27th August

FINISHED! For an article explaining how we finished, please go to:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2007/08/25/wfoster125.xml

Thanks again to all donors. We're still raising money though, so please do keep the money coming in in aid of this excellent cause.  

Thank you for visiting this fundraising page. Now all you have to do is donate! You'll notice that George and I have not put a target on our fundraising so the sky is the limit.

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor us: Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you. If you'd prefer to donate by cheque, please make your cheque payable to The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign and send to Professor Ian Smith, Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham Road, London SW3 6JJ. Once again, we would like to stress that no donations will be spent in any way on funding our trip. All donations will be going straight to something that really matters.

 One in nine women in Britain will develop breast cancer at some stage in their life and worldwide over a million women are diagnosed each year. While prevention, detection and treatment  are improving more and more women seem to be getting this disease and 17% of female deaths in the UK are caused by breast cancer.

Working in conjunction with The Institute of Cancer Research, Professor Ian Smith's  team at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London are leading the way in developing new techniques to prevent and treat breast cancer but, in Professor Smith's words, 'there is still a long way to go.' Someone very close to me developed breast cancer and was succesfully treated by Professor Smith's team so I can personally vouch for the work they are doing. Please donate what you can and make a difference today.

Money donated will go to The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign and from there, it will all be transfered to the Professor Ian Smith Cancer Research Fund. 

The trip starts next week and promises to be a tough one. Seventeen countries, three mountain ranges, three seas, two deserts and lots of languages. We had our first mechanics course today - in Bengali - so there is some chance that we might make it back home. Famous last words but the car (pictured left) seems quite straightforward...

Many thanks for your support.

Yours sincerely,

Max Benitz and George Vlasto

www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk                                                                  benitzm@hotmail.com

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070605/asp/calcutta/story_7874805.asp - here is a story in an Indian paper about our trip.

Peter Foster, The Daily Telegraph's man in New Delhi, has taken a shine to our project and from time to time will be following our progress through the summer on his excelent blog on all things South Asian. For the first installment please go to: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/peterfoster/jun07/longroadhome.htm

Thursday 5th July. Well, we've had plenty of fun since Peter's last update. Getting an Indian car into Pakistan proved to be a bit of a headache in the end but after speaking to various members of the Pakistani Government, we were generously given leave to enter. Leaving India with an Indian car also took longer than expected but we crossed the border last Monday.

Since then, we've been taking the car slowly up from the baking plains to the high mountain villages that cling to this hair raising road. The Karakoram Highway has been quite tough work but the people here are very friendly and the scenery is amazing. We're now edging towards the Chinese border and hope to cross this Monday.

Thanks so much to everyone who has donated to this site so far. We know the money will make a great deal of difference. Please tell your friends about the trip and let's keep the money rolling in!

Sunday  15th - Osh, Kyrgyzstan. A quick note before we head to Uzbekistan. Two very different expereinces since last update. In China, the roads were great so we'd have made great time except for the rather remarkable amount of paperwork required for us to be allowed through the place. Of the five days we spent in China, around half our waking hours were spent in police stations, customs houses and border posts so not too many opportunities to see the place.

 Kyrgystan was at the other end of the scale. Everywhere, people welcomed us like long lost brothers whilst pouring gallons of the national drink (fermented horse milk) down our throats. Plenty of fun has been had by all.

Thanks again to all who've given to The Royal Marsden and will update again this week. Max and George.

9th August, Trabzon, Turkey.

A fresh update from Peter Foster can be found at the followıng lınk:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/peterfoster/august2007/tblisi.htm

All is going really well and both us and the car are holding up. We've had an interesting drive sınce the last update, as Peter's blog makes clear. From witnessing the perplexing lunacy of Turkmenistan's now deceased Presıdent for Life (the man had a 25 foot golden statue of himself put up which rotates all day so that he always faces the sun), to dealing with border guards and policemen on the take we've certainly been kept on our toes. Listening to the BBC whilst driving the other day, we were surprised to hear that a missile had just landed 25 miles north east of Tblisi, Georgia which was exactly where we were at the time. Very odd.

We're on the Black Sea coast now but inevitably, after weeks of sweating it out ın the deserts of Central Asia, we've arrived at the sea side in the middle of a cold snap.

Yours, Max and George.