I filled the tank at a petrol station with a supermarket attached, then filled two spare jerrycans. I estimated I could cover 240 miles in six hours with my foot down. I bought a new shirt, eight litres of water, three days’ worth of food, and spare batteries. I put the gun under the seat.

The only plausible destinations in this direction were Pavlodar and Karaganda, although it was still insane to be driving across the desert. Karaganda had a football stadium and a power plant. Pavlodar had Sary-Arka airport 14 miles to its south. I went online and bought a plane ticket to Istanbul, then kept going east.

A Toyota Yaris passed in the opposite direction, seemed to slow. I watched the mirror as it continued away from me. Then I left the last construction sites behind and plunged into a landscape like a white sea. The city receded behind me – civilisation, other humans – the elastic stretching until the view in the mirrors was as empty as the one through the windscreen, and I was alone.

Desert rules: beware men flagging you down. Give lorry drivers a wide berth – most are wrecked on crystal meth. Don’t lose the road: it was level with the desert either side, no barriers, no lights. An old Soviet road, potholed, bleeding into the landscape. I focused on its line. There was something comforting in being able to see endlessly in each direction. I had escaped, for now. I had no idea what I was heading towards.

A few miles further and the road became white gravel. A rusted line of containers stretched along the horizon. I passed one dust-coated lorry marked Dong Feng, driver expressionless behind shades. Around 2 p.m. I saw a settlement a couple of miles to the east. They cropped up at intervals along the railway: track gangs, who might try to rob you, but would possibly sell you some stale food and black-market fuel. The railway itself was invisible but would be a single track carrying cargos of oil and gas from the Caspian to Druzhba on the border of China. I could smell the diesel fumes when I opened my window a crack. After another five miles I could see the oil tanks themselves, stained black and smeared with rail grease.

The railway veered away, replaced by mountains alongside me, then the mountains retreated. No landmarks apart from the road itself. Sometimes that vanished beneath snow and I had to check coordinates and pray. I’d read of intrepid Roman travellers who had reached these parts trying to navigate by the stars like sailors. I’d been trained in astral navigation but it was a long time ago and I hadn’t had to call upon it recently.