My Worst Convoy Moment(s)
This was only supposed to be a few paragraphs but it was actually a blast to dig up so many fucked up old memories. Hope you enjoy!
-Max
Well it has been a fairly intense exercise; dredging up the anti-pinnacles of my last 4 years working and travelling, then deciding which of them wins the award for ‘Max had the shittest time right now’ so I could then paste it on the internet for strangers to read… But as with all initially terrible Convoy things, it was surprisingly fun!
Near the Georgian border, hiding out in an abandoned swimming pool for the night
So back in 2016, very early on in the Global Convoy’s life, we discovered what feels like a ‘cheat code’ for life: If your goal is to grow as an individual, then the bad times are actually the good times! Sort of a necessary evil.
Breaking down in the desert is, fundamentally, a crap experience… unless it’s used as an opportunity to come together as a team, exchange ideas and learn from each other. Through which, this tough time slowly graduates into a tough but awesome memory!
Once we’d figured this out, we leaned purposefully into the madness! If a road is probably the right road, then “fuck it, let’s go!” because if it turns out to be the wrong choice we’ll have learnt and experienced a bunch of things along the way regardless!
And so began 4 years of insane, confusing, beautiful, terrifying, fulfilling, and frankly mind-blowing adventure - or, a hell of a lot of opportunity for my ‘worst moment’ to arise!
First and foremost, doing this has highlighted how few ‘actually bad times’ we’ve really had during the convoy’s tumultuous journey so far. I’m not saying it’s all sunshine and rainbows - by design, it’s often the opposite - but when I have to ask myself for hard truths about when I’ve really been suffering, the answers are pleasantly few and far between!
(I mean, some moments were incredibly painful, dangerous and scary but were usually followed by good memories shortly after, so I’d count them as a win!)
Our K2K crew, after the Armenian bear evasion
Let’s say night has suddenly fallen. We’re hiding out, hoping to avoid wild Armenian bears and worried we won’t find a safe spot in time (very bad), when a local invites us into his walled garden and we spend the entire night consuming Armenian vodka, honey and bread with him and his friends (very good). Clearly that experience overall is a massive win, severely limiting my options for straight up bad times. Phew!
With that out of the way, the first step was to figure out what actually qualifies as a shit time.
Based on the good to bad ratio described above, it would have to be something where either things really didn’t work out or couldn’t be fixed... or the fear of danger/failure was so real that overcoming it wasn’t worth the peril. And with that super vague guidance in place a handful of ‘unsavoury’ memories have sprung to the front of my mind so here we go!
The top 3, or bottom 3 I suppose, take place in Siberia, Istanbul and Kazakhstan. All touching on my biggest fears:
Getting stuck in governmental legal trouble
Serious harm or injury coming to the team
An acute case of becoming dead
In third place; we have the ‘Siberian Tyre Incident’ from the original Round The World Convoy. With 5 days to cross all of Eastern Russia, what could go wrong?
Our final stretch of good Central Asian road before it devolved into dirt and broke the Skoda
Having finished our breakneck tour of Central Asia, we had just crossed from Kazakhstan into Russian near Barnaul and our cars were getting seriously worse for wear. The Micra was battered all over but mechanically holding on, while the Skoda had really taken a beating.
Its accelerator cable had snapped and whilst I could still steer and change gears, Joel was forced to spend 17 HOURS STRAIGHT pulling some string through the passenger window to act as our accelerator. Basically, everyone was pretty exhausted!
We’d also been drained of any spare funds by an unfortunate bribe incident in Kazakhstan (see actual worst moment) so when we did reach Barnaul we could only get the necessities done and simply prayed that we wouldn’t encounter any other major issues during the non-stop 5 day drive to Vladivostok; due to the restrictions on our Russian tourist visa, we had 30 days from first entry to final exit and had spent the vast majority of this exploring Central Asia.
With only 5 days remaining we HAD to make it to Russia’s Eastern coast in time to get the cars shipped across to Canada and not miss our flight. If they weren’t on a boat, we couldn’t leave. If we couldn't leave, we’d get deported. If we got deported without our cars then we were somewhat fucked. So 5 days non-stop it was.
