More than one quarter of the way there...

...that's what it says on our milometer. We're in Kharkiv, Eastern Ukraine. After really busting a gut across Ukraine, we're now going to have to wait a couple of days to cross into Russia as our visas don't start until August 1st - Wednesday. We've covered 2400 miles and so far our trusty old jeep hasn't missed a beat.

Since crossing into Ukraine we've really been feeling the change in cultures. To be honest, we felt a bit out of our depth - not having a word of the language or even a letter of the alphabet. Our first day in Ukraine, after making the three hour border crossing from Slovakia - we drove about 300 miles from Uzgohrod - the poverty of which was utterly shocking, it came up on us so quickly - past Lvov and ended up being so tired and frazzled that we just pulled off the road to sleep in a field. We tried to ask a farmer if we could sleep on his land, but for some reason he wasn't having it and we were forced to drive on and park behind a hedge, crossing our fingers that no one would see us. Apparently it's not illegal to camp wild in Ukraine, but you never know when some canny farmer might come along with a slavering dog - or so my over-active imagination told me. We were just finishing our excellent meal of Army ration pack boil in the bag lancashire hotpot followed by fruit dumplings, when an old farmer on his bike peddled silently passed without saying a word. That was it: I was convinced he was going to bring a couple of the village hard-men to either evict us or turn us over. In the end, no such thing happened, but I didn't sleep a wink and got up the next day a complete nervous wreck.

It's become weird how being in the car, and being moving feels the most natural place to be. We barely paused for breath in Kiev yesterday, something we now really regret; it's a beautiful city, perfectly preserved. The really stressful times are at night, trying to find somewhere to stay. And also trying to find food. But being on the road, moving is fine.

Yesterday we saw some really ugly car crashes. Mangled metal and bloody bodies on the highway. And then, in state of mild shock, we were being passed by kamikazee truck drivers, just a mile later. We had to pull over for a break.