Mongolia is spectacular with it's pristine scenery. We love Mongolia but aren't sure Mongolia loves us back... so far we have punctured our fuel tank, had a screw in our tyre, ripped our sump guard off, the roof racks fell off and a wallet was stolen.
Fortunately it is only 447km to the finish line and hopefully nothing else happens.
Unfortunately it is only 447km to the finish line and we will be very sad to leave Mongolia.
Ticked "sleep in a yurt" off the bucket list.
We are still unfolding from our first and hopefylly last night sleeping in the car. The Kazakh wind, rain and terrible roads beat us.
We are really embracing Kazakh culture. Had butter chicken and chicken tikka masala for dinner at Mad Murphys Irish pub. Then went to a reggae bar with a cheeky KFC stop on the way home. This morning while slightly hungover we wandered down to Burger King and Starbucks for breakfast.
We got a parking fine and speeding ticket within a few hours. See ya Kyrgyzstan, thanks for the send off.
Our 8 car convoy set up camp on the Panç river across from Afghanistan. It's a bit unsettling hearing guns cocking in the dark the next to you. Some Tajik soldiers visited us twice to check who we were. In the morning we awoke to soldiers still watching our camp, they had been there the rest of the night.
The Uzbek/Tajik border has been the quickest and easiest of the stans but for us it has also been the longest at over 10 hours. 2 of our visas weren't valid until the next day so we were stuck in no mans land until midnight. The bride guards gifted us with ice cream, bread, water, melon and blankets. It could have been much worse and by the end the border guards didn't want us to leave.
Treating ourselves to a hotel because we haven't showered in 5 days and are still covered in dust from Darvaza.
We didn't quite make it to Mashhad and kept driving at night like we said we wouldn't. Tired and hungry we found a little campsite not far from a creepy ruin.
We only had a few hours in Tehran so we decided to divide and conquer... one of us went to Golestan Palace, another to the US Den of Espionage (former US embassy) and the other stayed in the hotel with #bumweez
We are a team of three girls who have decided to undertake the massive charity event that is the Mongol Rally. We will be driving 16,000+km in an extremely substandard car from London, England finishing (hopefully in one piece) in Ulaan Ude, Russia.
A charity empowering girls through education, currently working in Sierra Leone and Uganda. We're on a mission to educate 1 million girls across Africa.
