Today I landed in Astana and thought I’d get straight to work. I thought that there might still some saiga roaming around Astana, so went for a look around.

It’s thirsty work!

We asked the local wildlife, who weren’t very helpful.

I even asked the friendly looking man loitering outside the government building, for help.

Then we thought our luck had changed and we asked the local police if they knew of any local saiga hangouts.

After an unsuccessful morning we decided to gate-crash a VIP event to raise awareness and network.

In the afternoon I took Hen and Carlyn to the ACBK office and introduced them to the team, who all seemed to be busy working on various conservation projects. (www.acbk.kz) Steffen and Zhanna were really helpful and showed us where saigas do currently roam.

While we were in the office we heard more devastating news – a further 500 females and calves in the Ural population had just died. We decided there and then that we were definitely going to west Kazakhstan where the Ural population roam, to see if we could help.

We booked a flight for the following morning...