It’s the day before the flight, and I’m frantically trying to work out if we have everything we need. I don’t really know why I’m wasting energy thinking about it – I presume anything we don’t have we can pick up in a shop or our friends will be able to supply.

We have visas, airline tickets, the Kazakh and UK mobile numbers of our friends, a fist full of US dollars, and our sense of adventure – what more could we possibly need?

People still think we are mad – even though we are visiting friends, the general consensus of opinion is that not only are we mad, but our friends are too and that no one should expect to get visitors when they have chosen to put themselves so far from a Starbucks (OK, so people aren’t saying ‘Starbucks’ but they are saying lack of credible democracy, corrupt security services, decent healthcare, poverty, Soviet threat, Marks and Spencers food hall…).

In turn, I think they are mad – in this walk of life the chances are most of us have friends in strange places; friends who have chosen to go or who have been sent, off the beaten track for a few years. I think they are the mad ones, not to be taking the opportunity for adventure and travel somewhere different but with the relative safety of being with someone who knows the country, language, or even just has the emergency number saved into their mobile.

I won’t sleep easy tonight. Far too excited about what might lay ahead on our journey.