For the last 3 weeks, reports from the 3700 metre Torugart Pass – one of the main overland border crossings between Central Asia and China – have been worrying.

The Journey of Discovery was in Moscow when word came through that the pass through the Tian Shan mountains was closed by a massive avalanche. For a week. With our China entry permits issued for this remote frontier with Kyrgyzstan, we had no viable option to make it to our final destination, the People’s Republic and it’s capital, Beijing.

By the time we were in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and even Kyrgyzstan all seemed well. Spring and the snow melt had not produced more landslides. Until 72 hours before we were scheduled to make the remote and challenging crossing 2.5 miles above sea level all seemed well. Then came ‘that’ call.

“The pass is closed,” was the word from our local coordinator. “Another avalanche.”

I lay awake in my yurt on the shores of Lake Issy Kul, trying to work out how we might make the Beijing Motor Show on time if we had to wait another week for the pass to open . With every calculation of time, speed and distance the maths never worked out. We would miss our target.

But 24 hours before we had to completely re-think our trip, word came through. The Chinese had cleared the road. We were on.

Torugart is truly one of the most magical and challenging frontier roads in the world. Rough and rutted and flushed with snow melt and rubble, it is a road for the brave. It lies like a broken black carpet across the tops of mountains, which are linked to the south with the Himalayas.

We fuelled up in Kyrgyzstan with enough reserves for the drive to the border, and back if required. We carried 2 days of food and water and checked our satellite phones for security.

So thick was the dust that each car had to drive over a mile apart. Every half hour we would stop to check all was well. As lesser vehicles lay in pieces by the roadside we felt fortunate to have Land Rover technology and comfort beneath us.

Four hours from the last town in Kyrgyzstan, we reached the barbed wire and look-out towers that marked the border. Tensions always rise at this stage. Not that we had anything to hide but it is never a relaxing, taken-for-granted exercise.

Details of the formalities are best not shared whilst we are still on our journey. Likewise we have no photos or film of the border crossing.

To give you an inkling, it took four hours to get ourselves, our kit and the One Millionth Discovery out of Kyrgyzstan and into our 13th and final nation on this Journey of Discovery.

Every second of the four hours and every question, form and search demanded was worthwhile because, as I write this we are in Kashgar. We have passed the final frontier in this monumental journey. We are in China.

Please help us reach our £1 million target for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Find out more here.

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Having collected some extraordinary memorabilia along its 8,000-mile route, day 33 continued the happy tradition by receiving a stunning hand-made felt rug celebrating the Journey of Discovery.

Kochkor is a major hub of the traditional Kyrgyzstan rug industry. Beneath a towering wall of snow-capped Tian Shan peaks, the Kochkor-Kutu Co-operative employs 60 staff – 56 of them women – from surrounding villages. The huge team produce anything from 60 to 100 gorgeously patterned rugs each year. Larger designs, completed between more urgent orders, can each take up to a year to complete. Most take at least a month.

The Land Rover rug, however, was different. Very different. Five women burnt the midnight oil for six days – a high-speed turnaround to meet the deadline of the four Land Rover Discovery vehicles reaching their town. In the sun-kissed grounds of her workshop, Fatima Aipova showed us how she helped create the one by two metres, multi-coloured design, offering an artistic take on the millionth vehicle alongside a Land Rover logo.

Taking us right back to basics, Fatima, 31, whose mother, grandmother and great grandmother worked in the thousand-year-old industry, explained how sheep’s’ wool is beaten with metal sticks, soaked with hot water and rolled into handmade bulrush mats, before being flattened by foot. ‘We dance on it with our feet,’ she said. ‘And finish it with our hands.’

As three members of the co-operative sewed intricate patterns for future rugs and her father strummed a traditional Kyrgyz three-string Komuz, Fatima demonstrated expert draughtsmanship. After chalking patterns on felt pre-dyed with natural products including juniper, walnut and barberry, she cut them out with incredible speed and precision using razor-sharp scissors. Nothing is wasted. Cutting out a pattern leaves an identikit design in reverse. These are always stitched together to create a second rug she dubs ‘a twin brother.’

Land Rover’s special order posed a serious challenge. Not only was its style very different from the usual abstract but beautiful Kochkor-Kutu designs, but it was immensely complicated to create the vehicle – based on an emailed photo – on a Shyrdak; a rug whose multiple felt pieces make up a pattern or image: each wheel alone required nine separate cuts to be sewed together.

However Fatima, whose mother Noor-Bobyo is head of the co-operative, declared she was delighted with the finished result, which even includes a logo for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and zigzag interpretation of the Journey of Discovery route. ‘I’m definitely going to keep the identical reverse design of the Land Rover,’ she said proudly.

