SMS Update
Arrived yesterday, the 30Th of august at 2:40 Pm local time. At the finish line in ulaanBaatar, mongolia.
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I'm in mongolia baby! We managed to get out of russia and into mongolia in two and a half hours! Unheard of by most of the rally teams! The land scape is mental, just miles of nothing other than hills and mountains, no trees anywhere. We camped up with eight other teams last night, and have c ** some text is missing **
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just taken the car into mechanics. Rear diff making huge amount of noise and brake fluid spewing out rear left brake pipe. One oil change and a Crimped brake pipe later we are back on the road. 35 Hours to do 750 km. Onwards!
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This update is a bit late as i am now 500Km north east of Astana in a city called pavloada, but there is no way of plotting Pavloada on the map so Astana it is! Astana was a great city to see, incredibly modern in comparison to london, let alone the rest of kazakhstan. We are about to drive to the russian border and try and get across tonight. Then we head to Barnau tomorrow to take the pick up to a garage as it is making a hell of a lot of noise! Other than that, all is good other than the lack of frank and the imp! Easy now.
SMS Update
So we have made it into kazakhstan! Unfortunately the cars haven't been good to us. The irish boys pick up gear box is very broken and rattling, and the imp is in a bad way. The water pump has broken, causing the engine to over heat and has blown the head Gasket. On top of that the rear suspension is getting lower and lower by the day, and we now have ground clearance of about three inches at the back! We have just booked into a room for the night in atyrau And are now about to take the cars to a garage. Franks finally been driving again as you don't need an internatiol driving permit here, and the one tarmac road in kazakhstan is pretty awful! If we can get on internet will put on a bigger update! much love, olly and frank
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just got to astrakhan, going to find the right road to the border, get some kip then say goodbye to russia, untill next time...!
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After spending the night in what we can only assume was a brothel due to the Strippers pole in the bar, and being offered girls by the doorMan! Turning his offer down we went out for a meal in volgograd last night, and this morning we are heading to see the large mother russia statue then off to kazakhstan! Woop Woop!
We're in Kiev!
Well, what a couple of days!
In Prague we decided that we should head straight to Kiev and get intouch with the Russian embassy to try and get me a new visa, so that we can just head straight for Russia instead of waiting till the end of the month.Â
After we left the internet cafe we went for a wander around Prague, which to be honest is an absolutely stunning city. We were both extremely impressed. Lots of photos on the way.Â
On an absolute mamoth drive that Olly did most of (I was nakered and useless to be honest!), we got out of the Czech Republic and through Poland in no time. Our original plan was to stop in Krakow but in the end we decided just to cruise past. We got to the border with the Ukraine which is where things started to go a bit pearshaped. Document problems, luggage problems, police problems and the continuing visa problems.
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But hey, we're in Kiev now and have met a jolly nice chap called Bogdan who is showing us around, translating, and generally helping us out beyond all belief. We are looking to leave Kiev on Monday and head down to Russia so that we can cross the border on the 30th.
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We are at the big party at the castle in prague, czech republic! The imp has been ploughing on like a beauty and is running perfectly (touchwood). We have how ever just discovered thats franks russian visa has the wrong dates on it! It starts four days after mine, so we could have a four day wait on our hands! Other than that everything is cool and we're off to party in the castle! Woop Woop!
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Storming Down the autobahn in Germany!!
