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

Trabzon ıs stıll amazıng!

After a two day drıve (shorter than expected thanks to really good roads) we arrıved ın Trabzon last nıght. Unfortunately we wıll only be able to get the ferry to Russıa tomorrow nıght but thıs has caused an absolutely brıllıant day! We spent the day fıxıng up the cars (three ın convoy now sınce we met up wıth team Loud Noıses yesterday) which has gone really well as I thint the oıl leak has been cured on the second attempt.



The local guys at the car park we were workıng ın brought out two rounds of free Turkısh tea whıch was great. We then headed back towards town to fınd the ınernet...and we were greeted by an excellent guy called Mustafa Kemal Aycicek, the owner of a local kiosk. Incredıbly I am sat in saıd Kıosk usıng the ınternet to update the blog! To make things better I am serving all his customers at the same time and drınkıng more free tea. He is also a black sea area journalist and ıs (hopefully) going to get us in the local press! (http://www.karadenizolay.com/sayfa.asp?sayfaID=1)




Sorry about the sporadıc use of ı not i as the keyboard ıs in Turkısh and is a bit dıfferent! I could contınue wıth the stories but some should be kept for our return.

Love Will and Jules

Romania, Bulgaria and Istanbul....

Right, haven't posted for a while so got loads to write

Still with the team 'Two Muppets and a car' we left Budapest (thankfully getting out wasn't half as bad as getting in) and crossed into Romania. Spying a nice little side road off the main road we went up it to find somewhere to camp. The first sign that something was up was when we passed an army camp with loads of rusting military vehicles outside. We then saw a load of military helicopters and a military airfield on the other side of the road. Going round a corner these massive gates appeared across the road with armed guards - we had driven straight into a military zone! The quickest and neatest emergency stop and U-turn was immediately implemented and Tallulah has never accelerated so quickly as we sped out of there! Camped a few miles further on at the head of the valley and we treated to the most spectacular demonstration of Romanian air power as the booms of afterburners filled the valley and jets from the aforementioned airfield streaked into the sky. These were followed minutes later by bright flashes on the horizon as they dropped live bombs on a training mission! This whole spectacular was naturally accompanied by a beer and a cigar apiece - not a bad camping spot all in all!

Woke up surrounded by cows and continued on the slog to Bucharest. Romania is the most beautiful country and we had a great drive through the mountains. Got lost on the outskirts of Bucharest trying to find the ring road but after asking locals and using a compass (both far more reliable than maps we have found) we found the ring road. Banish all thoughts of a dual-lane tarmac affair - it was a rotting potholed affair with lots of traffic. We were entertained by the lunatic overtaking manouvers (general rule: if you don't mind driving your car off-road then you can) and the astonishing industrial waste land of derelict soviet building projects.

Rattled (literally) on through Bulgaria where we lost our fuel cap and one headlight gave up the ghost (our team name is very apt!) and up a corking road to the border crossing with Turkey. Met the angriest border guard ever and the other team had issues because they left their V5 Proof of Ownership document at home before camping just inside Turkey. This time treated to a natural spectacular as an electrical storm raged on the horizon. Sadly we had no beer this time but we soldiered on anyway.

Arrived in Istanbul which is incredible. I'm not going to try to describe the buzz and the sights and the sounds but watching the mosques turn orange in the setting sun was pretty spectacular. After food we found a completely random Shisha bar in the grounds of the "Turkish and Balkan Cultural affairs" behind a graveyard (the dead centre of town chortle chortle) and spent an enjoyable evening drinking Turkish tea and smoking shisha before moving on to a bar with a collection of other ralliers.

Eating yoghurt and honey on the roof terrace this morning for breakfast looking across Istanbul and at ships sailing from the Black Sea through the Bophoros (the gates to Asia and the great divide between West and East) to the Sea of Marmara whilst sitting in the sun wasn't a bad way to start the day. Walked into Asia after breakfast to try and sort out a ferry which brings us up to know - back in Europe still trying to sort a ferry across the Black Sea.

So everything is pretty good!

Love jules and will xx

Budapest

Just spent the night in Budapest which is somewhat of a miracle as they have the most viscous one-way system known to man! However this meant that after being directed through almost every street we had seen most of the city before we even got out the car! Had time to do a bit of sightseeing before a few beers last night with some other Mongolists. Beautiful city but would be nice to have a bit more time here. We're off to Buccarest now.

