Using the Wi-Fi included in our heterosexual room I finished downloading the Russian map to my phone, effectively killing any remaining shred of adventure left in our drive home. That being said having a map makes things easier to not get lost or killed by Russian hill-billies. We also got a message from the Mongoliers, who were still relaxing in Ulaanbaatar, about their next trip into the seedy world of Mongolian massage parlours. Having been mentally scarred by his experience at CeCe’s, Matt decided the massage parlour in our hotel’s basement was going to be more respectable establishment. Maybe hotel basements are where all the best places are in Newcastle, but their underground basement massage still came with a bizarre story. Walton’s facebook message to the convoy said “Holy f*#king sh!t. Massage parlour in hotel. Lift my face out of the fucking bed to tell her 'no crotch touching'. She's fully fucking naked and sitting on my back. Jesus Christ. She'd done a stealth undress. Needless to say if you guys had a secret camera on me you'd be pissing yourselves. Bobby is in there now- I didn't get a chance to warn him. God help the man”. After we all stopped laughing we found out apparently she had then ran out the room screaming and begun shouting at her boss. I think we all agree that Matt should either write a book about the strange goings on of the world’s massage parlour, or avoid them completely.

 

After an early breakfast we check out of the hotel and drove out of the city using our new highly detailed map and ended up getting more lost than if we didn’t have a map. On the trip out of the city we noticed a new problem with the car, a problem with the car that deeply upset Chris. The horn which Chris had become so deeply attached to over the past 48 days had broken and was no longer honking. He was going to have to face the sad reality that he could no longer hold his hand on the horn to the, a very effective manoeuvre he had first discovered on the dark streets of Istanbul and honed this skill over the rest of the rally. The traffic was pretty heavy so we were making slow process out of the city as Chris debated his new hornless life. On the last few streets of the city I was pulled over by a pair of policemen. They approached the passenger door first and realised they were dealing with tourists, not that the Scottish number plate didn’t give it away. When he came to my window he didn’t look pleased and asked for my driver’s licence. I gave him my international permit and he looked confused for a while until I pointed out that there was a picture of me on the back page, after all being capable of having a photo taken of your face is automatic proof of your worthiness to drive the other words of the piece of paper are meaningless – I’m pretty sure I could give him a birthday card as long as it had a picture of my face stapled to it. Once he inspected the outside of the car and had discussed my face’s ability to drive and its driving offence with his chubby sidekick he came back to my window and told me I didn’t have my headlights on. I slapped my forehead and turned them on, he laughed and changed his tune to asking about where we had been then waived us on.

 

The rest of the day was pretty similar to the day before, for all I know we were driving along the exact same road as yesterdays. There was more generic landscape, more trees, more hills and tarmacked roads. If you don’t believe me you can go on google maps and admire the dull landscape for yourself, you can even recreate our entire day on street view. The driving was broken up by filling the car to the brim with petrol and by traffic jams in the middle of nowhere. At one point we were at the head of the traffic jam. A level crossing appeared in front of us, not instantly but more in a manner which would relate to the speed at which we were moving towards it in the distance. The gates were closed so we decided to stop, we might be playing fast and loose with the rest of the “road laws” but we didn’t fancy getting hit by a train so decided to stop. The train made its first appearance within a minute, then continued making its appearance for what felt like ages. Just as we were losing the will the will to remain behind the barrier the train ended and a second train cruelly arrived immediately after.    

 

When we weren’t sitting in traffic jams or watching trains slowly pass we were making up our own speed limits. The speed limits were left ambiguous because of the lack of signs on the road side and the Russian drivers driving at what they wanted. At the border with Kazakhstan there was a sign post which showed the speed limit in built up areas was 60km/h, 90km/h in the countryside and 100km/h on the motorway. Since there were no signposts I decided that anything that wasn’t a town was probably a motorway but the police checkpoint begged to differ. I was pulled over by to the side of the road, the large policeman came slowly trudging towards the car. He looked exhausted and was taking a long time so I got out the car to meet him. He started speaking in Russian, because he was Russian and that’s what Russian people do, until I stared blankly back at him. I gave him my International driving permit with the photo page open, learning from the morning’s experience. He read that it was issued in Glasgow and begun listing off as many things he could about the city, once he had exhausted that list he turned to what he knew about Scotland. Once he had finished reciting the history of haggis production in Braemar I nodded in agreement and he said his goodbyes and waddled off.

 

At the end of the day we were getting closer to the next large city, we weren’t going to make it to the other side of the city before it went dark, so we decided to find a hotel in town. Having learnt from our previous night and with my phone loaded up with maps we found a fast food restaurant to borrow their Wi-Fi. We drove into the city centre and stopped at Burger King to book a hotel room online, we chose a reasonably cheap hotel which was nearby and looked like it might not be covered in diseases. With the hotel hunting done for the day we wandered around the city centre and found a bar for dinner. With a belly full of steak and beer (Chris was driving so his was full of cocaine coke) I led Chris to where my map said the hotel was. When we arrived at the marker there was nothing that looked like a hotel, but a lot of things which looked like a train yard. We blindly drove around scrutinising every building before accepting defeat and going back to Burger King’s Wi-Fi haven. At Burger King we had a new stab at the map then went to the new location and found a mechanic’s garage. Just as we were heading back to the Burger King for a third time in the evening, I spotted a building that might contain a hotel. The inside of the hotel contained an exhausted Russian Danny DeVito sat on a sofa.