Although everyone was pretty drained, things went well for the first few days and with 7 of us between 2 cars we could make sure no one was driving tired or pushed beyond their driving limits; although it’s debatable how much quality rest you can get sharing the back seat of the Skoda with 7 bags and Lucas! We only stopped for fuel and toilet breaks and made sure to stock up on any available food at the same time! And between games of ‘would you rather’, ‘who’s most likely to’ and ‘drunken passenger’, the team’s spirits had remained surprisingly high throughout! Until night 3.
Even the best drivers would struggle to avoid a surprise pothole at 2am in a Siberian snowstorm… and on a deserted stretch of frosty highway, that’s exactly what happened. It was already well into negative degrees when the Micra smashed both of it’s right tyres on an extra nasty pothole and they began gushing air.
The wind was picking up and with the cold cutting through our less-than-ideal clothing (shorts and a rug for me) we managed to hammer one wheel back into shape and pump it back up. But the other was a no go and as our fingers were getting more and more numb we agreed that it was a goner and that we needed a whole new spare. Diving into the Micra’s spare wheel well we found… nothing!
We couldn’t figure out when the spare wheel had gone missing; we’d had to change so many tyres and wheels through the Uzbek deserts and Kyrgyz mountains that no one was certain when or where it had been used. As the ice slowly started to form on the outside of the cars we figured it was a discussion for another time.
Finding out if you can fix a busted tyre with just a screwdriver - turns out you can’t
The Skoda was out of spares too, so we had effectively run out of wiggle room and the clock was still ticking. Looking out into the sea of blackness and snowflakes, with the cold air clawing its way into our stationary cars, we realised just how far we were from any nearby towns and figured that we’d have to go hunting for a spare.
We limped the Micra off the road, out of the way and then had to figure out who was going to go where. Andre and I had just finished resting so we would take the Skoda and go looking, but as it was the only car able to drive (and so have the engine heating us to stave off the cold) the team figured we should put as many as could fit in the Skoda to avoid the risk of frostbite or similar. Joel and Rich, the only ones in the team who actually owned winter gear (and good gear thank god!), volunteered to stay with the Micra to look after it and, if the stars aligned, wave someone down.
The temperature was still dropping and sunrise wasn’t for another 6 hours or so when Andre started the first shift. I kept trying to get a signal for research but there wasn’t any, so we pushed on into the darkness, stopping at deserted petrol stations, and empty rest stops hoping for a lucky break. We found some numbers on a piece of paper stapled to a door of a shutdown petrol station and, as we were desperate, started calling them. We spent the next 3 or 4 hours meandering around in the wilderness, Andre dodging chunks of missing road through the flurry of snow, Becca, Anna and Lucas passed out in the back and me on the phone trying (and failing) to communicate our situation in my broken-Russian.
As the black sky faded into a deep blue we knew sunrise was coming and started to head back to the Micra, hoping that Joel and Rich had had better luck and that they were still doing ok.
We arrived back at the broken down Micra just as the sun had begun peeking over the horizon, filtering through the snow covered trees and gently warming our cold faces.
We found Joel and Rich alive and well, having rationed out the last of the vodka and spending the night watching bootleg Russian films they couldn’t understand.
We were down 5 or so hours on a leg with no room for slack and we weren’t any closer to fixing the situation. Andre and I started pulling things out of the Skoda’s boot, hoping anything we could find would bodge our situation. I’d once seen a video of a Russian car driving on 3 wheels and dragging a plank of wood under the 4th, maybe we could come up with something like that. Anything to get us to a mechanic, we were getting desperate. I lifted the base layer of the boot to see if any other junk had fallen in the Skoda’s empty wheel well that we could use. And then I found it. The Micra’s spare wheel was in the Skoda. The entire time!
“Oh what the fuck!?” I think my body actually shouted it before my brain could process what I was seeing. Andre was also visibly shocked, looking a mix of relieved, confused and fucking furious. There was an exchange of glances between us and the rest of the crew and everyone remained silent. An awkward clash of joy at being instantly saved and sheer dismay at our own stupidity.
We had spent valuable time that we couldn’t spare, driving in circles, freezing our arses off, calling a string of irate Russian mechanics, while Joel and Rich huddled from the cold wilderness, as the temperature plummeted, convinced that we were totally fucked while we had the solution with us the whole time... for an entire night!
As light as Micras are, you’re still lifting a car at the end of the day!
Yeah. That was a pretty low moment to be honest.
