“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost -England

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“Robert Frost is a chump.”

Shane Bolinger -Kazakhstan -

The Marabby reared up into the air. A FIAT with its front wheels reaching for the sky is a rare sight. The event doesn't last long and the return to earth conjures imagery akin to a hippopotamus mid bellyflop.

This particular thunk was hard enough that I paused the drive for a moment to check the undercarriage. Mechanics doesn't come naturally or unnaturally to me but I've learned one or two things about cars from fellow adventurers. Okay, I only learned one thing: there is this thing called a sump on the bottom of the car. The sump is the artery of a car. Puncture this and all the oily life force drains out of your car, the engine has a seizure, and you are the owner of a box of scrap metal in a Kazakhstan desert.

I have learned how to identify this sump and was able to accurately diagnose that it had a huge dent in it, courtesy of Kazakhstan. I poked the dent to see if oil was seeping out. Nope, nothing but dirt.

This was worrying, not just for the obvious reason, but because the dent was just the newest of three sizable wounds.

After I got back in the car an argument ensued about the need for purchasing a sump guard, aka sump armor. The dialogue was heated enough that drivers were switched and seating arrangements altered.

Emotions were further, umm, aggravated, when the replacement driver sent the Marabby into her signature rearing pose with the same bashing result.

The saving grace of the next 400km is that I found driving the complex road quite pleasurable. A great deal of attention is required when most of your drive is spent on an old dirt path next to the decayed and dying asphalt. As one of our rally acquaintances from the Dixie Chickens School Bus quoted, "The road is paved with hate.”

Nerves did settle and we ended up boating along in our trusty steed. We showed the battlers the proper way to navigate harsh terrain by letting them go first and learning from their mistakes. Roberta got her first off-roading experience in, navigating some serious terrain.

After hours and hours of driving we would find bits of pavement that time forgot. A grand paranoia would come over us as we made use of these strips of asphalt. The road sirens called to us, "Drive faster. The road is good now. Faster, faster.” These false roads are far more dangerous than the dirt paths or destroyed sections of the highway. Perhaps the men who built the roads were sadists, or perhaps they were blind, but either way they had apparently paved directly over sleeping camels. What was left was a near invisible, seamless bump in the road that threatens to rip the bottom half of your car out from under you. To avoid driving a Fred Flintstone FIAT you have to be on guard for the little white scrapes and bits of cars that surround these Tarmac mountains.

For the low riding Battlers, dealing with the terrain involved relying on their armored undercarriage to take the hits. For us, the more comfortable method relied on avoidance but left little room for mistakes. Eventually, Shawn of the Battlers, a drag racer hobbyist, could wait no longer and they scraped their way into the horizon.

We ourselves arrived in the destination city of Aktobe with an intact sump and strong feelings towards the “road less travelled.”