The last time we wrote a little update, we were (as usual) a little ahead of ourselves thinking we’d be out for a little test drive on the weekend. It’s now a week later and we’re saying the same thing, we should be out in a few days. This has been the story of our journey thus far, everything takes a little longer, a little more effort, a few more parts, than we initially expected. It’s these extra yards, where we learn the most, about the truck, about ourselves, and about why we’re on this crazy merry-go-round adventure.

It has however, been an incredibly productive four or five days . Hammer and tongs, the saying goes, although we’ve also been using wrenches, soldering irons, and more rivets than I can count. We joke sometimes that our truck is held together with spit and hope, but that’s not true, it’s mainly rivets, lots and lots of rivets.

The internal and external lighting and ventilation is all wired and looking pro, we don’t even get out of bed now to turn the lights on and off – nice. Water pumps have been installed, the inflatable tank is full, and fairly shortly the clean, filtered H2O will be flowing into our kitchen and shower, double nice. Even our new chinese indicators are wired up, meaning we can indicate to other traffic which direction we’re going, as if we have any idea ourselves.

Last night, we had dinner with an incredible man called Micko, Liam’s dad (the guy we bought the motorbike off). He is 14 months into a travel from Rottnest to Rotterdam, (that’s Australia to Europe folks) in his landcruiser, with his lovely partner Liesbeth. They have just driven through China and Tibet, and had nothing but enthusiasm for us and our plan to get to africa.

For us, it was inspiring to see a couple of people, so totally happy on the road, telling us that we were on the right track. Long travels like theirs are not always easy, but for them, like us, it’s not about the destination, but soaking up as much of each place as they can. Hopefully we’ll get to spend some more time with them, and it’s likely too, because they have to wait for Russian visa’s, an unpredictable process that begins for us in a few weeks too.

So we’ll leave you, once again, in the hope that next time we update, we’ll have photos of sunshine, nature, and butterflies, instead of a slightly disturbing one of Rikki in a onsey.

(He says it’s not a onsey if they’re overalls, but he also confessed to me the other day his lifelong dream was to have boots attached to his onsey so in the morning he can get dressed with minimal effort sort of like richy rich? n.b Rikki’s birthday is december 3)