The icing on this ‘kick in the teeth' cake was that as we started to lift up the Micra to replace the tyre, we realised we didn’t even have the right jack! It couldn’t fit onto the Micra properly so we were left with only one option; we took everything out of the boot and Joel and I literally deadlifted the back corner of the car off the ground ourselves, while Rich wriggled under for some last checks and Andre passed him tools.
After successfully not letting Rich get crushed by a car, the Micra was good to go and we were finally back on our grind towards Vladivostok.
The whole affair was a bit of a sore spot for the crew and we didn’t talk about it much, but by the time we reached Japan a week later, everything having turned out ok, and us now being drowned in sake by some local Japanese businessmen, I remember cracking some jokes with Andre about the whole mess and we agreed it was one of the best/worst moments we’d had in years. But we were certainly glad it was now in the past.
Andre was found at 3am that night, drunkenly wandering the streets of Tokyo, and returned to the hostel by the police, so in hindsight he might not be totally over it.
Second place would probably be what became known as Istanbul-Shit from MAYhem ‘18.
While each of these ‘events’ on their own would be manageable. Several blows one after the other dragged out over several days does take its toll.
One of our early MAYhem ‘18 camping spots near Thessaloniki, Greece
MAYhem ‘18 was the first official ‘trip’ that we’d run. We’d obviously organised, funded, recruited for and overseen the original RTW convoy trip, but MH18 was our first attempt to recreate that glorious organic madness and offer it to newcomers.
The (lack of) plan was to set off from a local pub, cross the English Channel to Europe, make our way as quickly as possible to Turkey and then start getting stuck in and lost as we make our way to Georgia, across the Black Sea to Ukraine and via Moldova into the disputed territory of Transnistria. At which point the trip would be ‘complete’ and we only had to survive the journey home.
And on this particular journey, Europe had turned out to be surprisingly forgiving; providing wild camping spots, a plethora of friendly locals and it all seemed to be going more or less as we’d hoped. Until we hit Istanbul.
Getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in the world is not a cracking start. We then got split up, and spent the next few hours avoiding the savvy locals who seemed to drive at breakneck speeds, mere inches from us, while none of the crew were completely certain where we were heading.
A ton of near-misses later and we’d each managed to park our vehicles somewhere in the city and regrouped, rather exhausted, at the hostel. Alive but shattered. One nil to Istanbul.
The next morning I got up, ready to enjoy a taste of ‘the Gateway to Asia’, but Istanbul had other plans. As soon as I opened my door, reports started rolling in that Luke had been attacked, several of our crew were missing and someone’s passport had been stolen. Definitely not my favourite ‘good morning’. A couple of phone calls, questions and searching later and one by one each emergency was found to be a false alarm. Apart from Luke. He returned from the hospital having had his nose reset to inform us he quite fancied having a nap. Probably a good choice. Two nil to Istanbul.
After that seriously wobbly beginning, we had a fairly calm day absorbing the city then got some rest, getting ready to head out of the city in the morning for the part of the trip we’d all been waiting for!
While we were lucky not to wake up to any more physical trauma, the group still awoke to quite a shock. 4 of our guests had gotten drunk the night before and decided to book flights to Budapest, leaving the team with some concerns about future fuel costs, general team spending, bargaining power and of course the jarring feeling of being let down. We had brought enough people that despite the long miles we’d be driving there would be a decent crew to share fuel costs, car repairs, rotate drivers if needed and just generally function as a squad. This last second bail shot most of that planning in the foot. Three nil to Istanbul.
It may seem almost trivial in hindsight but being honest, it was a pretty sour moment. Each of those 4 that left had taken up a seat that someone else could have used. Even if we’d known just a couple of days earlier we could have possibly found some keen travellers around Istanbul to take their places. But it was too late now and so we set off into the Turkish countryside with about 20% of the team gone.
Our pretty badass crew, further on in Turkey
Some of the folks from MAYhem ‘18 became my best friends over the following trials and adventures of that trip and I often wonder what alternative 4 friends/colleagues/memories would have been made if they’d simply told us earlier. Not to mention the extra financial strain that got dumped on the rest of the team.
This is why, in case you were wondering, we now use a deposit system for our trips. If you bail (without reason), your deposit can be used to offset the costs of the team you left. But this was also the first and only time we’ve had a problem like this… so far at least.
So yeah, Istanbul was a kind of shit time but I have to give credit where due: despite what I was then expecting, almost overnight the folks that stayed seemed to have a boost in morale which really made my life (and Joel and Becca’s) much easier.
