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Finally finished

Our Mongol Rally 2009 is officially over.

 We crossed the finish line about 5pm this evening, and received our certificates, so I suppose that means we've completely done what we set out to do. We're 1500 miles over our scheduled mileage, we've had a hatful of experiences, one sensor failure, two spring failures, three tyre failures, and crucially, the best set of story-topping anecdotes a pub-goer could wish for.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored us - we visited Eamon at Christina Noble today and emptied our cars out, and it really does seem like they're doing an incredibly good job. They're having a "sponsor a child" day tomorrow, where the local urchins come in to collect their allowance - for every $30 given to the foundation, $25 goes directly to the kids. We'd love to visit their Ger village (which acts as a kind of mixed orphanage/school arrangement) but we're leaving for China at 8am tomorrow morning, so it's not going to be possible. Hopefully I'll be back and will be able to help out in a more practical sense.

In fact, I'm running out of different ways to be nice about human nature in general, which could be due to the fact that I'm sat in the bar having been on the receiving end of a surprising amount of Chinggis beer. Our landlady for the past three nights has taken "motherly" to new levels - her brother is giving us a free taxi to the station at 7am, and has charged us $8 each per night for a whole apartment with kitchen. The Adventurists have been amazing, despite being hit with an unexpected $400,000 customs bill. Pebley Beach Cirencester deserve a special mention for being for being on our side throughout and shipping our sensor flawlessly to Samarkand, the story of which is well documented earlier in this blog. Even the cops are on our side; we got stopped for an illegal U-turn 100 yards from the finish line, but they got bored after 15 minutes and let us go without a fine.

We've bloody done it. Unusually for me, I'm a bit lost for words. What now?!

We made it!!!

We did i!! We're in Ulaan Bataar, 3 flat tyres (per team) one sensor (per team) and one set of rear springs (just us) later!!!

Proper debrief soon - for now, here's some pictures of our final couple of days.

Photo update!

We are in MONGOLIA!!! This blog gives the lie to the last one, as Mongolia's towns might not be big on ninety-anything RON fuel, but they've got an internet cafe or two. Although the one that we have chosen can't be described as "dog slow", purely because we've seen (and been chased by) some pretty swift dogs.

So here we go, an illustration of the different climates we've been on the receiving end of for the past week.

We went from chilling by the lake in Kazakhstan...

To incessant rain in Russia...

To blizzards and snow in Siberia!

Mongolian border didn't take as long as we'd feared, we were across in 2 hours, but Pepe set about rectifying this 100 yards down the road by getting us stuck in a snowdrift - on purpose. Idiot.

6 days until UB!

SMS Update

Sittin in Mong customs,outside is 3ft snow. Slept 4 in the 20 euro tent last nite in a proper blizard. Micra is struggling, Jenny surefooted as ever,we had to tow them thru customs! 3 days since we were in tshirts in Semey-this rally is bonkers!

Don't keep me in suspense...

The new suspension worked!!!

Well, sort of. The car still sits right on its arse, but the transformation over the bumpy roads has been incredible. Who would have known that a tiny garage in a two-thirds-of-a-horse town like Ayakoz would keep, as its only spare part, a pair of springs that only needed a bit of hacksaw-based adjustment to be a perfect fit on our car? And who could have predicted that they'd relieve us of just $25 for the privilege?

So with our new Audi-based suspension system, we have been transformed (as Pepe put it) from the QE2 to a Q7. We glide over the "undulations" in Kazakh roads (some of which are up to 6 foot deep, you could lose Tom in them easily)  with the greatest of ease, and consequently have been making swift progress since Almaty.

Kazakhstan is notable for a select group of things. Firstly, the women are almost all drop-dead gorgeous, knocking the female population of Hungary into a distant second place (although obviously neither Usget nor Pepe noticed this themselves, it had to be pointed out to them). Secondly, there's often more than 100 miles between villages, which can become boring. Thirdly, as previously mentioned, some of their roads are utterly, utterly appalling. And finally, the population of Semey were some of the friendliest people we've met since leaving Iran - parking our cars up in front of the park led to an all-out assault by balloon sellers, ice cream vendors and passers-by, all wanting to try out their English, have photos taken with the cars, and give us gifts. Two hours later we finally managed to drag ourselves away, not wanting to see candy-floss again as long as we all lived.

