We three idiots are jumping into our Punto on 18 July and driving 10,000 miles from Cornwall to Mongolia, to raise money for Cornwall Hospice Care. Should be ace, and probably very weird. Not least because we'll be playing mini-gigs next to the Punto on the way. Expect to see us performing from beneath a pile of yak herders' flung underpants by the time we get to Ulaanbaatar.
Read more about the trip. 

Here's how we're getting on...

Day 50: Never any doubt

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We've driven over 9,000 miles in the past seven weeks. By comparison, our final task doesn't sound quite so epic: crawling about 500m across Ulaanbaatar to the finish line. Woo-hoo. Still, that's harder than it sounds when you've got no idea where you're going, the electronics in your car are buggered, and you're sharing the road with a bunch of utter lunatics. It's even harder when the owner of the guesthouse buggers off with the key to the car-park so you can't get out. In other words, we're not counting it as a given till we've got that damn Punto across that damn finish line.



We're up early unloading all the shite from Mr Wazzboobleyoid in advance of the handover. It's a weird feeling. To be honest it's pretty ace to be able to ditch most of the stuff, as it's caked in two-months worth of general grime and a shitload of dust from a week in the desert. And Jeff peed on the back seat. But I've become used to life on the road, and thinking about giving away Mr W, who is essentially my first car (at age 32), it's a sad day.



I unload my drum kit into Guillermo's ambulance - he knows someone who runs a school project that would love to take it on. So it's all worthwhile - we lugged it all the way here on the roof, and I only played the fucker once, but at least now some kids are going to benefit. Who knows, it could inspire the next Phil Collins. Genghisis.

The drive to the finish doesn't feel anything like a cert. We're all a bit on edge as we meander our way lost round the city, trying to avoid collisions with these maniacs. Any fuck-up now would be unbelievably dumb. But after several laps of the place we manage to find a useful landmark and work out where we are.



We spot the sign for the finish line, and Steve drives us through a car park towards it. A bloke unchains a barrier, and we're in. It's all highly surreal. Loads of people are staring at the car. We get out. Now they're staring at us. 'Welcome to Mongolia,' says one guy. Thanks. We arrived a week ago.

We soon realise it's because we're about an hour away from one of the auctions, and these people are looking to be first to get their grubby hands on our merchandise.

Next up it's a beer, and chucking shampers around, taking a few photos. Then I fill out a couple of forms, hand over the keys and we're done.

Done. Stenalees to Ulaabaatar. 50 days. 9,101 miles.

We hear word that an auction has started inside, so we go in to get a taste of what awaits Mr W once we're gone. It's weird being in a roomful of Mongolian city-dwellers bidding for piece-of-shit cars that are totally unsuitable for use in their country. Especially ones that are covered in stickers and marker-pen scrawls. As Jeff points out, the roads are gridlocked. Who needs another city car? I wonder where everyone is going. The city is small enough to walk around, and there's bugger all beyond the city anyway.

Still they're snapping up the cars. We watch the Potters' Punto go for, I think, $999. I wonder how much they'll pay for an identical car with only one back seat. And one which is covered in wee...

Thanklettes

In true hip-hop album sleeve style, I'd like to give a few shout outs. We'd like to say thanks especially to Gabi and his family for befriending us back in Bulgaria and for staying in touch with the story all the way through. I'm sorry to report no Big Problems, not even the horrific sexual abuse you predicted for us in Turkmenistan. The idiots won...

I'd also like to thank Alisher and the guys from the wedding in Uzbekistan for the warmest welcome of the trip, and to remind anyone in a position to carpet-bomb rural Azerbaijan to do so, in a bid to eradicate the menace that is the little shepherd twat who stole Doug and our football.

Thanks also to Andy, Dan and Lamorna at the Adventurists for helping set up such a memorable trip. And for reading and enjoying the blogs. Finally I'd like to thank everyone who sponsored us - you easily passed the fundraising target for Mercy Corps, and are so close to the Cornwall Hospice Care total. Another cheap party should sort that out. It's all been a massive laugh. And finally again I'd like to thank everyone for reading this blog. I'm genuinely chuffed to know that people have been out there following the inane crap we've been getting into. We'll be tweaking the blog over the next few weeks, putting in the best pictures and more video clips once we have the luxury of a bit more time.

And I'm brewing up another trip for next year that will be designed to keep people entertained. So stay in touch for that.

A special final shout goes out to Greg in the Daihatsu, for a comment that really tickled me:

Greg meets a bloke on the road who keeps referring to the Lonely Planet as the 'Lonely P'.

'Please don't speak to me,' he says.

------

Well that about wraps her up. This blog has been brought to you by the letters S, S, and C, and the number 3. And the music of Talking Heads, Beck, the Raconteurs, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, System of a Down, Guerner, Cinematic Orchestra, Aphrodite's Child and two iPods'-worth of shuffle.

As a potentially over-informative aside, my challenge of avoiding self-pleasure for the duration of the trip proved too much. It was a close-run thing but, over the course of the seven weeks, wanks beat wet dreams 3-2.

We'll leave the last word to my big bro: 'Keep on truckin'...'

Thanks again for reading,



Stenalees Surf Club Mongol Rally Minstrel Division

Day 49: The end

The road to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Steve and a French guy are trying their best to wrap a bandage round a Mongolian's head to hold his skull together. The poor bloke has flown down a steep slope in his van and rolled it, hammering his head into the desert through smashing glass as the vehicle tipped. His moaning is rapidly becoming a gurgle. He's punctured at least one lung, which is clearly filling with blood. He has about 10 minutes to live.

Minutes before we'd come to the bottom of the track and seen the guy's van lying on its side, a massive sattelite dish and a load of wood overloading the roof that faced us, a crowd of Mongolians sitting around his body as it writhed in pain in the sand.