Earlier in the day, the Land Rover Discovery vehicles enjoyed the most spectacular scenery so far seen in Central Asia. As early clouds fractured, the mountains came into dazzling view, perched above mustard-coloured plains speckled with sheep and herders on horseback. Close to the road, a lunar landscape of undulating clay – that once formed the bed of the lake – was lapped by turquoise waters of tropical intensity.

Incredibly, thirty minutes later the scenic drama had increased. The luminescent waters of small but perfectly formed Orto-Tockoy reservoir were swaddled by multi-coloured mountains, crinkled with ravines and frescoed by shadows of clouds. As we dropped down to its shore, a herd of camels ambled past.

It was a sensational way to celebrate Easter Sunday, helped by each vehicle tucking into a festive bag of Cadbury’s mini-eggs. We shared them with the Deputy Head of Mission at the recently established British embassy in Bishkek, Amanda Ross McDowell, who arrived with her husband to meet the convoy. Her choice of car? A Land Rover Discovery 3 from Kazakhstan. A new Discovery 4 will be delivered soon, proving they’re the vehicle of choice for diplomatic staff in both urban areas and wild remote locations.

Toward which the Journey of Discovery is now heading. Tomorrow it crosses the 3,752m Torugart Pass into China, the final border. Yesterday it was blocked by snow. Now it’s open. The road east awaits.
Day 33 also saw the Land Rover Journey of Discovery play a critical role in helping two severely injured men found in an overturned car that had recently skidded into a tree.

Team paramedic, Jim Cladingboel, provided immediate aid, stabilizing one of the men who was unconscious with a punctured lung. The second passenger, who had broken bones, was given pain relief. Jim briefed a very grateful local doctor, who arrived an hour after the accident and both men were taken to hospital.

The passenger with the punctured lung, would have died without intervention. The incident is of particular note, given the Journey of Discovery’s aim or raising funds for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Please help us reach our £1 million target for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Find out more here.

Donate here.

How would the Land Rover Journey of Discovery follow a night in one of the world’s most unique spas? Simple. They’d help build their own yurt. Now a staple of cool camping holidays and festivals in the UK and Europe, the circular felt super-tents play a more essential role in Kyrgyzstan life.

Around twenty per cent of its five million population are semi-nomadic, living in villages, but using yurts for special occasions including weddings and funerals. If you want a master class in how to construct one in the great outdoors, you’ve come to the right place.

And if you fancy a tasty hit of scenery at the same time, the south shore of Lake Issyk-Köl delivers the goods. Big time. After driving along a spectacular road where ridge after ridge of sandy rock cascaded down from the Terksey Ala-Too mountains, the four Land Rover Discovery vehicles turned onto a rough, rutted track near Tosor, passing disused and crumbling communist holiday apartments en route to the Bel-Tam yurt camp.

Members of three local families from nearby Bokombayovo – the Toyghonous, Sulaimankulovas and Arykovas – were on hand to demonstrate how the nomadic grand design could be knocked up in less than two hours. It seemed a rash promise but teamwork, smiles and years of experience made it look easy. This type of building is part of their DNA.

All the materials can be carried in one small trailer, including the front door. And, bizarrely, that’s what went up first. It was the anchor for stretches of collapsible willow trellising that expanded into ‘walls’. Six of them were laced together to form the basic circular frame of our yurt.

It seemed a tricky start. At one point one of the mothers broke off to make an urgent call on her mobile, perhaps she was calling the yurt helpline in Bangalore? It’s hard to know, but within 30 minutes the red trellising was lashed into a tight circle.

Next the roof. Its small centre – a round wood wheel punctured with multiple holes by a hot iron spike – was held aloft on a wooden pole. The ribs of the roof – strips of willow bent at an angle over hot steam – were then fitted into its holes like spokes in a wheel, with the other ends tied to the trellising. By the time the experts and their Land Rover helpers had finished, they’d created a 74-rib roof. If this were flat pack furniture, you’d obviously discover the final rib as missing or the wrong shape. Not today. Without needing a second infuriating trip to Yurts-R-Us, we’d built the basic skeleton after just 55 minutes.

Now the decoration started. There’s no bare flat pack functionality with Kyrgyz yurts. Bright pink, green and yellow decorations were hung from the bottom of the ribs while the mats made of bulrush were strapped around the trellising walls, with patterned coloured bands just above. It was already far cosier than your average tent or caravan.

