After having waited five weeks for a permission to bring our car into Cambodia with no sign of getting any response from the authorities, we became convinced that a written permission would never be granted. It would seem that our request had been sucked into the black hole of third world bureaucracy, never to be heard of again. Seeing as Cambodia is one of the world's most mined countries we were determined not to miss it and therefore decided to head for the border anyway, even without the necessary permissions, armed only with an assortment of ten and twenty dollar bills and the knowledge that in a country where policemen earn as little as $20 dollars per month, money talks.

We started our work with MAG shortly after arriving. The fighting between the Khmer Rouge and government forces and later between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces has left an untold number of landmines scattered throughout the country. Almost in every province, landmine victims bear witness to the legacy left by decades of war.

After a little less than two weeks we had finished our filming and it was time to head back to Thailand. We had fortunately managed over the past 10 months to faithfully

Thailand is the final destination of our expedition as one of our sponsors, Maersk Sealand, has very kindly made arrangements to ship our Landy from Bangkok back to the UK. We are very grateful in particular to Henrik Jensen and Marisa Phiwkhaw of Maersk Sealand Thailand for helping to organise the shipping so incredibly quickly and efficiently.

The expedition has been an incredible experience for us. We have met more weird and wonderful people and made more new friends than we had ever hoped when planning this over a year ago in London, and will treasure the memories of this trip for many years to come. In terms of the landmine problems that many countries suffer from, we have seen first hand what invaluable contributions to rehabilitation demining organisations such as Mines Advisory Group, Danish Demining Group, Danish Church Aid, Handicap International, and Norwegian People's Aid make. Although the problems are far reaching, the demining efforts of these organisations do help. Demining truly is the first step to rehabilitation in a post war country. We hope that through our expedition and the film that we are making we will be able to contribute to furthering people's knowledge of and support for the important work being done by demining charities worldwide.

The next step for us now is to begin the lengthy editing of some 60 hours of video footage that we filmed during the expedition. In due course we will then have a finished documentary which we are aiming to distribute to all of the many NGOs that helped us during the course of the expedition, as well a broad range of television networks.

We would like to thank all of our readers for their interest, our generous sponsors for their invaluable support and our supporting organisations for their help in realizing this expedition.

We were excited to finally be in Far East Asia and a bit saddened to be embarking on the last leg of our journey. We were only to stay a short while in Singapore before heading to Malaysia to pick up our trusty Land Rover that Maersk Sealand had shipped from Calcutta.

As soon as the car arrived at the Tanjung Pelepas port in Malaysia we headed across the border to pick it up.

We would like to thank Prithwijit Maitra in the Maersk Sealand office in Calcutta and Kim Hansen in the Tanjung Palepas office for their greatly appreciated help, efficiency and friendliness in helping us ship the car to Malaysia.

Malaysia offered the authenticity Singapore had lacked and is as the advert says - truly

Unfortunately for us we were in a rush to get to Bangkok to put pressure on the Cambodian embassy to push for our permission to bring our car to Cambodia.

Our main attention, however, was with the Cambodian officials. We called them daily to inquire as to when our permission would be granted, but as is often the case with third world countries, bureaucracy is a slow and complicated process. This wasn't helped by a recent change of regulations which has made the temporary import of cars extremely difficult - even harder than before. Whilst we waited we spent some time looking around the city.

Male tourists are predominant in a country where prostitution is widespread and although the Thai government claims it is curbing the sex-industry, one look at the notorious red light district of Pat Pong seems to contradict these claims.
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Despite the friendly Thais and their beautiful country we were eager to get to Cambodia to film the last part of the documentary. The landmines laid out during the years of the Khmer Rouge terror rule today pose an incredible threat to the people and the country's further development.

We headed for Jalalabad where we were to film DDG's UXO clearance work in the area. The town itself was poor with none of the allied presence that can be seen everywhere in the capital Kabul. The area is very traditional with the women still wearing burkas. A few Taliban sympathizers could still be seen, but overall people were friendly and hospitable - a trademark Afghans are famous for, although perhaps not in the West.

Perhaps the most affected people in the region are, however, the Kutchi nomads who face high risks when trekking through contaminated areas. After years of Taliban rule the nomads can finally wander north during the hot summer months for greener grasslands where their sheep can graze, however many are still unaware of the highly unstable cluster bombs scattered across fields and grasslands throughout the area. It is a new and unknown enemy and it has arrived at the worst possible time. Several years of drought has made their animals weak and the scarce grasslands are vital for the survival of their livestock - and their own.