People are trying to move him - Steve tells them to stop, and asks the French guy if he has thought to try draining the bloke's lungs. 'Yes,' he says, 'but think about it - if we try it out here and he dies these people will kill us.' It's time for quick decisions. Steve has done everything he can to help him, and quickly opts to move us on urgently before the guy passes on and things turn hysterical. We leave as a medical team arrives, too late. Steve says it's one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make.

It's an otherworldly moment for the final day of our trip, and it really puts everything into perspective as we finally reach the fabled tarmac for the first time in this country. The mood in the car is sombre and philosophical. Jeff points out it's a good thing to be reminded of bad things in the world. 'I fucking hate people who are ignorant of everything,' he says.

Seconds later his point is brought home when we see another wreck by the side of the road, this one put on display by the government as a stark warning to motorists to watch their speed. Judging by the state of it, the owner clearly went the way of our friend back up the road. That hasn't stopped one rallyist slapping a Mongol Rally sticker on the door. Seeing that straight after our last encounter, the intended irreverance doesn't really cut it.

But what can you do? Soon the music's back on, and we're singing along in an effort to lighten our mood. Led Zeppelin. We all remark how unfortunate Stairway to Heaven sounds right now. But the road is good, the sun is blazing, and the scenery is back to its stunning best. The day passes with a particularly poignant beauty, as we watch men on horseback herding goats in the epic landscape.



We'd had a coffee and hacky-sack break earlier beneath one set of mountains; now we stop for lunch in another incredible spot, watching loads of huge birds circling overhead. As we're cooking up our pasta we notice an ambulance approaching. It's a rally vehicle. It pulls up, and out comes a beaming gregarious Argentinian called Guillermo.



He actually finished the rally a couple of weeks back - at least he hit Ulaanbaatar, he just never bothered crossing the line and handing his vehicle over. Instead he's been driving round the countryside alone, meeting locals and trying to find a worthy recipient for his ambulance and medical kit.



He leaves us to eat. By 4pm we're back on the road. The sign says 362km to Ulaanbaatar. We start getting excited. Less than 250 miles left of a 9,000-mile journey, and smooth tarmac to bring us on home.

I take the wheel for a couple of hours. As my last ever drive with Mr W, it's particularly beautiful. Then I ask Steve to take over as the light fades - our headlights are crap, and I trust his eye-sight more than mine. This turns out to be the jammiest move - within 20 yards of the swap, the tarmac suddenly disappears, and we're thrown onto the worst road we've seen since Semey in Kazakhstan, and possibly the worst road of the entire trip. What crushing timing. We're meant to be rolling in on smooth roads. As it is we're suddenly sent crunching cruelly through lethal potholes - in the dark. It's potential suicide.

Thankfully, through some unlikely gremlin of chance, we're reunited with Guilliermo moments before. He comes past us as we're swapping seats, as he gives the local chief of police a lift to Ulaanbaatar. Guillermo knows the road, and tells us to follow him and his undulating headlights through the maze. He's an absolute god-send. If Jack Kerouac met this man he'd describe him as a mad burning Argentinian saint. In an ambulance. 

Heavy rock is essential at this point. The fury of System of a Down carries us through the night. We crunch into a few pot-holes. We're only a couple of hours from our destination. Can't let Mr W die now.

Guillermo's ambulance is crucial to this whole endeavour. Without his headlights we'd be struggling. Jeff realises this, so when he needs to use the loo he decides to do it in the back of the car in a bottle, so we don't lose our escort. It's not so easy over bumpy roads, especially when the bottle has a leaky neck. He's soon complaining that he's covered himself in his own wee. About 20 seconds later the ambulance pulls over. Steve and I get out to take a leak.

Then we see lights looming into view beneath us. Ulaanbaatar. This is properly exciting. At that moment, Cinematic Orchestra comes on the iPod, Fontella Bass belting out the word 'evolution!' It's all becoming a bit lyrical. We entered the country a week ago, thrust alone into a beautiful wilderness blazing trails of dust. Now we're on to smooth tarmac, rolling easily past choking power stations and crazy traffic. We've basically driven the course of the country's evolution. If that's what it is.

Guillermo's ambulance leads us on a merry dance round the city. Our indicators are fucked, so we have to signal by winding the window down and sticking an arm into the freezing night air. Junctions are madness, cars flying everywhere. He drops off his passenger, then tries to guide us to a guesthouse. We'll tackle the finish line tomorrow. After half an hour of wrong turns, he finds it - a place with secure parking and wi-fi. We've done it. We've arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

The host takes us up to our room. Fourteen hours on the road today, all we need is a shower, food and a decent kip. And to unleash our delirium. Turns out we're in a shared dorm. There are people everwhere asleep on bunk-beds. We have to talk in whispers. And there's only one shower which is constantly in use. Shit, we say - quietly.

Soon enough though we're all cleaned up and back out in the streets. It's 1am, and Guillermo is leading us on another merry dance to find food. The only place open is a Mongolian R&B club, complete with Mafia dudes and girls in short dresses bumping and grinding on the dancefloor. We pay the door charge, and wander in unkempt and boasting an enormity of beard, ridiculously paying the fee to occupy a VIP table. After seven days out in the desert, the mountains and the steppe, we tuck into pizza and chips. Evolution indeed. But we made it. And the beer tastes incredibly good.

Tomorrow, barring any crushing disasters, we'll cross the finish line. 

Day 48: Masters of our domain

From Altai to Bayan Khongor, Mongolia. Like a true pro I'm checking our instruments - we've gone 10 miles in three hours. Now I'm no Clarkson, but that is rubbish. Today we finally have to break out of the convoy. We're all for hanging out in a crew, especially as everyone's a really good laugh, but we've clearly got different aims. And we start to go a bit mental if we don't feel like we're moving.





Lunch illustrates the problem perfectly - we roll into a roadside ger in the middle of nowhere, and the woman offers us meat and noodles, which she has to make entirely from scratch. It takes an hour and a half before we're done. No-one's bothered at all, which is fair enough. But Steve spends the whole time out in the car. Different aims.