At one hour ten minutes it was time for the heavyweight façade: the felt walls. The ready-made felts, wrapped up with walnut leaves to protect against moths, were tied around the bulrush matting. It was almost up. It just left two big felts for the roof. Simultaneously the interiors were getting a full-on psychedelic assault with multi-coloured rugs, quilts and hangings. At one hour and forty-five minutes the final felt was slipped over the central roof hole and the yurt was complete. Our accommodation, and dining room awaited us.

It promised a seriously comfortable and communal end to a day that began with a spectacular drive around the eastern tip of the lake. In hot hazy sun we passed burial mounds from the time of Alexander the Great, herds of roaming horses and trees dripping with crows’ nests. There was a second heavy dose of soviet landmarks from space ship statues to giant slogans – ‘Peace is Our Happiness’ – and even old military tanks.

But the real star of the day was Lake Issyk-Köl. The second largest alpine lake on earth, twice as wide as the English channel and over 600m deep, it’s surrounded by the peaks of the northern Tian Shan. Its name means Hot Lake with the mix of depth, thermal activity and weak salinity ensuring it never freezes: the perfect spot to pitch your yurt and ponder the Journey of Discovery’s imminent mountain crossing into western China.

Please help us reach our £1 million target for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Find out more here.

You can donate here.

The Land Rover Journey of Discovery has thrown up some weird, wonderful and intriguing experiences along its 8,000-mile route, but no one predicted a succession of political leaders. In Kiev we bumped into the President of Turkmenistan, or at least his ceremonial dancers who were fellow guests at our hotel.

Today it was the President of Mongolia. The Kyrgyzstan police slipped into overdrive to protect his cavalcade, blocking off the main route from the east into Bishkek and forcing vehicles to park several hundred metres off the road – even though President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj was nearly an hour away.

After a brief detour the we put aside thoughts of International Politics and focussed on health issues. We were aiming for a unique historic spa on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Köl. It meant at least five hours drive, past roadside stalls selling buckets of apples and a bizarre bus shelter designed in the shape of the famous kalpak felt hat, before bisecting the sheer-sided, landslide-prone Shoestring Gorge where the frothing emerald waters of the Chuy River were juxtaposed with deep red rocks.

Not long after passing an enormous Kyrgyzstan flag hewn into the cliff face, the four Land Rover Discovery vehicles entered the Lake Issyk-Köl Bioshpere Reserve. It was riddled with evidence of the country’s Communist past from Balykchy’s gold and silver statues of Lenin to hammer and sickle emblems and a kitsch welcome sign to the resort of Cholpon-Ata: Central Asia’s answer to Ibiza and St Tropez.

In high summer it’s all tanned flesh, packed cafes and thumping clubs. Not today. Out of season, with snow coating the Küngey Ala-Too mountains to the north, it felt a tad world weary. It didn’t matter; we were here for the Aurora, a vast sanatorium that once hosted the Moscow elite, including Presidents Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

After a post-independence slump it’s now serving a new clientele of Chinese tourists and wealthy Kazaks. But with a 1970s soviet design that’s so brutalist it’s almost iconic, hotel staff in naval uniforms and spartan rooms, Aurora has a severe, military vibe. Add in its inflexible timetable (supper is served between six and seven o’clock with cabbage salad and hot rice pudding for starters) and this is a spa that processes rather than pampers its guests.

Its therapies were frankly astonishing. Forget Enya, scented candles and light massages, Aurora’s clinical treatment rooms offered intestinal irrigation, proctology consultation, high pressure hosing and strange nasal treatments. Walking around the labyrinth of therapy rooms we spotted what looked suspiciously like instruments of torture, missile firing panels and a padded cell.

In fact, they’re nothing more sinister than a long-established medical approach to treatments. One member of the Journey of Discovery team opted for what he hoped would be a simple mud bath. Instead he received two consultations with doctors, the second one involving blood pressure and heart rate checks, followed by an ECG to measure cardiac performance and a hot mineral water bath.

That produced a second doctor’s consultation that pronounced him ‘poorly’ and requiring treatments for blocked airways. In a room with gizmos resembling Sputnik satellites, his nasal and throat passages were washed with UV light and he spent five minutes inhaling salt-infused air. Only then was he allowed the luxury of a bath in thick, gloopy mud, wrapped in blankets for a gentle basting at gas mark seven.

As he remarked afterwards, it’s quite a thought that the nurse who helped hose off his mud might also have rinsed the cleansing mud off Boris Yeltsin. The Journey of Discovery really is continuing to offer unexpected insights into life in the diverse countries along its route to Beijing.

Please help us reach our £1 million target for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Find out more here.

Donate here.