Maybe it was a sense of ‘they couldn’t hack it but we could’ that brought everyone together or maybe it was simply that the trip started getting more awesome after that point, but either way, it was a hell of an adventure and I’m thankful I got to meet and travel with everyone!
And the Gold medal for Max’s shittest time on the convoy goes to... a good ol’ fashioned Kazakh Forced Bribe* on the original RTW convoy.
*This story is about my experience and a single incident. As of writing this, corruption has been and continues to be a problem in Kazakhstan, but I’m not insinuating that all Kazakh police are like this. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t tell this story, as I want future travellers in this region to know what COULD happen or what signs to look out for.
This was easily my most stressful Convoy memory, possibly of my entire life. So let’s set the scene: It’s early afternoon in Kazakhstan and the sun is beating down on the dusty landscape. A desert horizon spans in all directions and on a surprisingly quiet Kazakh road between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan the convoy (of only 2 cars and 4 people at this particular moment) is trundling along, looking forward to 3 new members already awaiting them that evening in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
The gorgeous sunset and ‘gorgeous’ roads we’d be travelling on across Kazakhstan
This region of Central Asia (especially back in 2016) was rife with hidden speed traps and less-than-honest police patrolling the areas. According to the locals the name of the game was to drive however you felt like but as you got closer to the ‘known’ trouble areas, make sure to toe the line. The problem was even when we drove carefully we didn’t know these ‘known’ areas.
On top of this, being a tourist effectively points you out as a ‘bonus objective’ in the mind of a corrupt police officer. We had 20+ police interactions in our 5 or so days in Kazakhstan which ranged from genuinely heart warming to, well, what I’m about to tell you. Of that 20, 7 involved being asked for money.
Being the only team member that spoke any Russian, the de facto language in Central Asia for the generation that grew up in the Soviet Union, whenever there was police trouble I had to not only translate what I could to the team without showing the police I understood anything, but also gauge where we were on the ‘totally fucked’ scale.
Typically it was enough to play dumb and waste time but other times were more intense. Once Andre and I were pulled into the back of a smoggy police van at midnight with 4 chain smoking officers as one of their friends told us over the phone “You now must pay these men city tax. Cash only” as the officers tried not to crack up and bantered in Kazakh. 20 minutes of stubborness later we were allowed to go.
Being honest, our primary weapon was that we looked like total shit on any given day. Between our lack of proper clothing, odd socks, layers of dust and whatever else we’d struggled through that day, it was easy - and accurate - to gesture to our falling-apart cars, mid-bribe, and say “какие деньги!?” What money!? This worked 90% of the time… until we started encountering the speed traps.
When you’re suddenly asked for ‘road tax’ in cash or something else suitably ludicrous it’s easy to dig your heels in and know that you’re in the right. But when they have a picture of you on a speed camera showing your recorded speed compared to what it should be, they’ve kind of got you by the balls! Even if the context was absurd - an 80km/h turning into a 50km/h zone when the sign is obscured by a bridge and they ‘catch’ you in the first 10 meters.
The 1st time I woke up in Kazakhstan
Becca and I had a troubling (but hilarious in hindsight) pattern for the 3 times we drove through Kazakhstan. Every time I fell asleep while she was driving the Skoda, I’d be suddenly awoken to some sort of chaos message:
“We’ve torn the sump off, the oil’s gone!”
“I think the police want money!”
“The accelerator has just gone floppy!”.
This was my 2nd time falling asleep, so police it was.
We pulled off onto the dirt alongside the quiet road and as our speed dropped, so too did the breeze from the windows (obviously we didn’t have air-con) and the baking sun began to gently cook us and the cars. I got out into the dusty quiet air, still half-asleep, and trudged over to the first of 2 police cars to begin the tedious process of trying to avoid a bribe. Starting out with the usual “Hello”, to not let on that I understood any Russian, not that I was that good at it, I shook the outstretched hand and was beckoned into the passenger seat of the police car and asked for my driver’s license. Sitting there, watching the Skoda and Micra about 50m ahead of me, I was then taken through the usual: this book is a list of the rules, here’s the one you’ve broken, and now you must pay a fine.
I asked if I could pay at a bank - where you can legally pay fines if they’re legit - and through a series of hand gestures, pictionary on some scraps of paper and the snippets of Russian he spoke, I was told we had to pay there in cash or he’d be keeping my license. And with the whole ‘driving around the world’ thing having just started I kind of wanted to hang on to that.