The ger woman is also cooking up tea - in a huge wok-thing cooking on a ferocious flaming cow-shit stove. I want to adopt this system for making a brew at home:

'I'll just pop the kettle on.' WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF!

Her job done, she sits down on a stool next to us and starts breast-feeding. Waitresses tend not to do that in restaurants at home. I'm tempted to profer my tea-cup but I realise, as gags go, that would be desperately immature. Plus she may well oblige, which would be weird.



It's a hell of a lunch spot (and that's not a reference to the breast-feeding) so it's a shame we've soiled it slightly by being angsty about moving. Especially as everyone else is just having a laugh and going at their own pace. But things get worse after lunch with a river crossing that takes ages, and pre-empts another bout of hanging around. We sit in the Punto sulking.

All of this is made worse by today's weather. After two months of largely glorious sunshine, we've hit a day of cold dank grey, with a howling wind whipping sand into our faces. It's rough. Not the kind of conditions for hanging about in. Better to be on the move watching from inside a warm Boobleyoid.



Pretty soon we are away again - the roads have turned from perilous hard corrugations to sand tracks, which is a good laugh to slide about in, and not deep enough for us to get stuck. So we can finally get some pace up. We're following the jeep, which pulls to one side to wait for the others and waves us on ahead saying they'll catch up. Which is highly likely, as I'm driving.



So it's a surprise to find an hour or so later that we're still out on our own. We figure they must have got caught up helping one of the other teams, but see it as a chance to recover our own feel to the trip so instead of hanging about we press on. The plan was always to drive 80km to the next town and camp just outside, so we figure they can catch us up.

We've got no map, and haven't worked out how to get M Waller's GPS thing going, so now we're out on our own for the first time in ages, in the middle of nowhere, which makes everything feel more vital again. We've got the tunes on loud, and our mood brightens, mainly at once again being in control of our own destiny.



After a few hours, just as it's getting dark, we see the town of Bayan Khongor lying nestled at the foot of the mountains ahead of us. That'll do for a camping spot - absolutely stunning. We leave the car in a prominent place on the hill and camp next to it, so if the others catch up they can see it.

Our 'calculations' put us about 100 miles from the start of the tarmac road which is supposed to lead us all the way into Ulaanbaatar, a further 250 miles down. With an early start tomorrow, and the freedom to move and stop as we please, we realise there's no reason why we can't pull that off in one day. Especially if the road is as good as people say.

All being well this will be our last camp of the trip. Which is ideal, as it's fucking freezing.

Day 47: Plight of the navigators

Approaching Altay, Mongolia. People tend to love driving off-road. I like the idea of it, but I can't help feeling that giving me the keys to the car here is a little like Hugh Heffner handing control of the Playboy mansion to a eunoch and going: 'seriously chief, do absolutely anything you want'. It's a nice idea, he replies, but I'm going to need a lot of help. And a Haynes manual.

But after Jeff's willful destruction of our rear-end in last night's frenzied heavy-rock-and-Jelly-Baby rush, it seems I've gone up one place up the driving pecking order. I guess the logic is that the worst that can happen at the pace I move is that the engine nods off out of sheer boredom. But like Jeff, I too draw inspiration from the desert rock gods.

We drive on. The boys in the Suzuki Jimney score the ultimate prize - soon they're strapping a skull with horns to the front grill of their jeep. It's a good look, especially as they've also simulated a pair of bollocks hanging out of the back. Viewed side-on the car takes on the appearance of the complete beast. It's incredibly painful following on behind and watching its dangling jewels taking bad whacks on desert rocks.

We've got about 1,000km to go till we reach Ulaanbaatar. We're averaging around 20 miles an hour. That's not good. We're still trying to get there in three days, and the Skoda is still having problems. Again, there's a lot of waiting. And faffing.



Soon enough though we arrive at Altay, and our second visit to a rally graveyard. This time the idea is to find someone to fix our rear suspension. A chain-smoking mechanic beckons Steve to drive Mr W in over the car pit so he can take a look. I feel bad for the car. She must feel like C-3PO when he wandered into the Jawa's transporter and saw all the broken droids screaming as the weird little dudes went to work on their feet with the welder.



But there's a stroke of luck: sitting among the car corpses there's another Fiat Punto. It's blue too. In fact it looks worryingly like Mr W. The only difference is that its rear springs are intact. So there's no reason why we can't just pull the springs out the back and swap them - at least then we'd be in the same position as we were when we left England, on springs that are short and stocky and designed to take the weight of our car.



I say there's no reason not to swap them, but that doesn't account for the logic of Mongolian mechanics. Ours is a bit of a character, an old dude in red overalls who stinks of booze. But he seems intent on denying us our plan to pilfer the springs. Instead he's trying to get us to buy brand new ones - ones which look worryingly like the soft and useless Audi springs we had back in Kazakhstan - so he can cream a few quid out of the sale.

We indulge him, figuring he knows what he's doing. And it all looks great. The back end looks amazing. Until they let the car off the jack and the back slowly sinks down about half-way over the rear wheels. It's laughable. Still they seem convinced they've done a decent job, and ask Steve to take her for a test-drive. The underside takes an almighty scrape just trying to get out the garage. That doesn't stop the mechanics getting arsey with us for being awkward.

It's a huge pain - we know what we want but we share no language, so it takes a couple of hours to convince them we're right. It's a big ball-ache, and another lesson in that quality which the rally has taught us so much about: patience. Much of the conversation takes place rubbing fingers through the dust on the Punto's back window, trying to convince the bloke it's just the springs that need doing, not the whole shock system.

After a long protracted process involving the rally organisers' Mongolian representative, we finally convince the bloke to pull and fit the springs from the dead Punto. It works fine - and could have saved us two hours. So right now we owe a debt to the Plight of the Navigators, the owners of that poor Punto, for unknowingly helping us back on the road and towards our twisted destiny.



