Borat country/ The Mongolian death worm

We thought it was strange how popular Ashgabat hotels seemed to be. Every Hostel was full. After a few hours and much pleading we were told by an American lady that the Turkmens happen to be extremely racist and in fact only let foreigners stayin bugged rooms and only if they look acceptable. On hearing this, it made sense, Will has no shoes and a ginger beard, Mim has shaved slits in his eyebrow and has half a flip flop, Lewis has a mowhawk/ piercing and Tom smells like the back end of a Mammoths arse.So, we decided that a $15 investment for a bed would be much better spend on beer and headed to the very cultural "British pub". We were outraged at the price of beer and decided local vodka was the next best path to take. Unfortunately the pub closed after half an hour of us getting there so we were kicked out onto the street with 4 bottles of vodka and some very angry looking army guys who looked ready to enforce the 11pm curfew.

We were quickly saved by some American pilots who paid for taxis for us to a local hotel bar and we strolled into a low lit courtyrad full of tables of women. Tom swaggered over to one and came scurrying back 5mins later to spread to news. Turns out we had walked into a mini brothel. We hid ourselves away at the bar and angeredf the staff by ordering the cheapest vodka on the menu in rounds of 20 or more and eventually made our excuses and left. Lewis then stole a cat and we got another camp (minus the cat) to a secretive underground bar where we suddenly realised we had no money whatsoever, even our reserve taxi money had gone on the 50p vodka shots at the hotel. We quickly left and realised that 1/ It was 3am, way beyond curfew, 2/ the streets were crawling with police and 3/ we had NO idea where we were. After some hurried hand signals and waving, a russian girl walked us back to our tents (in a hotel carpark)and Mim tried to urinate on a Turkmenbashi statue, saved at the last minute by lewis who noticed, unlike Mim, the military checkpoint that was about 5 foot away.... With a sore head, we were woken up in the early hours by a grumpy looking attendant who shifted us on. Definately still over the limit we swaggered to the Russian market where we cured our aching bodies with a bit of retail therapy. Lewis bought some chavvy sunglasses and Tom and Will bought cosy Sheepskin hats....forgetting it was 50 degrees so entirely pointless. Eventually we bought a dodgy kebab, ran to the toilets and Will made the worst parallel park we can remember, we then headed out towards the border on one of the two roads in the country and were soon greeted by some of the most horrendous roads of teh trip. ridges of tarmac a foot high and potholes littered the drive and truckers liberally swerved all over the roads to avoid them leaving Dobby fighting for his life as he dodged between them all. While this was going on, we had policemen every 10minutes running into the road and waving orange batons at usto stop, before trying to create some excuse to fine us, some of the finer ones were insisting that our car was "illegally dirty" and that Mim was not actually British. Tom discovered an excellant way of confusing and delaying the police however, by reciting song lyrics to them. This was all very good until he asked a policeman "Do you beleive in miracles? Where're you from, you sexy thing?"  to which the policemen got the jist and started to give Tom some angry looks, waving his baton at us.....We had had enough of Turkmenistan and after a man stole our papers and insited on $10 for a bridge tax, Will and Lewis lost it, throwing small change at the man andwe powered to the Uzbek border. After some more Turmenistan hassle we made it to Uzbekistan where the people were instantly 100x nicer, chatting to Mim about Bollywood whilst Lewis, Tom and Will tried out their Russian and flirted their way to a quick and smooth crossing. We powered through the night to Bukhara, and after an hour of circling "The Ark" we realised that it was in fact an acient citadel and not anything to do with a an actual arc. We treated ourselves to a swanky hostel and had a good kip. The next day we explored the beautiful city and Mim decided to blend in with the locals by buying a local shirt, which only would have blended him in if every Uzbekistani was a waiter at an Indian restaurant! Upon smiffing his armpit Tom realised that the shirt he was wearing was in fact the same shirt Will had tried to throw away after it was caught in his crossfire following a bad Turkmen kebab...he quickly followed Mim and went for the waiter look. Tom and Will then haggled for some more sheepskin hats (apparently 45 degrees is a perfectly acceptable temperature to wear one) and Tom changed money at the bank and came out thinking theyd made a mistake, waving a huge wad of cash in huis hand. Unfortunatley the Uzbek som only comes in 1000 notes and there are several thoasand to the pound, which makes paying for petrol and hostels pretty trickey...

