Team Silk Road Rangers

Mark McKinley
Of Silk Road Rangers
On the The Mongol Rally 2011

Korday, Kazakhstan

travelling thru the vast open wilderness of Kazakhstan. Been beautiful but very remote. Into the hardcore camping now. No shower or change of clothes for a few days. Spirits held high by negotiating bribes with the cops (bartered down $50 to 3 whiskey minatures) and drinking vodka with the locals. Time for Russia now, bring it on, and the showers!

Baku, Azerbaijan

What a country. Beautiful city with buildings made from sandstone. Pimped up mercs and oil money everywhere. Kindest people by far, except for the police who nabbed us for using the headlights(!?) and cost us $80 and 2 packs of Marlboro. Oh, also when u get to the port; pirates and scurvy everywhere. Landed on our feet with the cargo ship, leaving a few hours after we arrived. Craziest and most stressful process ever with lots of Russian and crisp US dollars being thrown about the place. The ship is like something out of Indiana Jones with a crew of sweaty modern day pirates with gold teeth and tattoos. Primark boxing day sale would even be safer.. Now for 24hrs on the caspian with warm beer and Streetfighter II for comfort.@

Rustavi, Georgia

After the last 48hrs travelling thru some of the most stunning sights seen as yet in the tea region of Turkey and the beautiful hills of Georgia, we're now waiting at the border with Azerbaijan. This should be interesting considering RHD cars are not allowed in, even in transit. People have been great so far, only hitch has been a damaged sump guard which saved Renata from certain doom! Next challenge after negotiating are way in to Azerbaijan, is negotiating our way out of Azerbaijan... via the Caspian.@

Samsun, Turkey

After a 500mile day we stayed in Samsun last night after eventually finding a cheap hotel (thanks to shrewd Vietnamese negotiating). Today we're headed along the coast to Rize and hope to get there early enough to camp. Starting to plan for our transit through bandit country in Georgia and negotiating our caspian sea crossing from Baku, Azerbaijan. Ran over a dead cat the other day, some van flicked it up onto our bonnet.

Mark McKinley

Load Mark

Shanti Shah

Load Shanti

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