Jeff is chatting to the mechanic about our route. The bloke uses mime to convey the idea that the last section we drove was the really shit part. The worst is behind us. But he's still warning us to be careful. He does this by chucking a stone on the ground in front of him, pretending to approach it in a car, and then grabbing Jeff by the testicles. Then he repeats it, instead moving his imaginary motor around the rock, and not grabbing anyone by the testicles. He seems to be saying that, if you're a careful driver, you won't have to suffer weird drunken mechanics grabbing you by the testicles.

It's all been a bit of a pain in the arse. Working stuff like this out in a foreign language is rubbish. But by the end we're all friends. We manage to chop a few quid off the price by chucking in one of our jerry cans. The mechanic ends up hugging it like a drunk suffocating a baby.

We celebrate our success with a bowl of dumplings in the cafe next door, and then set off. Not before the Mong Way Round boys manage to pick up a hitch-hiker and shove him into their tiny weird car. He's a Swiss guy who's ambling around the country and decides for a laugh to go back to Ulaanbaatar with them, having just left the city a day or so ago.

We can't go far before setting up camp again. And yes, it is another beautiful spot. The only troubles are the wind and the cold. We steel ourselves by dancing to Aphex Twin under the stars, and then turning in. We really have to get some miles behind us tomorrow...

Day 46: Onward Mongol soldiers

The road from Khovd to Altay, Mongolia. Having woken up early, with the sun coming up over the mountains, I grab the shovel and the loo roll and head off into the brightness to take a shit under a telegraph pole. Yes, I am a man.

There's something hearty and primal about the faecal act when one is out in the mountains. Especially when you come to bury it afterwards. It's like you're finally giving something back. 'Hello world. I love you. And I made you this.'



The idea was to be up and off by 8am - it'd be good to see what sort of mileage we're capable of on these roads when we're not waiting around most of the day for people to patch up their motors or purchase super-noodles. We're due to face our route's most infamous stretch of road today. It's a known car-killer. We're not sure why exactly, but we've been told to fear the worst for 200km.



But that's all a while away. Once again we have to sit around most of the morning waiting for the Skoda team to patch up their motor. Their gearbox needs tweaking so they can hobble on into the next town. So we eat a supernoodle breakfast and drink coffee, and then Jeff wanders off with the shepherd's staff he found yesterday, telling us to pick him up on our way past. We're now due out of here at 10am.

We kick our heels longer - more coffee, a few keep-ups and a bit of reading. While Jeff is away, Steve and I replace him on the team with a recently-filled bin-bag. He instantly fits right in. We decide he's hilarious. It's a shame in a way, as I quite liked Jeff.



We finally get back on the move at 11.30, which means Jeff has been wandering alone in the wilderness for about two hours. I seem to remember Jesus doing a similar thing. We find him about three miles down the track, a wild look in his eye and a camel's skull jammed onto the end of his staff.



A little while longer and he'd have had a massive beard, a load of followers and a B-tech in carpentry. As it is he's spent his time in the wilderness honing his woeful lack of knowledge of lizards:



It feels great to be back on the road. Movement is special. The music's on and the scenery is, once again, breathtaking. If wild. At one point we pass five eagles sitting on adjacent telegraph poles. While Steve drives, it's my job to scan the road for skulls. The holy grail is to find one with two horns intact. Instead I find a cow carcass. We decide against gaffer-taping it to the side of the Punto.



The sun's out. Again. In fact we're gradually dropping down out of the mountains and it's getting notably hotter.

We pull into a town for supplies. Fuck me. It's like a Wild West frontier town. Leather-faced dudes ride the streets on horse-back. Old men hang out on front steps, surrounded by Chinese motorbikes. One guy comes past and whips the front of our car. Everyone's drunk. I go into a shop to get water, and when I come out Jeff and Steve are urging me back into the car sharpish. Apparently Jeff had started giving out badges, which quickly turned into a scrum. People were getting aggro. Better to be back on the road with our convoy, our tunes and our packet of Haribo.

We begin to see why this road is known as a car-killer. The main tracks are largely made up of long stretches of corrugations - long series of small parrallel bumps that you have to hit at a fair lick in order to get anything approaching a smooth ride. This extra speed only leaves you open to hitting big rocks. It's also incredibly slidey. The best bits are when there's a generaous coasting of gravel, which Mr W is happy to surf around in. Much of the drive is spent hopping from trail to adjacent trail, trying to avoid the corrugated sections.

It's not actually as bad as we'd expected. But it is bad. We develop a golden rule: go steady. If you drive at a suitable pace, you're almost certain to make it, as you can see stuff early enough. Simple. The other teams in the convoy may seem plagued with bad luck - one team's had nine blow-outs so far, the other a punctured gear box and a problematic sump guard - but they're also going for it, speed-wise. Maybe we're just older and wiser, but we'd rather make it to the end than have to bow out because of overdoing it.

Which is how we do it all day. Until the evening, when Jeff's driving. The combination of the heavy rock of System of a Down and the sugar rush from our packet of congealed Jelly Babies puts him into a frenzied state. Suddenly we're in a race with one of the Mong Way Round cars, one that's been hooning it the whole time, bouncing round bends, sliding about and generally caning it.

Jeff's having the time of his life. Steve wakes up with his head hitting the ceiling. We stop to let others catch up. Steve gets out and inspects the back of the car. It's fucked. The weld on the springs has bent, pushing the whole lot against our brake pipes. Anger descends, and he gives Jeff a despairing assessment: 'You razzed it as hard as possible, on the worst section of road in the entire country.'

The mood isn't exactly bright as we hobble on to our camp. So nearly there - we'd almost nailed the worst road in the place. Now we're back to square one. Tomorrow we have to make it the 130km to Altay, and get our back end fixed again. The only option: set up camp and drink more vodka...

