Sheila, This is dangerous & crazy. Love, Mom

Day six was quite the eventful day.  Jake woke up to the plaster from the ceiling falling on his head (apparently there was a leak above), James (Aussie) woke up without his pants, jacket or shoes and had no idea where they were, and the Nat, James (English), and I were feeling the pain of a night full of vodka.  The others had gone back after dinner, parked their cars in a secure spot, and had a good nights sleep…after apparently getting in a fight with a local who wouldn’t let them be until they ate the bread the locals were forcing upon them.  

After a quick reassessment of the night before, James located his pants, James realized that there was a huge puddle of water on the floor that barely missed soaking his bag, and the rest of us headed next door for breakfast, and we realized the gas cans we had on our car were long gone.  Luckily, we had put the 20 liter one inside and had planned to take care of the other two 5liter ones after dinner.  James and Jake were also missing all their gas cans.  Luckily, we were close enough that we wouldn’t need them, but we would have liked to use the gas that was in them.  Jake also realized he didn’t seem to make it home with his wallet…a bit of a disaster of a night all around.

After chatting with the local Aussies in the cafe, eating an amazing breakfast, we decided to check out and pay our hotel bill.  As the room Nat, James, Jake and I were all sleeping in was falling down, pretty much all onto Jake and his belongings, we decided we were not paying full price for the room.  Oh me Oh my.  What a debacle that turned into.  Jake had already had the police there earlier in the day (which the owner was not happy about) to file a report about his stolen petrol and now we were apparently trying to rob them.  After a bit of an argument between Jake and the owner, the next thing we all know, the owner has jumped into the boys car and reached into the glove box and swiped their camera.  Now he is saying Jake must pay 10,000(Mongolian money…i forget the conversion) to get it back.  We were only looking to pay 4,000 less for the room.  With the help of one of the cafe next door workers as a translator, the owner was accusing us of putting water on the ceiling and making the leak.  After quite the back and forth, Jake finally walked out with his camera and having only paid the 20,000 we were looking to pay for the room.  Needless to say, we burned rubber out of the town…until we realized we went the wrong way and had to turn around.

After another lovely drive and a few wrong turns, we made it to these amazing hot springs where we were able to first, shower! and second, soak in the hot spring water.  After a lunch that took about a year and a half to make, we drove on a bit further to another ger camp, this one being a full on real ger camp.  A man came around and lit fires in all of them (they quickly went out but we were all able to get them going again), we had a nice meal prepared by a nice mongolian woman, and played a few games before going to bed in preparation for the finish line the next day.

LAST DAY!  

Our last day of driving was pretty uneventful.  Somewhere in the last couple of days, we lost our suspension, making it so that even with the tiniest bump, our heads were practically hitting the ceiling.  I don’t get car sick, but I almost did this day.  After a bit of driving, we hit a fully paved, asphalt road.  We had never seen anything quite as beautiful.  We rolled into Ulaanbaatar around 4ish, really pumped to hit the finish line.  Unfortunately, it was pretty anticlimactic, as it was just in a parking lot that was already full and we ended up in a huge traffic jam trying to get out.  We had heard about this nice guest house a little out of the city center, so headed there to see if they had room for 8 smelly, tired souls (Ian and Leon opted for a hotel in the city).  And room they had.  We stayed in gers in the backyard (6 in one, 2 in another), had amazing showers, amazing food and got ourselves ready for the finish line party that night.

Oh the finish line party.  Nothing will ever prepare you for a party like this.  Everyone there had one goal the past 6 weeks, to get to Ulaan Baatar, and here we all were.  We had all made it.  While not everyone who was there car made it the entire distance, they at least had.  It was quite the party to say the least.  

So, on Sept 3rd, exactly 6 weeks from the day we started, we had successfully driven from England to Mongolia.  We didn’t quite reach the 10000miles mark (the people who went the southern route thru Iran did, though)…I think our final mileage was somewhere around 8,700.  Quite the accomplishment, if I do say so myself.

…a car that refused to start.  It was a very cold morning after our campfire, apparently too cold for the Jimny.  The battery was flat out dead. Not a chug, not a churn, just a few clicks and nothing.  We get one of the cars to come back (after a few had found sand at our campsite and got bogged in for a few minute) and got a jump start.  He finally cranked and everyone took off towards the road and we started to, but then stalled and died.  And then needed another jump.  Soooo, a car had to come back to where we were and we finally got him going again.  So again, we are all off, only we took the wrong path to the road and when trying to reverse, yup.  You guessed it, stalled again.  Now we are in a precarious position and the bottom of a sandy hill facing a ravine and trying to figure out how to get a car down by us to get it started again.  Finally, oh finally, we had full power again and were back on the road. 

