Ulaan-by-car!

WE MADE IT! After about 5 weeks we rocked up in Ulaanbaatar on Thursday 26th and officially handed over the Terios on the 27th which led to a rather large Formula One style champagne celebration! The last few weeks of the trip had been amazing so will relive them for you now by going back afew weeks to the last blog where we had a nice day off in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, which was a suprisingly modern city, some of the buildings there wouldnt look out of place in Dubai! The next day we left the sophistication of Astana and headed for the slightly more desolate Semey which was used by the Soviet union as a site for 456 nuclear tests between 1949-1989, needless to say we didnt touch much of the local produce there! However we did meet up with afew rally teams who we headed out with to the Russian border the next day, the border itself was relatively pain free, however one team we were with forgot their customs slip which meant an extra few hours wait! Once through the border we drove into the night until we reached our desination of Barnaul where we rested up and got the cars ready for an assault on the Atlay mountains.

The mountains themselves had beautiful scenery, probably the best road on the trip as it wound its way up and down the snow capped mountains. The first night we camped with around nine teams on the bank of a huge glacial river, the second night the rest of the convoy were allured by the comfort of a small hotel however our team decided we wanted to camp again and had a great time making an awesome fire! The next day we got up nice and early and drove out of the mountains to the Mongolian border, little did we know of what would await us. After a full days wait on the Russian side of the border we eventually got to the Mongolian border thinking we were almost through, however we were told we would have to wait in a compound for the night as the border was closed. Little did we know we would be in that compound for 50 hours! A very sorry two days were spent living in snow covered compound, getting very cold sleeping in the cars and getting frustrated at the Mongolian border guards for being on facebook all day when the should have been processing our cars through! So eventually, after arriving on Monday morning we were released from the compound on Wednesday afternoon, as soon as we were realeased we sped out of the border straight into the breathtaking Mongolian landscape. We stopped for food in Olgi, and then camped up for the night beside a lake with afew other teams. Next day we travelled through the Mongolian mountains and conquoered our first river crossings until we got to the Ger Village in Khovd, where we had afew drinks with a number of rally teams and sampled the horse-inspired local Mongolian music. After a very cold wash in the river (very good at getting rid of a hangover) we headed for the next town of Altai. Unfortunately this was the point were the Terios decided it had had enough punishment and afew hours into the drive we got a hole in our fuel tank, cue an attempt at patching up the hole. This held up for about 20 mins and then the petrol really started to flow out but we decided to carry on, however whilst this was going on we managed to drive over the one bolt in the Gobi desert and shredded the tyre. Cue a very hurried tyre change whilst still trying to save some of the petrol coming out of the tank! After this we decided to camp up for the night with the 4 other cars in our convoy who we would stay with to the end.

Hoping for more luck the next day we made a better attempt at patching the tank and promptly got two more punctures within an hour. After another long day in the Mongolian desert we eventually got to Altai and stayed in a hotel, we woke up next day to find 3 of the other teams had all the stuff stolen from their roofracks. Joy. The only saviour to the situation was that we found the 'Mongol Rally Auto Service' a garage specially for Mongol Rally teams and the guys there did a fantastic job of re-welding our tank, replacing our 3 punctured tyres and also telling us that, completely unknown to us, we had snapped both of the rear suspension springs! We got the car fixed and headed out of town towards Bayankhongor, at this point the roads became a series of dirt tracks and we managed to go quite a way off course and ended up in a town where even the locals couldnt find it on the map, after a few more river crossings we camped up for the night. Next day we had a bit more luck and reached Bayankhongor and the other teams fixed afew more problems they had picked up after a night in a hotel we set off for the last town before Ulaanbaatar, Arvaikeer. Just before the town we came to the first bit of tarmac we had seen in Mongolia, which was a particulary momentus occaission as this piece of tarmac would take us all the way to Ulaanbaatar!