Day 45: The ghosts of rally future

Khovd, Mongolia. We're at the Mongol Rally graveyard, a garage full of wrecks of rally vehicles that died in the country and could only make it this far on a tow-rope. It's an eery sight.



There's only so many blown tyres and wrecked windscreens you can look at before you start thinking there's no chance your little Punto will ever make it. Thankfully Mr W is parked outside and doesn't have to see this.



One car advertises its sponsor, a motor parts supplier, as 'one of the cheapest in the UK'. Seeing their dead motor here, that's not a great advert. We're here to try and score a spare tyre. Trouble is, as we've already noticed, no-one round here drives Puntos, and tyres are particular beasts. But Jeff and Steve go off to a mad market full of watermelons and animal skins and manage to find a wheel that's both the right size and has the right bolt spacing on it.





So we leave safe in the knowledge we've got a fine rear end and a couple of proper spares. Which is handy - the road from Khovd to the next town is an infamous 200km car-killer.

We woke up that morning at the ger camp, refreshed from a decent night's sleep and a shower powered by a particularly shit generator. Much faffing ensues, with the convoy taking practically all day to get almost nothing done. The only achievements are Steve having around $20 nicked from his wallet, and Robbie, one of the blokes from the Mong Way Round team, being relieved of $100. Thieving shits.

There's also chance for Greg to discover he's snapped a rear spring in his Daihatsu. Luckily we've still got the Audi springs that were too crap to take Mr W's weight and had to be replaced. They do the ridiculous and stick one onto his wagon as a temporary measure. It seems to work.

Paul continues his run of fine cow-shit chefery by cooking a ridiculous breakfast of omelette and beans. It's a sad day for us, as we have to say our farewells and god-speeds to Greg and Karmel and the German boys. They're up for making their way to the finish line incredibly slowly, heading off into the countryside to check out more lakes. It's a shame, as they're ace people and we've had a cracking time together, arse-fat and all. If you're reading this, chaps, remember the door is always open in Cornwall.



After way way more faffing, we finally get on the road at about 6pm. We're starting to get a bit frustrated with all this. It's clearly just a product of moving in a large group, but coming as it does right near the end of the trip we'd much rather be moving - at whatever pace - than sitting around waiting for other people to sort their shit out. You never saw Rubber Ducky parked in a lay-by waiting half an hour for the other truck drivers to buy crisps. But it's a convoy and that's what you do. You don't want to be the bell-ends that cane off ahead only to break down and need people's help four miles down the road. 

We drive past some guys in a Mongolian van, who gesture at us to stop. One guy comes over wearing camouflage gear and stinking of booze. 'What is your name?!' he shouts. 'How old are you?!' Turns out he's a Mongolian throat singer. He treats us to a little burn...





When we do finally get on the road there are problems straight away. Mong Way Round's Skoda punctures its gearbox when we're out in the middle of nowhere. As usual I get stuck right into the engine work:



Light is fading, so this dictates where we camp - next to the Skoda. It's not like there's a road you can camp next to - there's just a series of trails. We just need to set up somewhere in between them, and hope no-one decides to forge their own new path right through us in the middle of the night.



We sit around drinking vodka. Stunning place. Blah blah blah. Tomorrow, however, we have to face our futures - on that car-killing road...

Day 44: Tears of a marmot

Somewhere between Olgiy and Khovd, Mongolia. Mongolians tend to be very curious and hands-on. Take the woman who joins us at our campsite in the morning. She's intrigued by an aerosol lying next to an empty vodka bottle, and sprays it into her own face from about 12 inches. It's a stimulating insight into the effects of pepper spray.

She's there for about an hour pouring water into her streaming eyes until Paul, the purveyor of said spray, emerges from his ambulance and points out that water only makes it worse. What she needs is milk. Something like this was bound to happen eventually - the people here do like to rummage. They've got their hands all over everything, asking if they can have it. Greg compares it to a jumble sale. 'You can't take that,' he says to one woman. 'My pants, my beans, I need those.'

We have a couple of women into our tent. They're lovely, but they're also very grabby. At the end of their little visit we've given away our jam, our bread, our penultimate packet of wet-wipes and one of our wind-up torches. Jeff then goes and breaks the other one.



At risk of sounding like a repetitive and irriating tit, the morning is beautiful once again. It's soiled only by the system people have developed for crapping in the wild flat landscape - drive your car off a few hundred metres, then dig a pit behind it and squat. Jeff takes Mr W off for a spin, and comes back beaming at having produced 'a foot-long', next to a mound with the body of a dead dog on top commemorating his efforts.

Before this trip I don't think I'd ever seen a dead dog. Now I've seen hundreds. I've also seen a dead horse. Paul makes a proud proclamation: 'I tea-bagged a marmot.' And then he mimes it. Pretty soon he's talking about going fishing, and doing even more disgusting things to a trout. Not sure why I'm telling you this, but it struck me as funny. I am falling in love with these Germans.



We drive off, again down incredibly bumpy roads, past vast lakes, yaks and more snow-capped peaks, covering ourselves in dust. Crank up the fans and you get a thick puff of choking white mist to the face. I point out there's a lot of traffic, given the fact we're off on this mental dirt track. 'This is the main road,' says Steve. 'It's the M5.'

This main road apruptly ends when we hit a river. There's no bridge or anything, you just have to pick a spot that's not too deep and hammer it across, hoping you don't get stuck.



There's much tense milling about and smoking of cigarettes as the Suzuki 4x4 blazes its way through as a depth test, following the route suggested by a local bloke on a motorbike. Greg wangs it through in his Daihatsu.



The water comes a fair way up the wheels, but it's our best hope. It's soon Steve's turn. Of course Mr W takes it in her stride.

Never in doubt. We finally wind up at Khovd, and drive past a sign advertising the 'Mongol Rally camp'. They've clearly spotted a cash cow. It's an opportunity for us to spend a night in a ger. Before that, Paul invites us to dinner, cooking up an amazing dinner of goat in a massive pan fuelled by cow shit. As a meal it'd be amazing even if we hadn't been living almost exclusively off army rations and biscuits.