Driving on day 5 found us some of the worse roads yet.  There was what appeared to be a road made of rocks and little concrete and filled with potholes.  There were corrugated bits that would rattle the car so bad I am surprised the whole car didn’t just start dropping parts left and right.  You try going slow, you try going fast, it is all the same.  Your teeth start chattering from the vibrations and you have to grip the steering wheel with all your might to keep it in check.  We found ourselves driving on the dirt paths more than the actual “road”, and I use the term road very loosely.  To put it mildly, it was pretty tough driving.  But alas, we made it to the next town, booked ourselves into a lovely motel that had no shower.  Yes.  NO shower.  It wasn’t just that the rooms didn’t have showers but there were shared ones the hall, but there were just no showers period.  Luckily for us, there was an amazing cafe/hostel next door that had showers we could use, had western food (aka, an amazing breakfast of eggs and bacon and pancakes and coffee) owned by an Australian couple now living in Mongolia.  

We arrived in the town before sundown, walked around trying to find a place to serve us dinner (several places simply told us no), had a nice dinner of traditional Mongolian food, and headed back to the hotel for an early night in.  Until we stopped because it was James (Aussie) turn to buy ice cream.  We each took one bite of our ice cream bar, which we naively thought was vanilla but turned out to be mares milk or something equally awful.  We happened to be in front of a karaoke bar at the time decided the only thing that would get this terrible taste out of our mouths was vodka.  So vodka we had.  We attempted to sing karaoke (we all know how amazing I am with a mic in my hand) but they didn’t have any American songs (or so they said) so we left.  Oh, don’t worry, we didn’t go home, just down the street to the Disco.  This place was full of locals, had plenty of vodka, and a pole in the middle of the dance floor.  

Mongolia wrap up, day 4

Lets get real folks and let me just get the rest of the rally phase of the trip wrapped up so we can move onto phase 3, China.  

So we wake up on day 4 (Aug 31), some of us feeling better than others and are happy to have a nice hot shower and a warm cups of mares milk with rice for breakfast (not as bad as one would think, but still not really very good.  I just kept telling myself it was cream of wheat).  Ian and Leon needed to find a new spring for their suspension, Felix and Chris had a mysterious transmission leak to sort out (turned out it was coming from their clutch, which they weren’t using, so wasn’t a big deal at all).  What did turn out to be sort of a big deal was that come sunrise, Chris and Felix were no longer the proud owners of a roof rack full of tires. Seems that someone during the night came and cut the bungees and chain holding them down and helped themselves, leaving the boys with no other choice but to buy new spares.  James (Aussie) was almost unrecognizable after using his exfoliating gloves and scrubbing all the dirt off of him and Jono, well, Jono just felt about as good as he looked.  Us, well, per usual, we were cruising along just fine.  Ever since our engine was rebuilt, it took longer and longer to start.  Just when you would think it wasn’t going to turn over and wanted to give up, ourlittle Jimny would start purring like a baby kitten.  Today it took even longer than normal, but never doubt the Jimny, he rarely lets you down.  And James (English) and Jake treated me to my first ever Mars bar (turns out it is just like an American Milky Way.)

By the time we have everything sorted, packed, money withdrawn (it took us 4 banks to find one that would give us money off our ATM cards.  We found 1 ATM, but it ran out of money a few people ahead of us), lunch eaten, we were on our way by early afternoon.  

We drove thru a few more river crossings, thru a state park with more amazing landscape and scenery, and ended our night in a posh little campsite in the national park, complete with John (the mannequin Felix toted around posing as Chris during their fund raising campaign), a campfire, and a little guitar playing by some of the boys.  

Mongolia Day 3

(I am going to give myself an out at this point that this timeline may be a little lacking in accuracy, as it is over a week later that I am now trying to get this all written down)

Day three greeted us with a beautiful sunrise over our small lake/pond and the promise of another good day of driving.  We set out innocently enough, not really knowing what lay ahead.  Apparently, all of Mongolia was set out to get us and set up a land full of sand to get us all trapped down.  We came upon a stretch of land that looked nice and flat and we were all so excited for the smooth driving ground…until one by one we were all getting bogged down in the sand.  Luckily, the Jimnys made it thru without too much trouble because they were 4x4 equipped, but we spent quite a bit of time getting one car after another out.  We finally figured it out…go fast enough and don’t stop and everyone can make it thru.  We were never so happy to see the rough mountain terrain.

