Mongolia...

We made it, we reached Mongolia and are now refuelling in olgii. The views are spectacular and the roads are awful, however there are brief stretches of Tarmac. We are well on our way and should reach Ulaanbaatar in about a week (fingers crossed).

We have a small oil leak however it's only a small problem that hopefully won't disturb us.

Death bed

An early start brought us some hope as we met the people at the garage. They set about troubleshooting the car, trying to find what was wrong. However there solution was to just pour water into the coolant.

As we guessed 10 metres down the road the car proceeded to overheat and we had to push the car back to the garage.

The men at the garage were no help as they did not speak a word of English, however Jon had the bright idea of using the age old communication of art to try and convey the need for a tow truck, needless to say it worked and we paid £300 to get the car 300 kilometres to Barnaul.

However there was one slight problem with the tow truck, the Russian trucker only wanted to take one of us to Barnaul. This is an obvious problem, and one which we decided to tackle with US Dollars (although we agreed on this bribe he seemed to forget and we did not pay him). So josh and Jon had to hide in the car on the back of the tow truck, while Ryan stayed in the front with the Russian trucker.

Once in Barnaul we were taken to a Nissan dealership, which would have been extortionate if it was not for yet another miracle. A Russian man approached us as he recognised the logo on the car, he spoke very good English and explained to us that he can look at the car in his garage down the road.

So once again we entered a strange mans car and followed him to his small garage to find a fix for our overheating problem.

It was at his garage where he delivered the devastating news, the words any man/woman does not want to hear... There is a problem with your head-gasket. This is up there with the worst things that could happen to the car, the words which appear in our nightmares.

The problem originated with our broken radiator, a while back in Ukraine our radiator cracked, and a Ukrainian man who fed us salad, managed to fix the car with a Russian car radiator. However as the radiator was too big, air got into the radiator and some other naughty mechanical stuff happened that caused the head gasket to sustain damage.

Luckily the kind men at the garage think they will be able to fix the car so it can "maybe" make it to Ulaanbaatar, however the car will not make the trip home (Elizabeth is on her last legs) therefore when we reach Mongolia we will be shipping the car to Lithuania and flying home.

If all goes well we will be back on the road in two days and should be at the Mongolian border in four days.

Another Day. Another Border. Another Breakdown.

Today the Russian border was as smooth as a neat glass of Hendrix, apart from the border guard yelling to evacuate the building and us refusing. We hit the road in full swing and good spirits but we forgot one thing. This was the Mongol Rally and she slapped us square in the face. Of course you have probably guessed, it is another breakdown so give yourself a sticker because your correct. The car is once again overheating and we have just hitched a tow back to the local garage 24km away. We are sleeping in the car in a factory loading bay next to the garage awaiting Lizzy's repair tomorrow, we hope.

Astounding Astana

After witnessing no end to the amazing generosity from the previous night and this morning we headed to Astana. This city has to be the most vibrant up coming capital in the world. With it's elegant buildings and endless fountains we headed out for some traditional Kazak food. Tomorrow we are heading for the Russian border and the car has been running fine!!!

Hospitality...

Today we finally made Kazakhstan! And with only a two hour wait it was one of the quicker border crossings of the rally.

There is a lot to cover in this post so strap yourselves in, it's going to be a long one ;)

So on the 7th of August we found the perfect camping spot in a wooded area somewhere near the Kazakhstan border in Russia. There was a huge lake right in the centre and it wasn't too far from the main road which was preferable. Although there were some fears through the night of Russian bears attacking us from the woods, we slept fine and even had time for a wash in the lake (luxury) before we made for Kazakhstan today.

Although the border crossing was relatively quick we did have a lot of communication issues. The guards didn't seem to understand that we did not speak Kazakh and just kept yelling at us pointing in all sorts of directions.