 Still behind on time (those damn Turkmens!!!) we raced to Taskent to find that the border was closed and we had to double back 60km to Yallama, pedel to the metal, Captain Slow Collier took Dobby to new landspeed records and we just got their in time to meet a few other ralliers and Will turned on his charm to sweet talk the border guards into letting us come through. Unbelievevable Tekkers. When we got to the Kazak side we were met by bumper to bumper lorries and after a lot of scrathing and sneaky driving we squeezed through the queue in a very un-British way with millimetres to spare and after some more faffing and some good bribe dodging by Lewis we made it to Borat country and camped out in the desert. The nice roads to Almaty were a nice break from the rest of the trip and we managed to notch up several police stops, including Tom being accused of being drunk and Mim trying to out run a police Mercedes AMG, we may call him the Stig, but not even Stiggy can take a 1.2 to 120mph....We made camp in the mountains and shortly after setting up tent Will stood on something crunchy and looking down we realised that we were surrounded by bones. Several theories were thrown around, including Wills theory of a genocide site and Tom inisiting it was just a few unlucky camels. Eventually we just manned up and slept.

 We arrived the next day in Almaty and surprise surprise, GOT LOST! We pulled over and tried to figure out how their ATMs worked and eventually found our way with the help of a nice man with lots of gold teeth. On finding the "hostel" (as described by lonely planet) Will and Tom realised the book had clearly lied and they haqd ended up in teh halls of residence of the Agricultural University of Almaty (Despite 3 tractors parked in the carpark it took Tom a while to believe). After trekking arounf for half an hour and leaving some very confused looking Kazakh students, Tom found an army man, who lead us to an office, who lead us to a Tailor who lead us to the hostel! WOOP....but it was full...so we stayed in an ex-commie hotel for $6 a night and had one "bathroom" between 80 people. Oops.To raise morale we headed to Soho Bar and had a few beers and kebabs before we got a surprise call from the Wolverines, who had driven 36 hours and rolled their car but still made it. We fetched thepoor sods and on the way back got a call from a very excited Mim who directed us to a wide street where the local rude boys were drifting their cars and doing donuts. Lewis insisted that we should bring Dobby down for a spin, but we didnt think that a Doblo, complete with Roofrack and jerry cans would quite fit in next to the Nissan Skylines and Porches. After Lewis goty threatedned for taking of pictures of a HUGE car, we met some Americans and went to find the only nightclub open on a Monday (conveniently located between a sports bar, shopping centre and strip club, dont worry mothers, we only went to one of the 3...) The night from then on was a bit of blur, after Lewis, Mim and some of the Wiolverines headed to watch Man U play we met the son of the owner of Samsung who ploughed us with tequila until Tom was cracking out all the moves on the dancefloor, reeling in everyone around him, Duncan was arm wrestling the locals and Will face planted onto the dance floor trying to show off how he could do "that dance from LMFAO. The night ended with Tom trying to speak Russian to the fit girl at the cloak room, Duncan, Ash and Jamie getting arrested, and Will being left alone in the clubat 5am, communicating with the locals by scrawling drunken pictures on napkins. Needless to say the hangovers were once again pretty epic, and Tom and Will declared themselves unfit to drive for at least 24 hours, leaving Lewis and Mim to chauffer the fools northwards. Not much happened the next few days and this is a really long blog, but we saw some camels, a few dodgy stomach bugs were picked up and the roads were really bad. And we found Marijuana growing wild at the side of the road (after about 5 false stops)

We got to Semey near the Russian border and quickly made our way through on finding out that our sperm counts would be severeley diminshed by the nuclear testing the Soviets did in the area in the 50's. The Kazak border was no hassle and the Russians were surprisingly nice, the only problem came when they searched the car and somehow got the idea that Lewis was a gangster asking him where his guns were. Defiant to the end Lewis stood his ground, pulled up his trousers, combed his hair and insisted "NO GANGSTER...ME GEEK" and made glasses with his fingers. This seemed to satisfy teh guards, who probably thought Lewis was a little bit special.