I think it was on day three that Ian and Leon heard a rattling under their car.  It was only after taking off the entire exhaust system did they realize it was really their rear suspension spring that was cracked and falling out.   Needless to say, the boys were starting to get a bit nervous about the state of their car. 

Day three was a very full day of driving as we were pushing on to make it the next town to stay in a hotel rather than camping.  Somehow or another we made it and had much welcomed showers, washed a few pieces of clothes in the sink and had a good nights sleep.  Well, most of us, at least.  A few of the guys decided to stay up all night drinking vodka with the locals, something that in no way holds the promise of a good morning.  

Mongolia Day 2

It has been awhile since my last update, so let me reintroduce the group:

Felix and Chris…Aussie, super tall, almost abnormally so, and lead navigators

James and Jono…at this point we still thought Jono was Jonah; James can simply look at a car that doesn’t even have an engine and it will start up.

Me and Nat…the girls

Ian and Leon…the Ladies

and introducing James and Jake..English and speak only in movie quotes.

Our first day of driving in Mongolia showed us all just how tough the rest of the week would be.  Almost every car that arrived at the ger camp we were staying at came limping in with some sort of problem or another.   Our goal for first day was to make it to Khovd, where Tony, the Mongolian who was solely responsible for making sure we did not spend 2 days sitting at the border, owned/operated a ger camp with his wife and family.  A ger is like a tent but more permanent but not permanent…I don’t know, google it and you will see.  They are a welcome alternative to camping in the freezing cold.  The ger camp was amazing.  We found our English friends, Jake and James, there and convinced (well, perhaps demanded or nicely persuaded) them to stick with us the rest of the trip.  From this day on, we refused to let them out of our sight.  We had a huge dinner of Mongolian food and swam/bathed in a freezing cold river, and had a good time getting to know the guys in our group. 

The next morning started with a trip into town to get parts for cars and tires repaired.  Luckily, all we needed to do was have two tire tubes replaced.  Others had much more involved repairs, such as whidling a truck axel spring into something to fit a little car and fixing or replacing a sump (I am not quite sure what Jono and James did, all I know is that James was covered in a mixture of oil and dirt).  It wasn’t until about 3pm that we had the final route finalized and was back on the road.  The rules for driving in Mongolia are very different from the rest of the trip in that you really really shouldn’t drive at night and need to stick to the main path.  That left really only about 4-5 hours of driving for the day and we ended the day with a massive campout next to a little lake/pond.  There were our five cars as well as another car of Canadians, one of some Scots and car of a solo American, making us quite a large group.  Chris and Felix attempted to catch enough fish for dinner, but unfortunately came up a little short.  As in they didn’t catch anything, but it was a good effort and we all crossed our fingers in the morning when they tried again, but the fish refused to be caught.  

There are 3 main routes that can be driven across Mongolia…north, central, and south.  The southern route has ‘drop off’ points set up by the Mongol Rally for cars to be left when they crash and burn and refuse to go any further.  Because of the import taxes and other Mongolian laws/rules, bringing a car into the country is a big deal and if you just abandon it, it will cause you quite a bit of trouble when you try to leave the country, hence the official drop off points.  We also had to put about $1300 down as a deposit for the car and the only way to get the money back is to sign it over officially to the rally people.  We daringly picked the central route and hoped against the odds that all the cars would survive the beastly Mongolian countryside.

Day 2 was a good day with no real incidents that I can recall.  

After what has to be the coldest night of our lives, an amazing sunrise, and a quick camp clean up, we set off for our first day in Mongolia.  At this point, we are a convoy of 4 cars… leading the pack in a little blue beast are two Aussies: Felix, who can fix anything an everything with nothing more than a paperclip and gaffer tape we soon learned, and Chris, who has navigational skills that can’t be rivaled.  When we found them, it had been at least 3000miles since they had an operating clutch and their starter motor was about done so they were push starting their car in a bit of a run and jump maneuver they had really mastered.  Second in line are two more Aussies, James, who just has to breath on the car and it will be fixed, and Jono, whose name we thought was Jonah for the first 3-4 days.  But no, his name is Jon and those crazy Australians just add and ‘O’ to the end of everything, hence Jono.  Then of course, our original foursome of Me, Nat, Ian, and Leon.  We had picked up 2 English kids earlier but lost them at the border.  Luckily we found them the next night.

Within, oh, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so of driving, Ian and Leon suffered the first casualty of the Gobi Desert…the blow out of all blow outs.