It's another fine night of vodka and chat, before we experience the quiet warmth of a night in the ger. It's also incredibly dark in there - I wake up in the middle of the night, so confused in the pitch black that I can't work out where I am. In my semi-conscious state, I even call out to my comrades, to check that everything is as it should be. Cue a panicked cry of: 'Dudes?!' We laugh about that in the morning.

Day 43: Pimp my Boobleyoid

Olgiy, Mongolia. Mr Boobs has had an uplift. The transformation is mesmerising: the car's rear end is now pert, and she moves with fresh vigour and confidence. Mongol heads will turn once this hot bitch hits the desert.





This is all done at a garage in the back alleys opposite our hotel, in spitting distance of horrid old apartment blocks and a cow moping in the street munching on a pile of rubbish. Giant buzzards soar about over the town. Steve manages to find a mechanic who has a sturdy old spring that's just long enough to cut in half to make two for our back end. Oo-er. His welding involves wheeling out the most lethal-looking home-made electrical contraption you could possibly imagine. It looks like a post-apocalpytic electro-octopus. Pretty soon the guy's half-way to blowing himself up by trying to weld his way through his own cables.



There's much hanging around today. A couple of other cars from our convoy need work, so it takes pretty much all afternoon to get everyone wheeled in and patched up. Then there's shopping to do. And fannying about. That's the trouble with convoys: you get the camaraderie and the support, but you also have to suffer a huge faff. The on-going delay is just enough time for someone to go into the hotel's 'safe' room, next to the reception desk, and whip $300 and Jeff's mobile from our bags. It's not a good first taste of Mongolia. It's weird - we've driven half-way round the world and had no problems anywhere, apart from the car getting keyed outside a gig in Cornwall, when raising money for a local hospice, and getting money nicked from Mongolia, when we're raising money for Mongolia. Big hairy balls.

There is a big upside to convoys too of course. You're with nice people. And these people are more than happy to sort you out with some moolah to make up for the stuff that's just gone wandering. Both the Mong Way Round boys and Greg and Karmel happily fronted up some cash to help us out with the car repairs and paying for food, which we buy at the 'bar-karaoke-pub-restaurant'. Which for me rivals Old Street's fast-food joint FCKF (Fried-chicken-kebab-fish) for deft beauty of moniker.

Eventually we're all ready to leave. A proper Cannonball Run scene as four cars, two jeeps and an ambulance weave their way round the town, trying to find someone to dish us out some fuel.



By the time we're all ready to go there's barely any time to get anywhere. This is the pattern for the next few days. We're aiming for a massive lake about 70km away. But it's blatantly not going to happen, so we end up finding a smaller lake nearer and setting up camp there.



It's the most ridiculously picturesque camp of my life. There are a couple of traditional gers (round white nomadic tent things) off to our right - the women who live there come over with their kids for a couple of vodkas, as they sit round the fire. We shit outside, like wild men.



It's another great night, sitting round the fire talking shit.





Can't remember anything else. Tired. Sorry, this is the lamest blog update so far. Bollocks.

Day 42: Into the wild

The middle of nowhere, Mongolia. The three of us sit looking at the three flat dust trails fanning out in front of us. One goes straight ahead, one bends to the left, the other splits off to the right. In navigating terms that's about as useful as being out to sea and someone saying 'hang a right at the wet patch'. We're just staring at mountains ringing a load of sand.

Pass. 

I want you now to go back and erase from your mind any cases in previous blogs where I've used the words 'mental' and 'weird'. As I feared, I really did shoot my bolt too soon there. This is where the trip truly cranks itself up to 11.

Escape from Mongatraz



We woke up among the detritus of vodka and flame, next to the Germans' ambulance, with the sun rising over the hills. The night seemed toasty at the time, but my body temperature has dropped right off. I've got the chills. Which isn't surprising given that even everyone who slept in cars is complaining of shivering all night. Greg tells me he was whimpering the whole time like a small child.

Despite the discomfort we're right back in the game, buoyed by thoughts of being back on the road before the morning's out. A groundhog lemming thing sniffs around at our pans. The big birds are still circling. We even spot a few choughs. 'This is rapidly turning into one of our best stops,' says Jeff. 'Ace nature, ace laughs.' We spot our first yak herd wandering past.  'Yak on,' says Jeff. We celebrate with more coffee and beautifully inept hacky-sack.

But the morning passes and we're still here. We get little Boldbaatr to demonstrate his prowess at Mongolian wrestling. After the Kazakh talc fight, it's the perfect chance for Jeff to reclaim some of his flagging self-respect - by wrestling a child. He doesn't come out of it well.



The weather turns crap - blowy and wet. And we get tired and shitty again. If we're not out today I'm going to pound Andy's face in. Hi Andy. Steve creates a makeshift shelter out of a sheet of tarpaulin and the Mr Wazzboobleyoid's left flank. We sit under it and eat. Time passes, nothing happens. This is rubbish.

Soon there's more action at the entry gate - a few more cars of rallyers has arrived. We say our hellos, then all end up camped in the customs office waiting for some information. Any information. Please. It's not overly forthcoming. But towards the end of the day we hear word that our man on the other end of the phone has been given the green light - the money has been sorted and they'll be letting us out today.



And so, at 6.30pm, after 31 hours at Mongolian customs, we're finally free. Unleashed upon the world again, we're now part of our first convoy of the trip - five car-loads of idiots weaving their way out through the village onto bumpy dirt roads and into the void. We're away. Finally.




Within two minutes the Fiesta in front has caught fire. What is this? One of the team, Sam, is leaping about, chucking stuff out of the boot, with everyone rushing around her to coat the contents with the foam from fire extinguishers. They had a battery sitting in the back connected to a load of inept wiring and it blew up.