Incidentally, Pepe and Tom claimed that wolves came around our tents that evening. James and Usget heard nothing, and don't believe them.

From Semey we headed over the Russian border, where we met a couple of Romanian bikers who were quality, and which was, in border terms, painless (and free!) Russia itself has so far proved to be quite a lot like England - bloody cold, rainy (we're at 53 degrees North, our most Northerly point on the trip), and difficult to get things done. Barnaul, though, has been a bit of an improvement: it's a sprawling great university city with a young population and plenty of shops, bars, and indeed a solitary Net cafe (from whence we write). We'll not be spending much time here, though, because it's a bloody long way to the Mongolian border and The Adventurists website is already expressing incredulity that anyone should still be on the road...

8 days to go, and this may be the last full blog until UB. Wish us luck everybody.

SMS Update

Suspension finally collapsed just before Ayakoz. Pepe temporarily fixed with Duck tape and cable ties, standard. Thankfully Ayakoz has a small garage with a hoist so we are fitting Audi springs and our spare shock. Please let it make the bouncing stop...

Almaty

Trying our hardest to link back up with Here Today Mong Tomorrow, who seem to be living up to their name - they beat us to Almaty by about 4 hours and have already buggered off out of the city to a place with, we presume, no mobile reception.

 Past couple of days have been fun, we took the long route from Bishkek to here via Lake Issy Kul and the Sharyn Canyon. The former was rather expensive for Usget as he managed to ruin a jetski, costing him $100 or four tanks of Kazakh petrol... oops. (Pepe would like to point out that, by "ruin", we mean "crash", "batter" or in fact "T-Bone" and not any more biological sense of the word...) Charyn Canyon, meanwhile, was absolutely wicked, and we got some amazing pictures: it's just like what I imagine the Grand Canyon to be, but smaller.

Then we got blasted by a ridiculous sandstorm that lasted for two hours and filled the car with sand and dust. Not pleasant.

Despite the inclement weather, we made Almaty by about 9pm this evening and are now in search of a meal and a beer.  City seems nice - will be nicer once we find a beer...

Can we build a fire here?

After saying we didn't have any photos, we've found some to steal from James and Tom's page. They're all from Iran, so a bit out of date, but hey...

 James' slightly scared, blurry shot of the Iranian drinking beach club.

The legends that are Mustafa's family, who put us up for the night and proved that you can have a great chat without a common language.

The unbelievably hot springs on the Caspian coast at Now Shahr. Made us all smell of egg...

An Iranian family we met en-route - typical of pretty much everyone in Iran, they treated us like celebrities. Amusingly, they were following the same route to Mashad as us, and three times (including this one) they passed us stopped by the side of the road. On two of these three occasions (including this one), Pepe chose their arrival as the moment to reappear from the undergrowth clutching bog-roll and poo chair (if you don't know what a poo chair is, it's better not to ask).

 The Iranian fuzz, who stopped us for speeding. Needless to say, arguing our way out of it was somewhat easier than doing the same in England...

Loadsa miles!

Just a quick update because it's only 2 days since the last one. But it's worth noting that we managed to cover 400 miles in a single day! Our biggest day since Munich, way back in mid-July.

Kyrgyzs roads (the ones that they've finished) are brilliant, alternating between arrow-straight stretches of fast, wide blacktop and sinewy passes that wind their way through the (copious) hills. Even better, we managed to find some 95RON fuel in Osh, so we did the whole thing without Jenny rattling complaints at us with every dab of the accelerator. 

On the road, we finally run out of luck with the tactic which has seen us avoid police bribery-points since Iran; ie, pretend to pull over, make sure they don't have guns, then drive off. On the whole, this has been remarkably successful, with nothing more than a succession of confused-looking coppers to our name, and only a handful of bribery attempts (in Tajikistan, where they had barriers across the road). The Kyrgyzs 5-0, however, are far more prevalent and have radar guns, so Pepe and Usget got one tug each. Usget got out of his ticket by pleading ignorance of the 60kph limit - this wasn't hard, since there were no signs whatsoever - and Pepe's "fine" started at 300 Som ($7.50), came down to 200 Som ($5), then a spare wheel, then a tyre... then a cigarrette (of which we've kept a stash in the glovebox for just such an occasion). When he offered to pay the fine in Bishkek (ie through the official channels, rather than into the top pocket) the policeman gave up and sent us packing... a bit more warily than before.

