Team The People's Republic of Sheffield

The Finish Line

 

We've made it!

 After 10,000 miles, 67 shashlik kebabs and  enough watermelons to irrigate the Sahara we finally hit Ulan Bator at 5am this morning.

It was all going swimmingly yesterday afternoon until we discovered the main road to Ulan Bator had been washed out. One mountain pass, 1 dry river bed and 1 cracked fuel tank later this was beginning to look like a slight problem. However, thanks to Adrian's amazing repair skills with putty we rolled, or limped into town, past the unlit roadblocks and car-sized potholes. And the journey wouldn't be complete without getting stuck in mud, which Mark duly managed.

Its hard to pick a highlight out of the past 4 weeks - possibly the saucepan fight with the taxi driver, the semi-arrest for drug smuggling headache tablets at the Uzbek border, the army interrogation at the Iran-Afghan border after a slight navigational error, there's so many to choose from.

 Favourite place, probably Samarkand at sunset.

 Favourite meal, anything not garnished with dill.

Friendliest people - Iranians.

Biggest megalomaniac golden statue that revolves to face the sun - Turkmenistan.

Best place to drag race in a city - Vienna

In the end though, travel is about discovery, and I've certainly learnt a lot. Firstly, never lend a Spaniard a guide book, or an axe. Also, I never want to see any dill ever again. From the Danube plain to the Kazakh steppe, watermelon appears to be the universal currency and mode of communication across half the globe, and we're hoping to trade one for a plane ticket back. Finally, never let a Turkish man drive you anywhere. Oh, and reversing the wrong way up a motorway with no lights is ok if you smile a lot.

This is Anjum, signing off, until South America...

Adrian Phillipson

Load Adrian

Mark Shakespeare

Load Mark

Anjum Khan

Load Anjum

<p><font size="3">The Peoples' Republic of Sheffield have seen the future. It's called twitter. It doesn't let you ramble&nbsp;&amp; you can do it from anywhere.&nbsp;</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p>
<div id="twitter_div">
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Twitter Updates</h2>
<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul>
<a href="http://twitter.com/SheffieldPeople" id="twitter-link" style="display:block;text-align:right;">follow me on Twitter</a>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/SheffieldPeople.json?callback=twitterCallback2&amp;count=5"></script>