5 June — the report from Day 19.

Tearing across the Kazakh wilderness again today.
And the same furnace: over 40 degrees outside, close to 50 in the car. The adventure goes on inside that heat.

A brutal start — flat out across burning wilderness

I barely slept at last night’s campsite again, and between that and the lack of sleep before it, my strength is close to gone.
The heat piles on top of it, and I have no appetite at all.
More than that, my body will not even take water.
On top of which my stomach has been bad for days, and every so often we stop and the fluid leaves me from the other end, in the middle of the wilderness.

The driver keeps telling me to force something down — but the water is well past lukewarm and close to hot. Drinking it, I can feel it leaving my body instantly, like steam. The heat really is extraordinary.

Trouble strikes — in a heat that takes your strength

Along the way we passed several other competitors stopped with punctures.
Our car was somehow still going — and then the moment came.

The front end suddenly went vague and the wheel started snatching left and right. “Hang on, is this …” — and yes: a puncture.

The trap in a bad road — the fight with a flat

We had a spare and a large jack in the car, so I assumed we would change it straight away.

Except that on a sloping, broken surface the jack would not lift properly, and a job that should have been simple dragged on in the burning wilderness.

Sweat and tears and every bit of fluid in me poured out, and my strength drained away with it.

I no longer remember how long we fought with it, but by good luck a support car came past and helped, and we finally got going again. Another god descending.


But I was in pieces. Half exasperated, I watched the driver eating an apple with real appetite and marvelled at that kind of resilience — while I still could not get water down.
And the fluid still leaving me from the other end.

At the limit — a life-and-death fight with heatstroke

We got to the campsite somehow and pitched the tent.
And from the moment I relaxed, I have no memory.

Apparently I then went into heatstroke, half conscious, and wandered about saying “water … water please …”
When I came to, I was surrounded by doctors with ice packed all over me.

They had also moved me to a large tent, the small one being too hot.
That I should end up in the care of actual doctors while driving a 1929 Doctor’s Coupé — a doctor’s car.

Looking back it is funny, but at the time I genuinely felt my life was in danger.

If I had gone on neglecting to drink, I might have stayed down with heatstroke.
It made complete sense when the organisers put out a notice that evening telling everyone to take not just water but something with electrolytes in it.

The night I survived, and on to Day 20

For all that heat by day, the Kazakh wilderness turns suddenly cold at night.


That swing is nothing to be careless about either.
Today confirmed for me all over again how close an adventure rally sits to real danger.

The journey goes on, and there is nothing to do but tighten up and keep moving.

So — what adventure is waiting on Day 20? Look forward to it.

Continued in Day 20 …