Day 31

The terrain has changed today, we've moved from the dry plains of western Kazachstan to the hilly south east and we even had a few spots of rain.

The standard of the roads is a little better, but 80kmph is really as fast as you can go.

After suffering our second puncture a couple of days ago, we had the tyre removed from the rim to find an eight cm rip in the tube which had started at a rectangular imprint in the tube. There was no hole in the tyre.

This confirmed my suspicion that the tubes were rubbing against the inside of the tyre, so we had all the tubes removed and now have tubless tyres. All the other tubes had the same rectangular imprint. Total cost for 6 tyres removed and refitted with new valves £4.80 The tyre with the damaged sidewall has been refitted to it's rim and once inflated the distortion is minimal so we'll run it tomorrow on the rear and keep a close eye on it.

No repeat of the rough running today, so fingers crossed on that.

The Baja however is not well. Rachael and Tom collected it from the mechanic, but only drove 60km before the engine dumped all it's oil. So they returned to the mechanic but the news this evening is that they have abandoned all hope of getting it fixed, and are looking at other ways of continuing the trio.

Lat 43 06.51
Long 73 17.07
Distance 9845km
Nearest town Merke, Kaz