The police compound was like a fortress, surrounded by high walls lined by armed policemen that all seemed to be watching town with a nervous look. We were greeted by the chief who, after we had filled in the required papers, insisted that we stayed in the police compound for our own safety. After he had insured us that no hotel in town was safe and that foreigners like us were easy prey, we agreed. He also told us that the place was very dangerous, but he, the chief of the police, was not scared of anything. The two guns he carried in his belt told us something different.

The landscape had by now changed from arid dessert to lush green fields and the potholed roads of Baluchistan had turned into double-lane smooth asphalt roads. The Punjabis wore brightly colored clothes, some even wore longis (wrap around skirts) which made the place look very much like how we have imagined India to look like.

The next thing we knew we were placed in a big open tent overlooking the track, in the seat of honour right in the middle of the front row, three local camera crews were competing to get an interview with us and the town mayor and major landowners were asking us where we were from and would we stay for a while. To top it all off, we were then promptly informed by the mayor that we were now officially guests of the local government. In the middle of all this, and as the police was literally beating back the crowds of curious onlookers, a dancing horse was brought before us to perform its dance.

As we arrived in Esfahan's amazing Emam Khomeini Square, the sun was just setting. The square measures a huge 500 by 160 metres and is flanked by arched buildings, mosques and palaces. At the far end the mighty Emam Mosque with its shimmering and colourful tiles competes for dominance with the impressive Lothfallah Mosque, equally elaborately decorated.

We found a small teahouse on the roof overlooking the square and watched the scenery as the sun went down. In the dark the square looked like an oriental version of the Piazza St. Marco in Venice. The Mosques were both beautifully lit up.

Our evenings were spent exploring Esfahan's many restaurants or talking to other travellers in the courtyard of our hostel. Most were heading towards India and others were coming back from the Far East. Stories, anecdotes and warnings were exchanged over hot tea into the small hours of the morning.

The families would be present and the girl would serve tea. To the unmarried male candidate she would also offer a cake. It is when she hands him the cake that he for the first time is allowed to look at her. If he then proceeds to eat the cake it would mean he was interested in getting to know the girl better and the young couple would be allowed to go next door to talk with each other in privacy. On the other hand if he decided that for some reason he was not interested in the girl, he would not touch the cake.

February 5th to 13th - Tehran, a city without charm.

We take the liberty in this update to write only a little about the capital of Iran as it lacks any of the Persian culture and charm. Not a drop of Persia, in fact, can be found in this huge and enormously polluted city. Take Cairo's manic traffic and add several thousand mopeds driven by suicide candidates, a thick layer of smog and add the odours of dirt and discarded kitchen waste for good measure and you have Tehran.

The only rule that applies for Tehran's traffic is that there are no rules. Rear mirrors are there to hang items from and side mirrors are knocked off the cars within five minutes of them leaving the factory. Indicators and headlights are frowned upon, as they seem to be regarded as unnecessary accessories that drain the batteries.

There is one plausible explanation for the erratic driving in Iran. We were told by a friend that due to the great demand for driving licenses the driving test has been shortened to only include the student to parking the car. When our friend saw our great surprise he quickly replied that parking in fact is a very difficult maneuver to perform.

We decided to leave our car in a safe parking space out of harms way whilst we waited for our Indian and Pakistani visas, which as it turned out would keep us in the city for a week.

We went to the Pakistani embassy to apply for our visa and when we were interviewed by no other than the consul himself we took the opportunity to inquire as to the safety of the Baluchistan area, infamous as it is for kidnappings. The consul assured us that the few drug smugglers usually left tourists alone and we had no need to worry because: "kidnappings happen everywhere in the world, not only in Baluchistan." Reassured we left the office…

We had expected American flags to be set on fire, angry banners declaring America's allegiance with the devil himself and thousands of passionate demonstrators, none of which happened. Later another Iranian friend of ours told us that that "all that stuff" takes place on another day!

There were two slopes one small for the women and bigger one for men - both of which were easy. We both went on the men's slope. Once on the top you had to maneuver Iranian daredevils at extreme speeds and questionable skiing abilities coming down the slope.

The 'Apres ski' was very different from the smoky bars with loud music and plenty of drinks in Europe and America. Here the bar was a family restaurant, serving only sandwiches and tea. Posters on the door were set up to remind the women that Chadors should be worn. Only two grandmothers seemed to abide by the rule as anyone else was wearing normal skiing outfits. The only difference was the hats would never come off when the women were resting.

There is unfortunately not much to say about this vast lake. We ended up seeing precious little of it. The tall mountains dip down to the Caspian Sea and made a beautiful journey, however once we had driven down to the Caspian the road which run parallel to the shores was laid about 5 kilometers inland so there was no chance of the scenic route which we had anticipated. Instead a complete lack of city planning has meant that the entire route is flanked by ugly urban development. But there were to be even more ugliness in store for us at our next destination a place even further deprived of any oriental mystique…