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On my journeys I have always met people who are willing to sacrifice their time, goodwill, and sometimes also some money for me, a person they will never see again. This mostly happens among people who possess little more than a genuine smile on their face. But they are in fact much richer than many people in "civilised Europe". And at all that, they couldn't care less for the current crisis.

Of course I don’t mean just materially deprived people. There are people, who live in a more genuine world which allows them to take time for their fellow human being, all the more for a fellow human being or "brother" of this world, who is in trouble. Or simply in an alien environment which is enough to make them willing to help. Writing about this reminds me of Shahab from Esfahan, who drove Carmen and me around and whiled our evenings away by reading the poetry of Hafez to us; the owner of a petrol station in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, who gave us petrol for free at his otherwise completely dry pump, saying he knows what it's like to be a foreigner away from home. He himself had spent a few years in London. And then Hasan, who helped after I'd had a road accident in Saudi Arabia by allowing me to put up in his courtyard "for as long as necessary". And the guys at the Peugot garage in Adana, Turkey, who fitted together my fuel pump during the festive season after Ramadan And all the kind people in Yemen, Morocco and Syria who helped me in a number of ways when I sorely needed it. Stories that oblige me to help whenever I am able to.

Praise is almost imperative and self-praise is bad manners. So I don't, as a rule, broadcast the duties I carry out when the opportunity comes along. Nor about the fact that, whenever it's in my power, I pull up next to a standing vehicle on the roadside and offer help in Slovenia, as well. Very often all it takes is an extra hand, a rested mind, some litres of petrol, a telephone number, some directions or a size 13 wrench. So why am I writing all this? Because the world will be a better place if just one of you, reading this, will think of these words the next time you mean to drive past a standing vehicle at the roadside or a tourist standing in the middle of the road and helplessly twisting a town map in his hands.

And why did I start this topic in the first place? Because on this journey, like on all others, we together accomplished some good deeds which deserve reporting as some of them were quite amusing.

In Tunisia we pulled up beside a standing truck at the foot of a slope before Matmata. All it needed was 3 litres of water for the radiator (for the engine, obviously). With two plastic bottles of water in his hands, the driver's face lit up in a big smile. The sun was getting pretty low.

At a police control alongside the Murzuq sand sea in south Libya, Amer and Omar refilled the water tank. I wasn't very happy about the shape my fuel tanks were in (there had been no diesel at the last petrol station before the desert), but the policemen had none to spare. As Uroš and I were taking a look at the solar panels with avid interest, a policeman showed up and spoke to us in fluent English. 15 minutes later and we were at a local observation post checking the state of the panels and batteries and repairing a bizarre defect, which stopped the cells from charging properly. He changed an ETI fuse (yes, ETI Izlake from Slovenia!) and instructed them to use distilled water to refill in the future. After coming back to the control point, Uroš checked the rest of the batteries there, explained the guys about the uses of different frequency ranges and wavelengths in radio communication, while Omar, Tomaž and I tapped 100 litres of diesel from a barrel into our truck.

One day we came across a pretty heavily loaded yellow Land Rover in the desert. These guys had come from the north, looking for a well lying several hundred kilometres back up north on the wrong side of the road they had apparently crossed in vain. These locals were wandering around the desert with . I worked out the geographical position of the well from the map and entered the location into the GPS for them. They continued their journey, with smiles all round. A couple of days later we met again on that same road. They honked and cheered enthusiastically.

It is also funny when a police car drives up to your truck parked at some desert lakes, asking for air. The guys clearly know that trucks come with their own compressor. At this point I should explain the importance of high or low pressure in tyres: the softer the surface, the lower the pressure should be in the tyres to allow the vehicle to move along. 7 bars in the front tyres, normal for road conditions, would never get us anywhere in soft sand. In the same way, the tyres would get sliced pretty soon with pressure for soft sand.

But the funniest story was when we helped out on the road on Djerba, Tunisia, on our first night back from Libya. There's a police van on the roadside and a handful of policemen trying to get it running by pushing. We stop. "Problem?" "Yes, it won't start." We join in to give it a push, but the engine won't stir. The batteries are full and so is the fuel tank. Still, we can't get the engine running. Finally, with the police station only a few kilometres away, we turn around the truck (this time along the vertical axis), fold out the towing rope we got in the Emirates and tow the police van back to the station. Hilarious experience. With a bonus - we got to enjoy some proper beer after a long time!

We'll come back to you tomorrow with the last of the photos from our last day of shooting, and then it's … España llamando, !