dune and parked up for the night. While setting up the tents someone noticed something funny about the local flora, we had parked up to camp in a field of wild hemp and marijuana.
Day 29 - The Great Watermelon War
Start: McDonald's in Almaty
Finish: A Kazakh pot plantation