 We blitzed it through Russia, stopping to pick up some 1litre cans of beer in an ex-KGB town called Barnaul (magically appeared onRussian maps after the fall of the Soviet Union), and impressing some local girls with our Kanye West and ignorant drivin, on the wrong side of the road and up one way streets...we are pretty hardcore. The mountains were amazing and reminded us of Switzerland but sadly we were in a rush to make it to Mongolia so had no time for a wash or stop off. We reached the Mongolian border 3 days ago at Tsaanganuur and were forced to camp the night. Given that just a few days ago we had been in temperatures of 40 degrees,Mongolia was freezing and we all huddled together in no mans land withthe Wolverines, some Scots and some Romanians, chatting about the fearsome Mongolian deathworm who according to Tom "has heat vision and only sriked with the sun behind it!".We russled up some disgracefully cooked pasta by Will who was forced to wash up and Tom shot him in the hand with a slingshot. This was shortly followed by a spat between Tom and Will where Will half suceeded in toppling Tom of his chair. But its okay, they hugged 5minutes later. And so the next morning we crossed our final border and made it into Mongolia, and talk about an inaudation of fire! Let me just say that tarmac does not exist in Mongolia. In Mongolia you dont follow roads....you make them. Rocks the size of our fist and potholes 4 foot wide are good going. Ontop of this there is never one road, there are 6 or 7, all winding off in the same direction. Dobby has coped well though, and despite some bumps and bangs we have ploughed onto Altai, crossing several rivers and getting 200km off course towards China when we all got a bit excited and decided to herd camels with the car. There were some very confused looking goat farmers that day. 1000km to go! Stay classy England

Iran over a kid / The Dementors of Ashgabat

So we went to the Alamut valley...it was a let down. We got lost, Tom bought an ice cream and the car nearly died. So we went to Qachvin and got lost....again. So ever helpful Lewis bought a watermelon and we proceeded to avidly follow the compass East, with Tom and Lewis yelling random and different directions as we went through the labarinthine backroads. This was all very fun for them until a child shot infront of the car, Will slammed on the brakes and the last he saw was the bike and child disapeering under the bonnet. Mim darted out the car ready for mouth to mouth, but to his dismay the child just had a grazed knee. An ambulance came just incase and in the mean time Lewis and Tom turned a crime scene into a pantomime, handing out sweets and performing magic tricks for the children. By the time we left there it was a small street party around our car and the childs mother even came over to Will to give us some bread and dip for dinner after he had tried to say sorry and appease her with packets of Starburst .The Iranians are unbeleiveably nice! With the Wolverines and Rolling Stans in convoy again we set up camp in one of Arnolds famous camping spots, "perfectly hidden, remote, where no-one would find us". This all seemed dandy until we realised that 1: there were scorpians, 2: we could hear gunshots and 3: cars kept driving past the campsite. So for the rest of the evening we all hid behind the car and turned with the lights off and Ash sat on the roof of the car with binoculars. The gravity of our error was realised the next day when we woke up and realised we had camped about 20metres from 3 houses and there was a firing range over the hill. Not so subtle. 

Anyway, we headed onto Iran and met up with the Wolverines friend Matin, who lived in Tehran. Expecting a wooden floor and a squat toilet we hit gold..literally! Matin lived in a 5 storey marble and gold palace, complete with swimming pool, sauna and WESTERN toilets. We spent the rest of the day drowning each other in water polo and watching Tom perfect his signature belly flop. That evening Matin invited his friends over and we had a chance to sit around, have some alcohol (shhhhh) and shisha whilst Lewis taught the Iranian guys how to rate girls and useful phrases such as "she's butters". Always a good envoy for the country is our Lewis. Matin took us to a mountain after where we ate pizza and Tom ripped his jeans, giving all the Iranian ladies a lovely view of his buttocks with every stride. Charming. 

 The next day we topped up our sunburn, sprayed each other with a hose and practiced our Usian Bolt poses. We know how to have a good time...Afterwards, with Tom moaning about how he thought "my hair would block out the UV" we got taken to an Iranian paintballing field and got slaughtered in the first round of Iran vs the UK. Little did we know that one of them played internationally and had a gun as big as a rocket launcher. Then, Will and Mim (naturally) defected to the Iranians, and with chants of "durka durka" the UK fought back to win 2:1, even though Will cheated and hid inside a van. Oh, and Lewis nearly crashed on the way there as the Iranians think that watering their roads is a good idea when you are travelling round bends at 50mph.