Much faffing ensues, and after two days in customs we're wired and short-tempered and in no mood to remain still, so we plough ahead. Spat out of purgatory and off into the unknown. It's amazing. We're now in proper rally territory - loud rock blaring out as the Punto wheels spit up clouds of dust in our wake. We navigate by the sun and compass. Steve's driving. Our track has just split in two, each curving off into an uncertain distance. He shrugs his shoulders. Jeff points his hand to the right. 'That's south.' We go right.

A jeep comes bombing past looking decidedly local and in the know. We follow him for a bit.

Later on we take what appears to be the road, but Steve spots a problem up ahead. 'There's a gate,' he says. 'This isn't the road.' Sure enough there's a barely discernable trail curving away to our right, under the telegraph poles. Here's one tip for desert driving - if you're not sure which road to take, stay close to the poles, as they're bound to lead to the next town.



Luckily we're taking it very easy, and the others soon catch us up, which is ideal. We've enjoyed being fairly independent of the rally so far - the whole thing has wound up being a road-trip for the three of us - but we quickly appreciate that out here we're so much better off as part of a crew. The convoy gets a big 10-4.

The Aussies in the Jimney 4x4 cane ahead, led by their GPS, with the rest of us in tow. It's a crazy scene - the sun setting behind us, cars veering off all over the place, picking trails, overtaking each other, hopping off of one trail across stoney scrub land to join another. Out the window to the right, a zebra-coloured Skoda bounces along past us in a cloud of sand. To the left it's a battered blue Fiesta. It's like Mad Max has downsized to a more fuel-efficient model.

We roll past a load of yaks grazing next to a lake. They're big-shouldered horny hairy bastards. Soon we stop to regroup, which quickly turns into a chance to throw some shapes in the desert. The yaks watch me and Jeff get funky.







Our first taste of the potentially sketchy comes when the trail leads us up a steep hill. Round here they don't believe in gently winding around mountains - the road goes straight up. Mr W is in first gear giving it everything she's got. It's nearly not enough, but she makes it. Just. Like a Scottish gym teacher panting his way up the Gladiators travelator.

The reward is to look back on one of the most stunning views we've ever experienced. Jeff has a moment. Me too - it's my second nature-based well-up of the trip, after Kyrgyzstan. The feeling is one of triumph mixed with privilege. We're lucky to be here. The mood is altered when Greg pulls up, with Stenalees Surf Club's rendition of Magic Number booming out of his jeep. I gave him the CD earlier. This is ace. We formed the band for the trip, now I'm standing in Mongolia as a new mate cranks our sound out across the desert.

The only downer is that finding the chance to write is becoming increasingly tricky. The perfect writing time used to be in the back of the car as we drove, or in a hotel of an evening once we've turned in. But now we're rolling in a convoy, there's vodka to be drunk, and the roads are so bumpy that a simple sentence can all too easifsds;5ly; tuasdhkrn isnto sthissasgh ksaind oasf shit. If I try to sneak off for a cheeky half-hour in a car, someone comes over to ask what I'm up to. Even now, it's 7.15am in the middle of the desert, I've just taken a crap next to a telegraph pole, silhouetted by the rising sun, and every other fucker just got up as I started writing this. And they're making me coffee. The selfish bastards.

The convoy crawls into town under the cover of night, guided in by a Mongolian man on a chopper with a fuel tank painted up like the Stars and Stripes. We end up at a hotel which charges $20 a piece, for a shitty room with no shower. We take over an entire floor, with everyone arranging to meet in each others' rooms for booze. It's ace, if a bit too much like university halls for someone in their thirties to be totally at ease with.

We wile the night away with the Germans and Greg and Karmel, on the vodka. It's a great night, mellow, talking. Martin makes the point that if you got 15 people together to compile their stories from the rally, you'd have an almighty collection. Then they show everyone the photos of the arse-fat they were fed in Kyrgyzstan. I hadn't expected it to be actually anus-shaped.

Day 41: Purgatory

Russia-Mongolia border. Customs. 'You don't sound too wound up about the whole thing, so that's good.' Andy, one of the rally organisers, is on the phone, referring to our reaction at being held by customs until we pay $,2000 tax to bring the car into the country. Indeed, we are quite mellow now, because Andy and the Adventurists were straight on the case to sort it out. Go team. But 20 minutes ago I had them being buried neck-deep in the Gobi desert, giant marmots gnawing raw meat from their twisted faces, as I poked at their eyes with our lucky wolf's claw.

'Loving the blog,' says Andy.


The day started bright enough. We wake up with the rising sun, to discover that the Russian border, our home for the night, is in the middle of yet more beautiful hills, with more snow-capped mountains in the distance. Birds of prey are circling above our heads. We eat super-noodles and drink coffee, propelled by the caffeine into a laughable game of hacky-sack. There's an ace toilet. All is good.



Soon a load of Russians and Mongolians show up to queue for the border too. We've foolishly left a car's length between us and the one in front, and watch incredulous as a bloke performs a protracted 15-point turn to wedge his 4x4 into the tiny space. Utterly pointless. Foreigners, eh.

It soon opens and we're through in a couple of hours. It's relatively painless, and we're just excited to be getting on to Mongolia. We drive out into what seems like no-man's land - things turn barren immediately, and we drive 20km seeing only the occasional truck. Where's the entry border? We pass a final checkpoint signalling the end of Russia, whereupon we get an immediate taste of our new home - the road goes from being a smooth strip of tarmac one side of the gate, to a shitty bumpy car-pummelling dirt track on the other.

This bumps along for 7km, before we pull up to the entry border. We're queuing behind a few Russian trucks. 'Welcome to Mongolia!' says a cheery soldier. Very mellow. He takes me to sort out some car documents. 'Change money?' That doesn't normally happen. As usual we've no idea what the exchange rate's supposed to be, so I take his offer of 1,000 tugrug to $1.

