Mountains, Rivers, Desert and lots of Yak cheese

Party in Prague—where the autobahns run out and the adventure begins. The “Penelope Pitstops” chose to wear all pink for the duration of the rally!

Tatra mountains, Poland. The language barrier gets the better of us and we order “4 food” for dinner. The cute cat in the window disappears and we are served pasta with mystery meat!

Attempts to order “chicken kiev” in kiev yield similar results and a very confused waitress! Simon ran over his bag then the engine fell out of the Suzuki!

A garage in Kiev remounts the engine and I drive 11 and a half hours through the night finally catching up with 5 other teams at the Russian border.

 

Russian toilets….the worst in the world!?

The Crimson Monkeys in their Bedford Rascal have their own solution to the toilet problem!

 

Also travelling with 2 Micras, a VW Polo and a Mini.

In Russia I swap places with Aaron. He goes in the Suzuki with Simon and I join Maso and Kate in their Nissan Micra. See www.feckinirishrovers.com

Kazakhstan is really hot! We run out of water before reaching civilisation so wind up purifying river water!

When we finally reach a town the Kazakh people are really warm, friendly and welcoming. They take pictures of us and even give us presents! James has to fly home so Kate swaps into the Polo.

Back into Russia where they have tarmac roads! Elephant size mozzies make camping in the woods fun …. But Tom is more worried about the bears!

Flash floods in Omsk cause chaos! The Polo is hit by a bus! All ok but police enquiry takes hours. All hotels full, 2 local lads find us rooms at the Ministry of Foreign affairs hostel! Drunk squaddies asleep in the halls. Stunning artwork on walls!

Russian police cars don’t stand a chance as we drive all night through the Altai mountain region.

The Russian/Mongolian border looks like a wild west frontier town which turns out to be quite appropriate as beyond the border is a vast, largely unexplored, unspoilt landscape…..without any roads!

Our first nights camping in Mongolia and the first Mongolians to bring us Yak cheese and milk…...little did we know!

What do you do when the dirt track you think is the main road and have been following for the last 3 days ends at 2 rivers that are too deep to drive through?

Answer—Persuade a local truck driver to tow you across.

Mongolians are unbelievably helpful and hospitable. We met these 2 in the mountains. They insisted on fixing our puncture, took us home, fed us, repaired the Polo’s fuel tank, fixed the rest of our punctures and showed us on to the right road!

A hail storm made following the tracks even harder as we slid backwards down the mountains. The lightning was a particular worry as the Polo’s repaired fuel tank didn’t work they had jerry cans mounted on the roof and fuel lines running down the windscreen.

Almost there!

 

 

 

 

….But first lets pull some Spanish tourists out of a ditch!

….and someone really ought to crash the Polo again!

 

 

SuperDave is exhausted

 from all the car fixing!

We arrived in Ulaan Batar just after 10pm on the 22nd August. 3 days behind schedule. We were around 84th to arrive out of 200 but only 2 of those did the same route as us and at least 30 of them arrived on the back of trucks. We arrived 2 hours after Jack Osbourne’s team but Eleanor and Martin beat him to the best hotel suite in town where we drank Vodka till the early hours when my cab arrived to take me to the airport!

Martin and Eleanor—fined in Ukraine for having Smarties on their car!