After spending the rest of the day visiting a Mongol Rally funded library we headed out of town and camped up for the last night, cue a cook off between all the teams and a small pyrotechnic display to use up all our remaining petrol and butane canisters! The next day we got on the tarmac and drove the last 400km to Ulaanbaatar, we were ecstatic when we arrived however little did we know the worst traffic congestion in the world centres in Ulaanbaatar and this led to another 2 hours battling our way through the mental locals in an attempt to find a hotel. Next day we emptied the cars of all our stuff and drove them the short way to the finish line (we still managed to get really lost!) at which point we had a large amount of celebratory drinks and sprayed each other with afew bottles of champagne! Since then we have been soaking in some of the Ulaanbaatar culture and sharing stories with other ralliers. Yesterday myself and Rich visited the Christina Noble Ger village and spent a day visiting the kids of the village who we had raised all our money for which was a really rewarding experience and made it all seem worthwhile. Tom then flew out this morning and me and Rich are flying out on Thursday, which will bring this amazing adventure to a close! Our Terios will be going to auction in the next day or so and once this is done we will post the vital statistics of our rally up here. Finally a huge thanks to our sponsors and everyone who has supported the team and followed us on our travels, we couldnt have done it without you! See everyone back in the Uk soon.

Thanks again,

Ian

P.S Tom and Rich say hi

Back on the road!

Well we are into the third week and we are still in the game! Last time we did an update the Terios was holed up in the Ukrainian Kwik fit, the outcome of which was that thankfully the car was fixed however the price we were quoted recieved a substantial 'foreigner tax' and the price went up to $450. We spent over an hour haggling with a Ukrainian man the size of the three of us combined and after alot of blood, sweat and tears we got the price down by a whopping $36. With an overall feeling of delight to be back on the road (albeit with slightly lighter wallets) we sped out of Odessa. After being stuck in a tiny hotel room for three days going nowhere once we started driving we just kept on going which culminated in a marathon 36-hour straight drive across Ukraine and Russia until we reached the Kazakhstan border! Just before the border we met up with a team called the Desert Beagles, namely Jay and Matt, and their fantastic steed Shanequa the Suzuki Swift, who we have been convoying with ever since. After meeting up with these guys we filled up our jerry cans and food supplies ready for the difficulties of the barren and wild landscape of Kazakhstan. We promptly got to the first town of Atryau and ended staying in the nicest hotel we have stayed in so far!

We hit the road again early heading in the direction of Aktobe and all was well for afew hours untill the tarmac road stopped, to be repalced by gravel roads. At this point we asked some locals if this was the right way to Aktobe, who promptly told us by frantically pointing in the opposite direction that there was a road but that is was best to go back and go a different way. With some British grit, determination and stubborness we thought we have got this far so lets carry on. Almost straight away the road became a maze of two foot deep pot holes and it ended up being better on the dirt road which ran alongside! Due to our stubborness it took us two days along this road to get to the next town of Aktobe. As soon as the relief of finally reaching our destination had subsided we were told by some teams that we met that we had to register in Kazakhstan otherwise we would face either A. Large fine, B. Arrest, C. Deportation to the embassy in the capital, and D. All of the above. We only had five days in which to register and found out on the fourth, which was of course a Sunday and the immigration office was closed! Cue a mad rush to the next town's (Konstanai) immigration office where we were confronted with a registration form which was handily only in Cyrillic. Thankfully we met Sergei, a Russian guy who very generously filled out all five of our forms and got us registered into Kazakhstan with 5 minutes to spare! After buying Sergei dinner to say thanks for saving our bacon (and wallets) we got out of the town, pulled off the road and camped up for the night.

Next day we got up really early and drove 700km to the capital, Astana. Here we decided that after our marathon drive afew days earlier and camping for the last few days we would have a rest day in Astana. This rest day promptly gave us an excuse to meet up with a few teams and hit the Kazakh nightclubs till 4am! Today we enjoyed our first lie in for ages and now for the rest of the day we going to rest up and stock up on supplies ready for our assult on the rest of Kazakhstan, abit more of Russia and the wilds of Mongolia! We are not too confident on the number of internet cafes in Mongolia so not sure how many updates we will be able to do but keep checking the Spot satellite page for updates of our position!

Hope all is well at home,

Ian