Inside a shed there's a bloke watching TV on a black-and-white set so shit he'd get more entertainment out of watching a microwave. 'One dollar,' he says. What for? 'Vehicle decontamination.' This involves driving through a small pool of filthy stagnant water - which seems more like vehicle recontamination. Steve asks whether they offer a full valet service. By now it's not the outside of this car that's carrying the virulent disease.

I give him a dollar. He tells me to drive round the decontamination tank. I like his style. I wonder how much I owe him for not giving me a cheeky hand-job. 'Change money?' This is weird. We'll need more than $100-worth, so I take his offer of 1,100 tugrug to $1.



Our passports are stamped immediately. 'Welcome to Mongolia' says the girl behind the desk. This could be the easiest border crossing ever. It's all pretty mellow: there's a few kids hanging around the office, one of whom seems to be the handler for the sniffer dog. It's a new approach to 'bring your spawn to the office' day.

We do our vehicle document bit, and get asked to sit down on a row of plastic seats by the wall. So we do. We wait. And we wait. And we wait. A little man in a suit beckons us into his office. 'Change money?' We've got plenty of money now, so we turn down his offer of 1,200 tugrug to $1.

We wait. And then they close for lunch.

It's all fairly mellow round here, so we decide to wander out of the compound to get some grub. The guard at the gate asks us where we're going. To the kafe. Ok. Brilliant.

The town isn't so much a town as a settlement. Nothing but a handful of concrete bungalows dotted about, with the odd white wall covered in spray-painted words like 'shop' and 'kafe'. A guy shows us into a building. It's basically someone's kitchen, full of women and raw meat. If only sex were on sale too it'd be ideal. It actually looks like someone's house. The weirdest thing is that the girl from the passport desk is in here, sitting at the table next to her mum.

They show us to the other room, which is full of beds and a table. There's no choice or anything, they just bring us bowls of dumplings. An old woman comes over and asks if we want chi. Yes please. Then she goes over to a bucket full of milk and asks if we want it. We don't want it. She ladels it into the chi. Oh. 'Mama,' she says.

We eat loads of dumplings, and then go to pay. Comes out at $18. Jesus Christ. These Mongolians know how to screw people. At least people who they know are stuck at customs.

Back at the office, I ask a dodgy-looking bloke what's going on. This is where he drops the bombshell about the $2k tax. We don't share enough common language to discuss it. All I know is it's not true. One girl here speaks a little English. She tells me we have to pay, and to call the rally people. 'Wait in the car please,' she says. There's little in that request to suggest the wait will be another 24 hours.

This is the point at which my mind starts to fill with the image of kidnapping a load of clever young entrepreneurs, burying them up to their necks in sand and unleashing ferocious beasts upon their features. Nice marmot. Then we have a nap, and I wake up feeling a bit better. I recall the logic of the trip - to trust stuff and watch it resolve itself. I look at Pete, the nodding dog, and notice his head is nodding, ever-so-slightly, even though the car isn't moving. I decide to call the Adventurists instead of killing them. I speak to Lamorna, who immediately tells me to ring someone who'll sort everything out. Ideal.

I call and a dude called Aruka says he can sort it. Minutes later Andy's on the phone, reassuring us that they're on the case and that they'll have us through tomorrow morning at the latest. We'd expected it  to take a while, so this is all no biggie.



We're not moving, so Steve takes the opportunity to tinker more with the rear suspension, taking the springs out again to repack them, filling them with bits of hardboard. A Mongolian kid shows up and watches intently through the fence. He's ace. His name is Boldbaatr, he lives in the village, and he already has a handshake that can have a grown man whimpering. He becomes Steve's little helper, running to find stones that Steve can use to jack the car up.



Towards the evening we spot an odd-looking vehicle in the distance, just pulling into the compound. It's an ambulance covered in stickers, clearly a Mongol Rally vehicle. It's driven by two Germans, Martin and Paul. They're joined by a couple, Greg and Karmel, who are driving a battered Daihatsu 4x4, which looks like it's been through the ringer.

We give them the lowdown on what's happening, and once they go through the paperwork bit we settle down for an evening in the car compound. This means creating a sesh. Steve and I wander out to grab some vodka from the shop. This gives us such a great taste of Mongolia - stooping through a tiny doorway into the darkness, pushing on a big wooden door and stepping into a large empty room with a bloke surrounded by small piles of groceries at the far end.



We return to find we've been locked out. Which puts us in the unusual position of having to break back into somewhere we've been detained. Being Mongolia, that's easy enough - just hop the fence - then it's on with a sesh. We start a fire, neck vodka, and get to know each other. Greg and Karmel have had a hell of a time - they suffered an almighty blow-out in the heat of Turkmenistan, which flipped their Daihatsu and sent it flying 30-feet off the road. It sounds horrific - Greg had to pull her out all bloodied and, as he says, make sure she was ok before he could start getting photos.

The beautiful upshot is the good that came from it. The accident led to them spending three days with a Turkmen family, Greg off having a laugh with the boys, Karmel expriencing what it's like to be a woman in these countries.

The German guys are classic, and they've had a hell of a rally, taking in everything from dodgy dealings with patchy Ukranian hookers, to meeting the dog-fighting champion of Kazakhstan, and staying with a family in Kyrgystan who slayed a lamb in front of them before feeding them the whole thing, including its balls and, much to our amusement and Paul's continued dismay, the arse-fat.

This rally is brilliant - everyone has had a mad time, and each story is completely different. It allows for myriad different experiences, from the extreme to the beautifully minor. What I hadn't expected was people doing the rally as part of a wider trip - both the Germans and Greg and Karmel are going on afterwards, to China and Oz.



The night winds up with us performing our first live music since Dortmund. Everyone has a good time, depsite the fact we keep forgetting everything, and it all reaches a glorious crescendo with the improvised magic of the Arse-fat Blues.



Then we sleep, outside the car, on the concrete. It's fucking cold. The RAF sleeping bags do us proud, despite the near freezing temperatures. All being well, we'll be out in the morning.