35 000 ks from Melbourne by road  is Thessaloniki in Greece. 25 000ks is Kashgar in Western China.

Jack has taken more than 8 000 photos

We have averaged 14 litres of diesel per 100ks, but can get it down to 12 if we go slower…

Cheapest diesel is Iran, where we paid Aust$3 for 165 litres. That is not a typo. $3 for 165 litres.

Most expensive has been Turkey at A$2.60 equivalent a litre

Two punctures, one in Mongolia and the other in No Mans Land on the Torugart Pass between China and Kyrgyzstan, in the snow.

No mechanical breakdowns or failures at all. Burglar alarm switches and the CD player have broken. One driving light bulb has blown. Two wheels buckled and repaired imperfectly, just as well we went for steel instead of alloy wheels which would have cracked or split ages ago. So we have a wonky spare and a slight front end wobble at speed until at least one wheel can be replaced.

To those who thought we chose the wrong car….  we didn’t. I could say a whole lot more about this but it could be misunderstood as marketing. To the nice people from the Land Rover Club who wrote on their chatroom that I was an idiot and knew nothing about cars and was heading for disaster, sorry to disappoint you.

Nothing has been stolen except Jacks notebook and sunglasses pickpocketed in Thailand. Nothing lost except two guidebooks I can not find which could still be buried deep in the car !!!!

The biggest waste of money was buying tickets for the plane to Dili and then two days later being offered a ride on the cargo ship. Not refundable.

Equipment not used includes the EPIRB [but good to have it, you do hope you never need it] and binoculars. Various and extensive tools carried and thankfully not used, but again you have to have them. Tyre repair kit not touched….  you can get tyres repaired everywhere we have been. So that well travelled kit will go onto eBay !

The budget… well, a work of fiction and I have not dared look at the totals and will not until we get home because that would spoil the last bit of the trip.

And more than  1,400 comments on this blog…. and well over 500 000 visitors to the site. We never thought we would get one tenth of that.

Just one too many litterbugs have thrown their wrappers and bottles out of their bus window on the highway, and I can not stand it anymore. I am going to let off some steam. I know it is impolite to say rude things about your hosts, but the future of our planet is more important than good manners.

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We are eating in the Padang, the local cafe. A window display full of plates of cold chicken pieces, sardines, potato croquettes, spinach and assorted other delicacies that vary from province to province. Flies optional. Rice obligatory. Initial surprise that “bule” [pronounced 'bull-aye', meaning 'whitey'] would wander in to this decidely un-touristy venue.

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The island of Flores is so breathtakingly wild, raw and real that It’s no wonder that the locals are devout Christians. It would be easy to believe in God when you are surrounded by such beauty. Common sense would imply that a skilled artist had carefully crafted the landscapes.

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Now we do not want this to turn into a competition. There is already too much rivalry in travel tales tall and true. “I remember Bali in the 70’s” is good but trumped by “I went through Timor, mate, when it was Portugese…”.

But does everyone have a “you would not believe it but…” story? Here is ours.

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