When contemplating the year off, one of the things I really looked forward to was a break from the tyranny of one’s schedule. No need to be in room 10.07 at 11AM, or be in Brisbane on Tuesday etcetera.
Turns out it’s even harder to escape this sort of thing than it seems. For us, a hard date for Iran means a hard date for Turkmenistan means a fixed window to cross the three northern ‘Stans and so on. Meanwhile every day ticks towards the turn of season in the Pamir Mountains, when comparatively mild conditions give way to the truly formidable.
Accordingly no sooner had we made it out of Russia (a full 8 hours before visa expiry) we were asking ourselves how long we could afford to spend in the Northern and Eastern Kazakh steppe. We plotted a course south for Almaty.
The leg from the border to Oskemen was easy enough, albeit by then rather late in the day. The road was a snaking 1.5 lane carriageway, unlit of course - although the LEDs fitted to Disco turn night into day.
Oskemen via Ayagoz and Taldykorgan to Almaty was another story, with 80% of the leg (taken over three days) subject to roadworks or in an otherwise desperate, and yet unpredictable, state of repair. Potholes and washouts can be up to 40cm deep: easily enough to shear off suspension let alone burst a tyre or crack a rim. Much of this across a featureless semi-arid plain.
The circumstances demand attention: eyes on the road, ears searching the bangs, rattles and judders for signs of mechanical distress. Land Rover technology helps out with cameras that project obstacles obscured by the nose of the car, while the driver dances a dance with oncoming vehicles also avoiding the worst of the surface.
Like riding a motorcycle at speed, walking in a desert or completing an endurance event, there is something exhilarating and transcendent about such an all-consuming application of one’s attention. Which is not to say that it’s pleasurable in the moment, if that makes sense.
I was reminded that for whatever reason my mind seems to thrive in this sort of scenario, so despite some fatigue I was left feeling ready for a George Lucas post-apocalyptic wasteland; or indeed whatever other conditions lie in front of us.
Through all of this Disco threw up one gearbox fault (turns out Eco mode doesn’t work in such conditions) - which cleared on a restart - and otherwise did not miss a beat. I couldn’t be more impressed.
The fifth horse of the end times is grey and named Discovery.