We've done it!

Somehow, against all the odds and significant mechanical failure, Will and I trundled into Ulaan Baatar yesterday in Tallulah and under our own steam and crossed the finish line 6 weeks to the hour from when we set off from Hyde Park. Incredible!







Until that moment I shall pick up from the last post...

We left Altay without the girls (our chivalry still gleaming though!) and continued on the endless tracks and ruts that make up the Mongolian highway system. Mongolia took its toll on poor Tallulah and the rear suspension springs broke twice more - Will and I are now pretty expert at the repair job! Despite the high levels of workmanship it semi broke again and the only solution was to chock the suspension up with wood and rope the axle to the car - yes, everything is now held together by wood and rope! We did the last 500 miles with no clutch which was an interesting experience and something the UK driving test had not prepared us for, but we are now both pretty expert at matching the revs before ramming the gear lever and praying that the noise of crunching gears isn't too upsetting! No clutch was particularly debilitating in the city when we had to turn the engine off at every set of lights, when we stopped and when we wanted to reverse, and all the while trying not to attract the attention of the army of traffic police at every junction!

No English travelling blog would be complete without a weather update, and I can tell you we were both slightly suprised when it snowed 2 days ago! Will and I both had images of spending a day in the sun leveling out our rather ridicolous sun tans, but instead spent the time carefully exposing as little skin as possible to the elements.

So despite the lack of clutch, a drive train held together with rope, suspension held together with wood, atrocious road and weather conditions and the fact that when the cartographer made the map he appears to have decided to go for a work of fiction rather than base his work on anything approaching fact, we found ourselves trundling down out of the mountains and into Ulaan Baatar yesterday in the late afternoon sun. Absolute elation as we spluttered and juddered along the side of the main square and up to the pub marking the finish line and were greeted by the landlord holding six cold beers. Even more joy as we had our first shower since Uzbekistan and then did some serious damage to a steak. Perfect.

We've just dropped Tallulah off and handed in the keys at the compound and had our sad farewell. Inspite of everything that went wrong the old girl got us here which is quite simply astonishing.

We're both aiming to be back soon, more news on that front soon. Until then we aim to eat our weight in steak, let slightly tacky tourist stalls help us lighten our wallets and generally chill out in Ulaan Baatar, a really rather attractive place!

This isn't the final post but until then thanks so much to all those who supported us and helped us to get here. Hope to see you soon,

Love Jules and Willxx

Talluhlah Lets us Down Again and 3 Damsels in Distress

We've made it to Mongolia! With our car! Incrediable! Hurrah!

When I last blogged the suspension had broken. Well it failed again (U bolts failed). And then the previously repaired leaf spring failed again in a sandstorm in Mongolia which was an experience. Fortunately we are travelling with some guys who have a spare which we banged on, but it was a bit short so the car now moves sideways when you drive so you have to turn right to go in a straight line. This results in some interesting handling characteristics, especially over rough ground!





Having posted that we had fixed our rear lights they decided to unfix themselves somewhere in Kazakstan. Basically our left and right indicator now switch the hazard lights on, and our hazard switch switches the hazards on also. In short we're incrediably well set for putting our hazards on but not so hot at indicating our intended direction. We're not particularly fussed though and this is now the third country we've passed through with no functioning indicators, rear lights, reverse lights etc.

We have just completed a 24 hours drive. This was not planned but we passed a broken Mongol rally car with three girls in. Car completely broken and the deposit point was 200miles away and one of them had to get a flight today. They had no money to afford a truck to tow them, and as we are such gentlemen and could not leave them in such a state of peril, the other SJ in our convoy, with all the power of its 1 litre engine, towed them 200 miles over the most atrocious roads at an average speed of 15mph! Who says chivalry is dead!? We have just come off from 24 hours on the road but were rewarded with a fantastic breakfast of meat and beer. I think pizza is following soon too! I don't quite have the energy to explain what a challenge this was but try to imagine trundling along at 15mph in pitch black with a veritable spiders web of rutted tracks, potholes, trenches with only a compass for navigation in a car where the clutch broke (yes, Tallulah and Mongolia are not getting on) in a country where there are NO road signs for 24 hours with no respite. Some man-points due I think!

Having actually got here I should probably pay some lipservice to Mongolia: incrediable, stunning, huge, like nothing else anywhere. Driving across the steppe with snow capped mountains surrounding you and eagles soaring above you. Come here.