We then went through the typical back and forth of bad cop into friendly cop, me explaining our lack of funds, him saying how he really wished he could help us, and so on and so on until the cornerstone of any traffic police bribe was introduced: He opened up a notebook, tapped in the centre and gave me the ‘put some money here and everything will work out’ look. I turned out my pockets (literally) to show I had nothing on me and he pointed at the Skoda. I gestured to it as well but this time “какие деньги'' wasn't enough. He then decided he wanted $500... FOR EACH CAR!
I flat out said no. Not from any bravery or intentional mindgames, but because a) fuck this guy, b) we literally didn’t have anything close to that, c) it would probably be cheaper to fly back to the UK, get a new license printed and then catch up with the crew later. How Becca could drive the Skoda between countries when the stamp was in my passport would be a problem to solve later, but for now, the ridiculous number of $1000 was still bouncing around in my head. I sat there for a while, saying nothing, staring blankly at him. “так, двести” So then, two hundred, he said while tapping on the new number he’d written on some paper. ‘Well fuck! That’s a hell of a drop’ I thought to myself whilst trying not to let anything show. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this and the ‘fine’ amount becomes negotiable, congratulations, you’re in a bribe!
I made it clear that the $200 was to cover both cars by adding to his pictionary diagram with some arrows and scribbles and when he started pushing back I just said “yep, $200 then” in Russian and got out of the car before he could say too much more.
My vague plan was to cobble together just shy of $100 then play the dirt-bag card as many times as necessary. Luckily we’d been on the road for a few days and it showed so we had that going for us at least. A full $100 was definitely a significant amount to us at this stage but chipping in about $20 each so we could be done and heading to the nearest border crossing, about 2 hours away, seemed like a good bet given the circumstances. But while $100 is significantly less than the theoretical $1000 it’s still $100 more than $0. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled about my half-asleep haggling.
I shuffled back over to the team through the dusty breeze to update everyone on the less than fantastic news. The result and impromptu plan was agreed on and Joel went between the cars collecting everyone’s loose change in as many useless currencies as he could, reminding everyone to hide any secret cash stashes. After handing me the bundle he wished me luck and settled back into the Micra to try and find the best angle to subtly film the police in case things went wrong.
I probably had about $40 in assorted currencies and coins, hoping to add the impression of ‘this is all we’ve got man’, but again it was a hard no. He now agreed however, that $200 would cover both cars so that was ‘some’ progress but I seriously doubted we even had that much throughout both cars. Another brisk, dusty trek between our cars and the 2 police vehicles and I returned with about $90.
This was when he started getting mad. We began arguing while I did my best to stay calm and kept insisting it was all we had. Just as his temper seemed to flare, Joel appeared by my side with an open packet of cigarettes. We’d stocked up on Marlboro Reds in Moscow as American brand smokes were hard to come by in these parts and so actually held a lot of value. “Would you gentlemen like a smoke?” he asked as he offered them out. Once they’d each taken a cigarette he handed the pack to the officer in charge and said “Ok, thank you goodbye” and added a fistfull of random coins to my pile, saying it was absolutely everything. I left the money on the passenger seat and we started walking away.
“This car is worth £75. We aren’t paying a $500 bribe for it”
“Thanks man. But do you think we needed to waste a whole pack on them?” I asked once we were out of earshot.
“Maybe not, but I got some great angles!” he slyly grinned back at me. I noticed he was carrying his phone at an odd angle, and then realised he’d actually had it in his hand for the whole transaction!
A grin spread to my face too and as I realised we’d effectively just ‘purchased’ some fantastic footage of police corruption at a knock-down price. All that was left now was to get away with it.
Then things went nuts. I had barely sat into the Skoda’s driver’s seat when one of the police cruisers roared up behind us and screeched across the gravelly sand. It came to a sudden halt alongside us, about an arms length away and the policeman leant out his window and screamed. He pointed at Joel and kept yelling “дай мне телефон!” Give me the phone!...
Well then... Shit.
The other police car rolled up as Joel sheepishly got out of the passenger seat, walked around the Skoda and handed over his phone. While the phone itself was pretty worthless (Joel's favourite brand of phone is brick apparently) the month and a half of footage and all his other personal info was on there. It was quickly snatched away from him and they started going through all the files shouting angrily and pointing at Joel and us.