After about 10 mins of confusion on of the border guards who seemingly had enough of trying to talk to us, ordered Jon out of the car so he could sit in and direct is himself. And I'm not joking when I say all he did was make us drive in a circle only to arrive back in the position we were at in the first place? Actually thinking back he probably just wanted to have a ride in the car but I digress.

Once we made it through the border the next order of business was to exchange some USD to he local currency. We stopped off at a local shop just a short walk from the border and this is where we met he nicest guy on the earth.

We met him by chance as he spoke very good English and was helping us translate at the office. From there he have us some very good advice about Kazakhstan as well as his number incase we needed any help along the way.

So from the border we made haste towards the nearest town so we could find a nice open field to bed down for the night. There was just one problem with this seemingly fool proof plan... Insects. I have never in my life been attacked by so many different types of insects. So as the three of us where sitting in the plains of Kazakhstan, getting bitten to death and contemplating what the best type of curry is, we decided to call the friendly guy at the border to attempt to find a nicer place to stay.

It was at this point when he met up with us, and insisted we stay with him at his apartment. In the few hours that then followed the three of us witnessed the most unbelievable hospitality we have ever saw. The man and his wife fed us and took us into their lovely apartment where we had the opportunity to wash ourselves (you get surprisingly dirty over four days in a car with the same clothes on).

One of the things which we would all agree we have learnt on the course of the mongol rally is that before going on our journey, ourselves and others we know have a certain perception of people outside of the UK, we tend to believe that everyone will turn away from us, try to hurt or even steal from us, however this is not the case, the hospitality we have witnessed and friendly nature of people in the countries we have traveled through has been stellar, and it's this sort of hospitality which the media and people in General should highlight.

However the same can not be said for the police of Kazakhstan, once past the border several kilometres down the road, we noticed a police sign, warning of police ahead, naturally we brought our speed Down to hopefully not attach the attention of the police, but as I've mentioned before, the car essentially screams "pull me over!". So we were brought to a stop by the police station where I was brought inside by a officer. It was here where he pointed to the screen which displayed a picture of our car taken by a camera down the road. (before I go any further I will give some context, it's about 4is in the afternoon and the sun is still well up in the sky, a beautiful day) what I then learnt was that we were pulled over for not having our headlights on... Yes, not our side lights but our headlights on in the middle of the day? To add to the situation, the police officer was requesting me to pay 3,500 Kazakhstani tenge... Luckily there was a fat chance of me paying this fine for this ludicrous reason, and after 10 minutes of me playing the innocent "I don't understand" card, the police officer got bored and told me to go on my way. Our next stop will be Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan... Onwards and upwards!

UFA! UFA! UFA!

Today was only a short drive to UFA - Russia, and we will be resting here for the night, before we move onto the Kazakhstan border in the next two days.

We did however forget to mention the tyre problem we had yesterday, and by tyre problem I mean our tyre exploded. The road condition was dreadful and a burst tyre was inevitable.

So we are now driving on our spare tyre (the best of the set, and this should take us to Mongolia, fingers crossed.

Abstracting wifi

So this is just a quick one ( we are parked outside a hotel "borrowing the wifi) another fun filled day of, you guessed it... Driving, I spy and more driving.

We had 10 minutes of pure adrenaline filled action when it rained but other than that nothing to report.

We push towards UFA (somewhere in Russia) for tomorrow.

Mother Russia

So today we visited the one and only mother Russia. She was even bigger than we expected. A leisurely 20 minute walk up the hill takes you to some great statues (mainly Russian soldiers with no shirts on) and a parade square with Russian soldiers marching all over the place. And at the top of the hill is the one and only mother Russia (can't really miss her). Nothing else exciting today apart from more driving...

Woke. Drove. Slept. Repeat.

We woke up, drove, slept and repeated.

From Russia With Love

With the car running fine again we left Kiev heading for the Russian border. Turns out all you need to cross a border is to play a few tunes on a trumpet and they will let you through! Russian border was only quick, 10 minutes to get through, 3 hours Ryan filling in a form. Camping in a farmer's field tonight so we hope he doesn't mind.