Bishkek is a bit of a hidden gem: the guide book isn't wholly complimentary about it but we've found it to be leafy and pleasant, a bit like Cheltenham. But then all of these former Soviet capitals are leafy and pleasant and a bit like Cheltenham. For the people who supposedly have the lowest average wage of all the Cental Asian countries, the Kyrgyzs dress incredibly stylishly, and Pepe (with his beard now at hobo-rivalling standard) and Usget (with his two-weeks-and-counting shorts and gay cowboy hat) have been on the receiving end of some incredulous, disparaging looks. Also, Bishkek's residents all drive either big 1990s German saloons (we went in a BMW 525i taxi last night, after evicting a prostitute from same) or right-hand-drive Japanese imports. It's probably the most Western-feeling city we've been to since Budapest, in fact.

We are now working out what to do with our three spare days before meeting HTMT in Almaty, just 200km away. The favourite option seems to be white-water rafting, but Usget's belly currently feels like he is white water rafting whilst sat in an Internet Cafe, so this might not be the safest of options.

 1500 miles until Mongolia and 2500 until Ulaan Bataar (so long as the bits which sound like they're about to fail - rear springs, brakes, catylitic converter - don't.)

P.S. Sorry for the lack of photos. It's a combination of Pepe's camera failing, Usget's SD card failing, and none of these internet cafes having card-readers anyway.

Drive me to the moon and back

We're finally back in civilisation after a week in Tajikistan. In brief, a creepy German doctor in Dushanbe cured Usget but appeared to want to take over ze vorld. Once that important aspect was sorted, we headed out into Tajikistan itself, which is an utter moonscape. Sometimes there are 100km between villages, and most of the plateau is above 4000m - no wonder Soviet Cosmonauts used to use it to train for their space missions.

A lot of our journey was undertaken following the Afghan border, which was beautiful, if deserted. A fantastic side-effect of this was that we got to meet the lads at FSD, a Franco-German mission to clear Russian mines from the Tajik-Afghan border using Tajik troops. When we rocked up in Thunderbird Four, they bloody loved it, giving us Plov, Choy (complete with the biggest sugar lumps in the world - Pepe now has a habit and needs a trip to the Priory) and even gave up their tent so that we could have a place to sleep! In one of the strangest nights of the trip, we were first given a showing of the worst German porn in the world, and then woken at 4am as they'd realised they'd given us their prayer tent to sleep in! Weird, but they're doing a damn good job - the sooner Tajikistan is rid of these hideously archaic weapons, the better.

Other adventures from Tajikistan are few and far between - the country has mindblowing views, but little else! The boneshaking roads have killed an indicator and our driver's window, and on one particularly well-hidden pothole Pepe managed to launch the whole car off the ground and snap a spring (it's probably only fair to point out that Usget did pretty much the same thing 4 hours later, so the spring would have gone at some time!) Despite these issues, and our tortured brakes, and the 80-RON fuel (for the uneducated, you'd run a tractor or possibly a lawnmower on 80-RON fuel) Jenny managed to climb the highest pass you can take an English registered car on - the 4655m Ak Baital. We're proud of her.

(Note to Suzuki, though: 4wd vacuum hubs don't work at over 4000m altitude, which is a bit tricky when you've built a campsite on a sandy bit and can't get out again in the morning. Bastard thing.)

We're currently running two days ahead of schedule, so before we meet up with Tom and James in Almaty we're planning to do a couple of car modifications in Bishkek. We're hoping to remove the catylitic converter, so that Jenny accepts the shitty fuel a bit more readily; and we need to find some brake pads which will fit, as ours currently sound like a tribe of banshees on a rusty railway engine and won't last much longer. If we accomplish all that easily enough, we might have a crack at white-water rafting in one of Kyrgyzstan's many excellent rivers.

Kyrgyzstan is beautiful, we've had a good meal and a good explore of Osh, we're loaded up to the gunwales with 95-RON fuel, Jenny's running well, and we're just days away from reunification with Team HTMT. TYO are flying along!

P.S. The finish line party in Ulaan Baatar was today. We're still about 3000 miles away. Whoops!