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Ants & Jo

Taxi for two from Bangkok to Brighton? Ants Bolingbroke-Kent and Jo Huxter aim to cross 12 countries by tuk-tuk, and raise £50,000 for Mind.
Entry: 18
Date: 02/08/2006

A spell of doom and gloom overshadows the trip, but the girls won't give up now.

Volgograd, the Volga Region, Russia

Jo writes...

"It is 11am and I am sitting in bed listening to the deluge of rain falling on the windowsill outside. It really feels like we have been stuck in a typically bad English summer for the last three weeks. Neither of us expected weather like this. Ting Tong hates it even more than we do. After the episode when her spark plugs got wet on the way to Yekaterinburg, we are now very wary of driving in rainy conditions. Therefore, we will be staying a second night at the Hotel Ripoffski.

"It must be a total pain in the arse if you are a teenager and your best mates live the other end of the dumbbell."

We left Ufa yesterday morning and it was my turn to drive first. Ufa is a very strangely designed city, being over 20km long and shaped like a dumbbell - it must be a total pain in the arse if you are a teenager and your best mates live the other end of the dumbbell. We followed signs to Samara and ended up on a scenic loop north of the city that added an extra 20km to our journey. We also beat our record yesterday of police stops and managed eight. Strangely, most of the police that stopped us knew we were travelling from Thailand to England. I can only assume they are somehow communicating and warning the next patrol unit to watch out for a strange pink vehicle.

Ants and I both feel a little strange at the moment. Personally, I feel pretty flat, uninspired and uninspiring. I am hoping it is just a phase. Even though we are doing this amazing trip, it is not possible (I think) to always feel happy and be having an amazing time. Emotions are something that wash over you continually, even though you may not want to feel a certain emotion at a particular time i.e. feeling below-par even though there is nothing particular to cause the feeling. I think the weather is having a huge effect on my mood. I hate the rain and when it is cold, grey and miserable in England I hibernate indoors. We cannot do that on this trip and have to carry on tukking regardless of the weather. I am not complaining, because I love this adventure. It's just that sometimes my heart doesn't love it as much as I want it to."


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