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Lisa said: “Ironically, we had gone for a walk to be fit and healthy. We couldn’t have been in a more remote place so, after I did my best to patch Phil up, we worked out we had pretty much a 10-hour drive to the town, which I kid you not was called Moron.”
Phil added: “I was in agony and poor Lisa had to nurse the truck along some of the worst roads we had encountered.
“She had to drive through rivers, heavy mud and across broken bridges, all the while trying to minimise the bumps for my sake.”
Phil ended up receiving treatment at two hospitals before their insurance company expressed concern about the care he had been given and insisted they f ly back to Austral ia for the broken bones to be surgically fused together in Sydney.
It was two months before they could fly back and continue their journey.
The couple, who have been married for six years, admit one of the scariest encounters on their trip came while trying to leave Mongolia.
Lisa said: “We had to do a river crossing between us and the Russian border. We thought the river would be a little trickle but the snow had melted, turning it into a raging torrent of water. Halfway across, we realised the tractor towing us couldn’t get up the steep mud bank. It was wheel-spinning and at a dangerous angle above us – so Phil and I were stuck.
“The water was up to our windows and we knew if the car stalled, flipped or drifted, we would be stuffed.”
The couple were able to reverse to safety only after the tow rope attaching them to the tractor snapped. They later crossed the river 1km up stream.
Another scary encounter came as they camped in Tajikistan, just 50m from the Afghanistan border.
Lisa said: “We had camped up after dark, which we don’t normally do. In the morning, a couple of military trucks pulled up and we thought, ‘Oh look, that’s lovely – they’re picking up litter’.
“We were eating our cereal when it suddenly dawned on us that they were sweeping for landmines. We can laugh now but it wasn’t our best moment.”
The couple have driven everywhere from Kazakhstan to Iran.
Lisa added: “A touch of altitude sickness and camping in -14.5 degrees couldn’t detract from the beauty of the Pamirs and Wakhan Valley, which run along the AfghanistanTajikistan border and has to be one of the most beautiful places we’ve seen. In November, we crossed into Iran so it was time to hijab-up. But I didn’t mind wearing the head scarf – you can hide bad hair plus it’s an extra layer against the cold.
“Everyone we met told us about the Iranian hospitality and they weren’t wrong. We were invited into house after house to take tea, meet people and eat food.
“Our strangest encounter was staying with a Kurdish family near the Iran/Iraq border. They found us in freezing conditions, about to camp, and insisted we go to their house.
“We agreed, had a lovely dinner and a chat. Then at bedtime all these mattresses were brought out and we all slept in the same room, side by side with our new friends snoring.”
The couple travelled on to Armenia, Georgia and Turkey before stopping in Greece, where they are now staying with a couple they crossed paths with earlier.
They will take in another 15 countries before returning to East Lothian, where they plan to host a huge party.
Lisa said: “We are having a wonderful trip but are looking forward to going home too.
“We haven’t seen our families for four years. And after two years off work, we are looking forward to hopefully restarting our careers and living like grown-ups again”.