Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
I've arrived!
Ovorkhangai, Mongolia
going to some hotsprings today, UB tomorrow. Heard the Scots are 1 town behing us in their Mad Maxed ambulance
Govi-Altai, Mongolia
we finally reached this place. Together with some other passing ralliers and some tow ropes we managed to tear the back cabin off of the ambulance. She still drives so if we get an extra seat installed in the back and somd kind of basket for our stuff we should be good to go, though that will depend on if rally officials will allow us to continue in what is effectively half a car now.
Khovd, Mongolia
the car's dead, heading on in team braveheart's ambulance. Longer update later.
Bayan Olgii, Mongolia
both the ambulance and the daewoo are fixed. the roads out here are extremely bad. We are averaging 30km/h. I also got another flat tyre, so now I'm all out of spares. The night sky is amazing here. You can see the milky way!
Bayan Olgii, Mongolia
Well, here i am without signal again. Hope it's not for the whole country again. We're stuck at the border because we arrived too late to be let out? It is amazingly cold. Like fucking near freezing is my guess. I'm so unprepared. I'm wearing a t-shirt, 2 fleeces, long johns, trousers and am in my sleeping bag and i'm still only barely comfortable. @
Barnaul, Russia
so driving through russia in a single day was unrealistic. Camping 200km after barnaul. Getting to UB by saturday unlikely in my opinion.
Semey, Kazakhstan
drove all day. Now at 5km of russian border. Said goodbye to yorkshire ralliers as they want to take it slow. Now it's just me with team tomahawk and team braueheart's ambulance. We're aiming for the arrival party of the 27th.@
Almaty, Kazakhstan
made my way over here yesterday and after fruitlessly driving around the city looking for other teams and getting lost (though you can't really get lost if you don't know where you are) i took the first hotel that had internet and immediatly found what appears to be the only 3 other teams left in the city. The othes seem to all be ahead of us already. Had a few drinks with them and then we were denied entry to any clubs we went to because we all looked so scruffy with our 4 week beards, dirty t-shirts and sandals. Heading north now. I'm meeting the north yakshire ralliers, the yorkshire ralliers and that 3rd team outside town.
Jambyl Province, Kazakhstan
went off yesterday afternoon with the dirty canadians and the germans of mongollo11. It took quite a while to find our crossing as the main one in tashkent was closed. Had to sleep in our cars because the kazakh side was closed. I'm never doing that again, my neck still hurts. At least we were first in in the morning. The kazakhs were also the first border to demand bribes. We bought them off with molten chocolate, bad turkish cigarettes, a fake cuban cigar & a pen. Ran into return of the yak there too & we convoyed up. Unfortunatly due to bad communication we got split up & now i'm stuck in this hotel without anyone's phonenumber. Texted a friend to mail my nr to the canadians. Let's hope they have internet phones. Tomorrow off to almaty. I'm bound to run into other teams there as everyone goes through there. I just wish there was an internet cafe here so i could print a map.
Rik Wuyts
Load Rik
<p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">Welcome to the homepage of the Dukes of Desert!</font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">As I hope is obvious by now, the two of us are doing the 2011 Mongol Rally, in aid of the <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-Barnes0" title="Just Giving link for CNCF donations" target="_blank">Christina Noble Children's Foundation</a> and <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-Barnes1" title="link to justgiving for SOS Children's Villages">SOS Children's Villages</a>. This involves us driving in a highly unsuitable, probably a little unsound car from London here in the UK all the way to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. To prepare for this, we... hang on, what have we done?</font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">Yes, in the true spirit of adventure, we are hopelessly unprepared for this. Only one of us can drive right now, for starters,</font> <font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">and neither of us is exactly a mechanic. We've not previously been through the vast majority of the countries on our route, we're not survival experts or wilderness people. We are well and truly entering into the unknown.</font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">Hopefully, you're looking at this as you believe you can help. Well, a good start is helping us towards our charitable donations for our charities, via the Just Giving links supplied. You can also donate to us directly, to help cover costs we will inevitably occur, or give us equipment that we will need. After all, we'll be covering around 11,000 miles, and we won't be in hotels eating at Michelin star restaurants. Nope, it'll be tents and quick grub for us. As such, we need gear for the cold, gear for the heat, gear for the car, gear for eating... Basically, we need.</font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">And, uh... if you happen to have a car lying around, 02 reg or newer, 1.2l engine max, that you fancy just giving us? That'd be really nice. Even better if it has a ton of storage space, rally tyres, adapted for rough terrain, that sort of thing. Just saying. Shy bairns get nowt, as they say back in Yorkshire.</font></p>