<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">Hello hello.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">This is the blog for Arjun, Ajay, Dave and Simon's Mongol Rally team. If you don't know what the Mongol Rally is then you clearly haven't been cornered by one of us and had it explained at great length. Don't worry, you will be...</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: justify; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">In essence the Mongol Rally is a crazy, foolish, potentially dangerous and incredibly awesome expedition that we are undertaking for no real discernible reason other than we didn't have much planned for next summer. What it actually involves is taking a ridiculously small and underpowered car (the engine has to be smaller than 1.2 litres) and driving it from London, England to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - a distance of around 10,000 miles, give or take. We will be entirely unsupported on this. The rally is organised by a company called &lsquo;The Adventurists&rsquo; who essentially help with a lot of the bureaucracy of the expedition (visas, carnets de passage, etc) and with getting you organised before you leave. Once we hit the open road, however, we will be on our own.&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: justify; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">So, apart from a vague sense of ennui and a desire to give our parents stomach ulcers, why are we doing this? Well we are also hoping to raise some money for a couple of incredibly worthy causes. We are aiming to raise &pound;1000 for the Christina Noble Children&rsquo;s Fund and &pound;1000 for Pratham UK. Both these charities are doing some really great work, and will be highlighting this in later blog posts. But for now, the important thing is that this is where YOU, the humble friend/family member comes in. We need your help if we are gonna hit these targets, so please give as much as you can. We have set up JustGiving pages for both charities and their links are right here:</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: #1f00a7"><span style="text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 0px"><a href="http://www.justgiving.com/mongol-rally-a"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">Christina Noble Children&rsquo;s Fund page</span></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: #254fae; min-height: 14px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small"><span style="text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 0px"></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: #1f00a7"><span style="text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 0px"><a href="http://www.justgiving.com/mongol-rally-b"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">Pratham UK page</span></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: #254fae; min-height: 14px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small"><span style="text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 0px"></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: justify; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small">We will be keeping this website updated with sporadic blog posts, picture uploads, progress reports and so on, so keep checking in to find out just how unprepared we are...</span></span></p>