In other news Will and I had our last shower 3 countries ago. Food conversations becoming increasingly intense and we're still in great spirits and well (if a little smelly).

Love to all,

Jules and Willxx

Rubtsovsk

Express update as we got into Russia late last night and need to get tothe Mongolia border by Friday morning - lots of driving.





Since the last update we have meet back up with the 2 Cornish simplefolk, are no longer with the Italians but are with 2 Spanish (sorry Basque!) who are great fun and a little crazy (par for the course I think).

Drove back up through Kazakhstan where we then had the option of taking the main road up to Russia, or taking this ridiculously small dirt track around the Northen Shore of Lake Baqlash. This would take 2 days and had no petrol - a point emphasised when we asked for directions from a lorry driver who told us we were mad and then insisted on checking the fuel gauges in our car. It was meant to be a wonderful 2 days skirting the lake swimming and fishing, but after 60 miles we took a wrong turn and only ever glimpsed the lake on the horizon from that point on! We did however end up driving through some amazing mountain scenary, where disconcertingly we bumped into a radiation monitoring van! The ground was nice and warm to camp on though....

The main excitment since the last update was that Tallulah broke a leaf spring on a completely flat section of road whilst doing about 45mph! We were so lucky in that it happened after our two days in the wilderness only 20 minutes from a town. We found a mechanic who could work magic with a welder, and with the help of a Lada leaf spring, she is now repaired, although one side sits a couple of inches higher than the other!




No blogs for ages now as we will be entering Mongolia! Keep on bumping into the mini with a telephone box on its roof.

For those of you who care we are both well and now spend increasing amounts of our time talking about food.

Love jules and Will xx

The Cultural Fix

Just a quickie...

On the way back from the internet cafe after our last update we passed the Bukhara football stadium, which the security guard let us wander round! A slightly tired Soviet affair but still pretty good. In the evening we bumped into a large group of ralliers, 2 of which are driving a fully kitted out ambulance! We are now with two teams who we met at Bukhara and have come to Samarkand. The teams are Spanish and Italian so we are now travelling at a slightly more sedate speed with regular breaks for drinks, food, coffee etc.






Spent today in Samarkand looking around the breathtaking Registan and the Shah-I-Zinda mausoleum complex (unfortunately the victim of a recent zealous restoration effort). We will be applying equal gusto to some gastroculture this evening when we sample 'plov' - allegedly an Uzbek rice dish. We have fortunately also arrived the week before high season starts, so everything is still fairly laid back.





Tomorrow we start back to Kazakhstan, where we are meeting the other teams again, and the long trundle up into Russia and then Mongolia. Internet contact may be sketchy at best so you will have to succle your curiosity with this post for a while.





Of course no post would be complete without a Tallulah update: exhaust starting to fall off and a fog light has a disconcerting tendency to turn upside down during the course of the day (meaning that now we have had problems with every light on the car!).

All is well and the kind locals are helping us part with our money for ridiculous and impractical clothing.

Love as ever, Jules and Will xx

Roads - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Trying to seemlessly pick up from where Will left off....

After camping with the herders we sadly split from the other two teams. They are heading through Kazakhstan and we are going down through Uzbekistan. They have been great guys to travel with and really epitomise the rally - two blokes from Cornwall who crashed their car on the way to the rally start in Hyde Park, can't read maps, don't even have maps, know nothing about cars and are always optimistic! We are planning to join up again on thursday though for the remaining journey through Kazakhstan Russia and Mongolia.

Shortly after that we filled up with petrol (where we found that a tube of pringles costs 3 times a litre of petrol!) and headed out into the wilderness. Wilderness does not quite convey the 1200 miles of nothingness though - just desert from horizon to horizon for 3 days! The roads ranged from the sublime (a strip of brand new tarmac with no markings that you good comfortably have done 200mph on. Tallulah didn't quite feel up to this though), to the ridiculous - roads so bad that we chose to drive in the desert next to them, roads under construction as we were on them so we were driving next to the graders, roads which are more pothole than road etc). Tallulah didn't quite come out of this unscathed and her rear bumber was shaken off by the vibrations, so we are currently driving with one brake light, one indicator, one side light, no main lights and no reverse lights! Otherwise the old girl continues to amaze us and just carries on plugging away!