 The next morning we said our goodbyes and decided to head onto the Turkmenistan border. After a long and boring days drive, filled with Harry Potter audio tape, we realised suddenly that Iranian women are remarkably similar to Dementors. So naturally,Mim whipped out the video camera and we drove down the streets of Gorgon leaning out the window, brandishing packets of Starburst yelling "EXPECTO PATRONUM" at every lady we saw...it worked too..they didnt stick around. That evening we were treated to another epic "Arnold" camping spot. Parked up in the middle of an olive orchard, eating our pasta, a man stumbled out of the bushes and sat down next to us. After speaking on the phone to his friends and mentioning the "Eenglash". He proceeded to mime slitting out throats, stabbing us, stealing our money and then started babbling about Opium. We decided to leave pronto, but Lewis dropped a spare tyre which rolled down the hill and Will didnt tie the jerry cans on. This lead to jerry cans flying off the roof and Lewis running down the hill after the tyre into a cornfield. It was definately no Italian job.

 We made the border at 1pm the next day with high hopes that we would be sipping our first lager in 6 days in Ashgabat that evening. After leaving Iran and crossing to Turkmenistan a small man in white, a.k.a Asian Gandalf, came out to tell us that we SHALL NOT PASS, and that Lewis did not have an invite to get in. The next few hours created a small international crisis with the Turkmens pushing our car towards the Iranian side and the Iranians standing in the way stopping it. Both could see what the other was doing but refused to listen and could not talk to each other through their little Green fence. So, we got out the football and ignored them all until the Iranians cracked and let us back in and the Turkmens gave Tom a PSP. Score! For the next 6 days we camped in the Iranian compound, living off bread, watermelon and cheetos whilst entertaining the head guards children. They were sweet at first, then they hit Lewis with a flag and he chased them with a golf club. Each day we went and asked if Lewis had an invite, sat round playing poker whilst "Mr Motivator Arnold" gave the team a full chin up, press up and sit up work out. In the evening we chilled with other teams, watched Anchorman, Lewis got scared by the cows and Tom complained about the wasps (he was near tears when there were two hiding in his tent one night, bastards). Even the head border guard who spoke no English came and sat with us, all very good until he sparked up an Opium pipe in the car and spent the evening walking in circles shouting.

FINALLY, after 6 days, we made it through on Monday evening with $20 to spare as the Turkmens have about  6 different offices to run between, costing us $500 in total, including a $2 fee to disinfect the car...[probably a good idea given the lovely aroma of rotting watermelon and BO it had accumulated.] As we came through the mountains we looked down onto Ashgabat, probably the weirdest city we have ever been in. A mix of legoland and Las Vegas, it rises out of the desert and is made almost entirely from marble and gold. Our crummy lonely planet map was no use as every time we got lost and found a "monument" the size of St Pauls cathedral, it turned out to be someones garden shed, and we kept on driving off the edge of the map when Will got East and West muddled up... Eventually, we made a U turn and a nice English speaking man called Begench (who worked for the UN) found us and took us to some hostels. Nowhere was free so we decided to get drunk and sleep in the car. We ate kebabs, drunk our beers and eventually Begench told us we could sleep at his bosses flat. We went to Igors flat and despite not speaking any English he managed to entertain us with stories of his travels to Moscow and some very dodgy tv channels when we asked to watch the BBC...(apparently BBC has more than one meaning) Now we are in the Gimpash centre ready to get Ashgabattered tonight at the very cultural Bristish pub on the high street. We havent got anywhere to sleep but the car but Im sure that with a few pints down us it will be enough to drown out Tom and Mims 9th orchestral symphony of snoring.

 

 

 

Child, Tehran - Matin, pool, paintballing, mountain, party, food, ninjas/dementors, drive to the border - olive orchrad, lewis tyre, opium, border wait - 6 days, children, opium, food, going in and out, germans, teams

Iran...out of Money

After an hour of fighting censorship and Iron age internet speeds here is the next blog, live from Rasht - IRAN! After tearing up the Istanbul cafes and some hardcore haggling for shisha by the well travelled Mim Patel, we decided to take the most direct route we could through Turkey and after a few hours of motorways, with dusk coming, stumbled across a bumpy, single track mountain road, traversed by daredevils and truckers alone. With hairpin bends, magicaly appearing chicanes, and random speedbumps, Dobby ploughed on through with some Stig-like driving from Will and Lewis. After unsuccesfully driving into a field of cabbage where Will was swarmed by a million insects we hid ourselves away and camped in the corner of a truckerstop. Fearing our demise from scary Turkish truckers, Will decided he was going to arm himself with a golf club and Stanley knife, clever lad. Shame howver that he slept with them on the floor outside the tent. Classic Collier. Despite this we awoke with no problems and went beach hunting in Sumsum, Turkey....which turned out to be a sludge filled