Less than one week to go. So what does that mean? Well it means that we are almost done with the visa fiasco (still waiting on our Turkmenistan visa), still figuring out how to fit everything in the car and are counting down the days to the trip of a life time. Kit has been the main focus of the past week or so. A practice camping trip to the rough terrain of Berkshire was quite enlightening as to the quality of some of our kit. Tent wise, Charlie had offered the services of an old 'tent' of his. Given that Charlie was away, Harry B was given the responsibility of testing this 'tent' on our practice camping trip. The more observant of you will have wondered why the word tent in the last sentence was in inverted commas - Harry B on a wet night in March was to find out why. Now its fair to say that waterproofing technology has come along way since the '60s. Instead of a water repelling strategy, Charlie's tent went for water absorption. Given that it rained all night, by morning, Harry B was fairly adament that a new tent was required and so Amazon has once again delivered the goods. To film the trip we have also acquired a camera drone. The idea of this was to film jaw-dropping footage of the Mongolia Steppe and the Pamir Highway. I (Harry M) was given the responsibility of flying this thing. After about 30 seconds, I soon realised why I spectacularly failed my flight aptitude test for the AAC at RAF Cranwell. As yet, the only footage we have is of the drone repeatedly crashing into my lawn - much improvement required. I recently read that Winston Churchill ended almost every phone call during WW2 with KBO. Give it a google and I think you'll agree that its a rather wonderful slogan for our trip. 5 days to go and then we are off. KBO. 

Now paperwork isn't all that we are doing. Given that some of the places that we are going to are a little bit more remote than where most people 'gap yaah' to, it requires a little bit more preparation. The bulk of this preparation consisted of a two day course with Objective Travel Safety. The aim of the course was to get us to start 'thinking on our feet' and to react to what is presented in front of us. We covered everything from muggings to checkpoints. This was all extremely enlightening, particularly a 'practice checkpoint'. It was fair to say that through our inadequacies and dismal preparation, the boarder guards had a fairly profitable day as they walked off with a watch, phone, car-jack and a selection of maps. The Objective Travel Safety course also included a medical day with Andy, a paramedic. This too was extremely enlightening. It was a bit like the St John's Ambulance first aid course on steroids. We learned how to do everything from stopping a catastrophic bleed to putting a snapped femur back in place. It was a long shout from the 'heart start' courses that we had done at school and it made us a little more appreciative of the situations that you can end up in these countries. So, we now only have 4 more visas to get and then we are set to roll.