It happened at just the right time because they were driving much faster than all of us were trying to pass everyone and then bam, blowout. They changed that only to find themselves less than an hour down the road with another flat tire.  Slow and steady, boys, we tell them, but boys will be boys and insist on driving fast.  

We make it to the first town, try to find new tires for them to no avail and carry on.  We ran into another team along the way, the Rubber Ducks, whose car was being held together purely by rust, duct tape, and a whole lot of fairy dust.  We ran into them once as they were gluing some part of their engine back together.  They caught up to us later only to discover that whatever holds the transmission fluid, (the transmission? i don’t know these things) had lost the plug, they seem to have lost a couple of their gears, and and whole list of things.  Next thing you know, Felix has practically rebuilt the engine with duct tape, sprinkled a little more fairy dust, my wine stopper was fashioned as a plug, and off they went.  As we were stopped, Jono decides he should look under his car, just for fun.  Weeeelllll….turns out they had a hole in the sump and that needed a bit of repair.  

Luckily by this point, we were about an hour away from our destination, Khovd.  It was here where we stayed in our first ger, found our English boys Jake and James, who we refused to let out of our site until today, when we were forced to leave for China.  One by one we all limped into the ger camp.  Luckily, we seemed to be the only ones who survived the day unscathed.  

Holy Mongol, where do I start.  Last time I updated, we were in Barnaul, Russia, where we spent a bit of a lazy day doing food shopping, internet, etc, with the intent of driving a ways further that night and then making it to the Mongolian Border on sat or sun.  The info we had was that the border would be open both sat and sun until 3pm.  Oh no, luckily we ran into some locals who had befriended many different rally teams who told us the border would be closed on sunday.  So we decide we better get driving so as to make it thru sat before 3pm.  We drive until dark, notice that everything is wet from rain, and decide to find a hotel in one of the towns.  We pull up to some random town, make a lap and find nothing (although, honestly, we really didn’t know what we were looking for).  Next thing you know, a taxi appears out of no where, almost as if it is heaven sent, and with a few rounds of charades, a couple points to words in the Lonely Planet translation book, this man in a taxi takes us to one hotel (full) and then to some random guesthouse/apartments that we basically took over.

The next morning, we expect it to be a couple hour drive to the border and plan to make it there by 11am, giving us plenty of time to make it thru by 3pm.  We were slightly off on our calculations as we skidded into the border at exactly 3pm.   We drove thru quite the mountain range in Russia that was one of the best stretches of driving we had done, simply because the scenery was pretty spectacular.

Some of the mountain passes were quite steep and our little Jimny struggled with quite a few, but I have to give it to her, she did everything we asked him to do that day without any complaints or sputtering or refusals to move. 

Luckily for us, turns out the border was open until 7pm that night but the rumor of it being closed the next day was true.  It looked as if we would have no troubles and skated right thru the Russian border.  We pull up to the Mongolian side with about 10-11 other rally teams and were super excited to meet some new people.  The excitement began to wear off when things took a quite a turn and things started looking grim.  There were 13 cars waiting to be processed thru.  The Mongol Rally only paid the import tax on 7 cars for the day.  And it was getting close to quitin time.  And they were telling us we weren’t going to get thru that day and we would have to wait until Monday.  And it was getting really really cold.  In the group was one Mongolian guy on the rally who pretty much saved the day.  After organizing each car to pay $60 for “overtime”, things quickly got moving and we were out of the border by dark.  

Holy Mongol Roads.  We thought Ukraine was bad, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were even worse.  Well, Mongolia didn’t even seem to have a road.  There were a bunch of rocks piled into the shape of a road, but it pretty much seemed like a big wasted effort.  We have now met up with a couple other cars which turned out to be our convoy for the rest of the trip (best convoy ever).  We drive about half an hour, decide we need to stop before we kill ourselves on this “road” and set up camp.  Oh. My. Coldness.  The wind was whipping like I have never felt.  I truly have never been so cold in my life.  This is the coldness upon which to base all other cold.  As we are setting up our tents, we all look up and can’t believe what we are seeing.  Snow. SNOW! On August 27th.  Snow.  I slept in a thermal shirt, tshirt, 2 long sleeve shirts, a light weight sweater, fleece, two pairs of socks and my shoes.  It wasn’t until around noon the next day that I could feel my feet again.  

More to come, I promise.  We made it safely to the finish line on Sat, Sept 3, exactly 6 weeks after the start of this crazy adventure.  Today we leave for China.

(the morning after our freezing first night in Mongolia)