Enough about roads. The Uzbek boarder post was the most laid back affair ever. We thought this attitude might be a one off, but this trait has continued to the numerous police check points where we get stopped. They stop us, have a friendly chat, then send us on our way without even looking at our passports! At one place they even stopped us and gave us watermelon - I thought we were meant to be bribing them?



After the 3 days hard driving covering 1200 miles through absolute wilderness and desert we have finally arrived at the oasis of Bukhara - jewel of the silk road and, more importantly, perveyors of $2 shashleyk and cold beer. We love Uzbekistan. For a start we changed $100 and were given a wadge of cash back over an inch thick! You don't need a wallet here but more a small train of porters just to carry your money around! We are currently staying in a "B&B" which is over 250 years old and is run by an absolute eccentric who insists on giving us fresh tea and grapes. More importantly Will and I had our first shower in 5 days (seperately of course!) and have even gone for clean boxers AND deoderant - such extraveganse no doubt brought on by our amazing surrounds.





This post really does only scratch the surface of the stories and the amazing time we are having! Off to Samaraknd tomorrow before sauntering back into Kazakhstan and beyond!

Love Jules and Willxx

PS. Apparantly we just missed the Russian invasion of Georgia - we were in that region only 4 days ago.

Sochi Frustration to Atiraw Desolation

So first off sorry for the delay in putting up a new post...the internet is becoming harder to locate! (At least this time I have the correct keyboard!)

So after the day wait in Trabzon we managed to get the ferry, little did we know... We also met up with Jules and Jim, a couple of guys on their second year of the rally, they had just attempted to get through Georgia to Russia but were unsuccesful (unsurprisingly in light of recent events) and were forced to retreat to Trabzon at Gun/Tank point!! We spent a very surreal 12 hour ferrry ride relaxing and slept on the top deck of a not very crowded boat (a proper ferry). On arrival we had to wait outside port for 14hours while other boats were unloaded, and being a sunday evening by the time we landed the cars were most definately not moving. Leaving them on the boat we kept the keys and found a reasonable hotel (in terms of the very up-market Sochi) . It was however a very Soviet affair and cannot be accused of being anything more than functional! That night was a late one and the eveing meal wound up at about 5 in a restaurant-come-club (with pretty good views:). The next day was really frustrating, with a day long wait in the port building that resulted in getting the cars, but being so late that the only option was to crash at the same slightly expensive hotel. At least we had the cars!





The drive through Russia commenced and the first day was a windy one punctuated by three breakdowns. Team Loud Noises had a blocked fuel filter and some dodgy spark advance (both quickle sorted) and we suffered a handbrake that jammed on. After some persuasuion using both hammer and 3-in-1 oil we got going, the handbrake is now cable tied down and worn to a point of no resistance...which is not holding us up! The day ended with a remote camp in the middle of Russia, a pretty standard evening.

The next day was slightly more smooth...with no breakdown but a sum total of $180 worth of "fines" luckily only $30 attributable to us! The first was a (believe it or not) speeding ticket, thankfully we were at the back of the convoy. The second was to all of us for not coming to a complete halt at a police checkpoint, despite being beckoned forward. I smell some profiteering. The third was unfortunate as we all managed to get seperated in some town and one of the teams pulled an "illegal" U-turn, some more Dollar was in sight I think. That separation was actually more frustrating than the Sochi hold up and was made all the worse as mobile contact was lost. We got back together in the end. That evening was amazing, we camped (now in Kazakhstan) near a herders house, and a greeting expedition resulted in a really fun evening. In return for some Whisky and entertainment (some joyriding was also done) they treated us to fermented camel milk and a chance to look around their amazing Moscovich 412 (car) with a pretty awesome stereo! A great time. By the way that was just short of Atiraw.






A funny one that I forgot to mention, when were were looking for a place to camp that night team Loud Noises reversed into the front of Two Muppets and a Car resuting in the one good headlight they have being smashed. Some gaffer and araldite (hopefully) sorted-ish that one. To make the story a bit better the other one is off a transit van as they had an accident before the start line...looks pretty odd now!!

That brings my entry to an end, I will had over to Jules to bring you up to date!

Photos

OK, so I promised Will I would put some picture up of the start line, and seeing that photos are in short supply, I have finally finished the post I started on the 21st July!

So, scroll down if you want to have a look. Em McGeehin xx