This was when I started to really stress about our limited options. It crossed my mind to just start driving. They had the phone so we weren’t a threat anymore, right? Maybe we beeline it for the Kyrgyz border? Nah, that’s a crap idea. As Joel tried to sooth the situation as best he could, I figured it was best to see what the situation was before doing any planning. “You. Go!” the officer shouted, waving us off, “Him” now pointing to Joel, “Prison”.
Now this shut everyone up.
Joel was forced to get in the police car as I desperately shouted out his defence. As he sat down he didn’t close the door and had intentionally kept one foot on the ground outside. I can’t honestly remember what Becca and Rich were doing or saying as my focus was entirely on assembling a makeshift legal case on the spot in a language I spoke poorly and spitting out each idea as it came to me, but I know they were pretty panicked too.
Joel looked about as confused and worried as I’ve ever seen him and it dawned on me that I had only met this guy about 2 months earlier. I’d sold him on this mad plan so would that make me responsible for him getting locked up in a Central Asian jail? Would I need to call his family and explain their son was now in prison somewhere in Kazakhstan. Who even were his family? Would they know where Kazakhstan is? Not to mention what ridiculous bail/fee/bullshit would be included in this mess.
A few minutes of shouting passed and I yelled across the fuming policemen to Joel, “Have you got your phone back?”
“Yeah but I think they’ve deleted a lot of stuff, I don’t know” came the reply, muffled by other yells from the car. This seemed like progress but there was so much noise and movement happening I had no idea. My heart was honestly racing as a second police officer now started shouting at Joel to close the door and I realised I was running out of options.
“Он просто глупый турист!” he’s just a stupid tourist!, I yelled. This seemed to get their attention and for a moment they went quiet. Joel picked up on this and started pointing at himself and repeating stupid tourist over and over. This seemed to cause a discussion between the police in Kazakh before the cacophony rose up again and the inter-car shouting match entered its second round.
About ten minutes later - though it felt like a lifetime if you were there - the yell-off was appearing to die down, not that my hoarse voice or thumping headache had noticed, and without warning the police went quiet. Their chief looked at me and started speaking Russian, “You guys are ok. But him”, pointing once again at Joel, “I hate him. Get him away from me!”. There was dead silence and Joel stared at me with a ‘what the fuck did he say’ plastered across his panicked face. I was pretty confused too but wasn’t going to hang around. “Joel come get in here, now”. Joel now looked puzzled and started to ask why but I cut him off “Mate, I don’t know, get out of the fucking police car and let’s go!”
We started rolling the instant Joel’s arse hit the seat and as we gained distance I kept one eye glued to the rearview mirror, nervous that they might suddenly speed up to us again. Cue a long, relieved silence, the loose parts of the car rattling away on the uneven road and the cool breeze now pouring in from the windows once again.
Once we were in Kyrgyzstan we took a quick ‘post-bribe breather’
A few hours later and we’d made it to the Kazakh/Kyrgyz border. There weren’t any dramas getting out of the country so apparently nothing had been reported against our names or our vehicles on their system. We were beyond relieved and only an hour or so from Bishkek, where the rest of our crew had found a place for the night and all we had to do was arrive.
In an almost comical twist, about 1km into Kyrgyzstan we turned a corner to see some police with a speed camera waving us down. I was furious. There was no way in hell we’d been speeding. We purposefully checked all the speeds at the border and I’d been watching road signs like a hawk.
One of the Kyrgyz police officers came up to my window and shook my hand, “Where you from?”
“England”
“Welcome to my country, I hope you enjoy!” he said, smiling as he waved us on. As small as this gesture was, it was everything I needed at that point to not lose complete faith in the police of that region.
Once we got to Bishkek, I didn’t know if I wanted to sleep off my residual anxiety or just drown my shaky nerves with some drinks. So we did both. On arrival the four of us collapsed into our beds, truly exhausted from the day’s events. Then shortly after, woke up, wandered into town and spent the night in a very questionable bar drinking a fluorescent green liquid that you could also set on fire.
In hindsight there might have been better ways to cope but this did the trick.
I guess it’s kind of obligatory at the end of a blog like that to ask you about any of your nightmare scenarios you’ve had adventuring. To be honest I’m actually super keen to hear so do leave a comment if you’ve got anything from a near death experience to simply a crap time! Maybe writing it out will make it all feel worth it? It certainly helped me!
Cheers,
-Max