Car update: the old girl is sadly not so good. In torrential rain one of the windscreen wipers decided it had had enough and ceased to be. The cabin could also be described as far from weather proof - whenever it rains we get very wet feet. Fortunately this isn''t adding weight to the car as we are spewing oil at about the same rate as water comes in due to a cracked sump (ask a boy to explain girls). In fact if any of you want to find us just follow the oil trail down Europe's motorways!

Love as ever, Will and Jules xx

Prague & The story so far!

So I guess Ill start from the beginning, quite a lot has happened already!

The trip to dover and ferry cossing was really good, met up with a load of Mongol Rally guys and had a beer. We started on out own way towards belgium but was passed by and sometimes hovered with a constant stream of mongol rally cars. The spirit was much like the trip out of London, a lot of horn usage and waving...and another thing, the hard shoulder is like a third lane to the Mongol Rally! One unfortunate car broke down 8 miles from Hyde Park but most are doing OK. We stopped overnight for about 5 hours just after Achen at about 1am and got a few hours sleep before continuing the drive. I'm glad that we don't have do do that mileage every day, it takes a long time at 55mph. Everyone was really tired on arrival in the Czech Republic. Most people didn't sleep on the first night, or only for an hour or two.

The next day the drive was boring, right across germany. Nice scenery but dull roads, it was also a bit demoralising being passed by BMs, Audis, Mercs and even lorries doing up to 120mph estimated (for the former three!). After lunch a load of cars passed by, thankfully, as we broke down on a Autobahn around Frankfert! We had to push the car to a break in the barrier and ended up with 4 cars stopped to help. We got it going after about 15mins, the points gap had closed up. The rest of the drive to Czechout (the party) was in a convoy of 5.

We arrived at the Czechout party at spot on 1930, the designated start time! After some navigational confusion (we had really bad maps and the bit of Czech that we arrived in was very badly signed) Jules and I lead the convoy on a very raural route to Klenova castle. The party was awesome, dance rooms in the vaults of the ruined castle and a main stage in the courtyard...really magical! It was like a mini festival in a castle! We met up with a couple of guys who have the same visa dates for Russia as us. I think that we will travel with them to Russia via the black sea ferry and then part. Everone else is out shopping as I type.

Many people had pretty serious car problems (one car had fuel streaming out of it almost constantly and was on repair number 3)...but the red bus managed to arrive at 1am! Tallulah is doing well, running sweeter than ever and actually seems to perform much better than most of the other cars. We do have some worries about the rear suspension which seems to be struggling a bit (it bottoms all the time on any rough roads). We also have a continuing oil leak but at the current rate we should be OK just to leave it. If it gets much worse some action may be required. I checked the points with the textbook feeler gague, a bit of cardboard! She seems to be doing about 25mpg, which is OK and means that we can do around 200 miles on a tank. We ran out once however. Unlike most cars when the gague hits the bottom of the last quarter it really is empty, hopefully we will not repeat that too often!

We are now in a hostel in Prague and will leave soon, we saw a lot of the city last night and its raining now so not the best sightseeing weather! From what we have seen it is a really nice place, amazing archetecture and cobbled streets. Its a bit of a pity that it is really touristy but really interesting none the less. Not exactly sure where we are going to head to now but will will end up in Istabul around the 28th--that will probably be the next update--camping untill then!

Sorry about the lack of pictures, I forgot my cable. We will try and pick one up so I can post some from Istanbul. Have to sign out for now.

The Long Break Down Begins

So it seems that Will and Jules are doing well, and have a bit of a convoy going on.


Better late than never, to make up for a lack of pictures, here are some from the start line at Hyde Park.

A good crowd turned up to cheer them off, Mums, Dads, family and friends..

A few last minute tests proved that everything was in (nearly) full working order..

A quick pose for the cameras..

Off to the starting gate..

And through the start line.

Here are some snaps of some of the other slightly more wacky vehicles taking part....

An old Bristol bus (but made in Germany apparently)

Pigs might fly, but they can definately drive!

A mobile phone!

A stretch Volvo (mobile phone standing up on the Mini, in the background!)

Who needs GPS!!

And last but not least, a mongolian wrestler, laying out one pretty brave guy described to him via translator as England's strongest man!

Keep it up Will and Jules! love Em and Darren xx

The Bell at Aldworth

Firstly a big thank you to all those at The Bell pub last night - we raised £105 and had great fun showing our mighty vehicle off to all and sundry. Also thanks to The Bell for their kind donation of a brand new beer garden umbrella which may prove especially useful if we ever have to use it for parachute braking when going down a mountain pass. A wonderful evening was had by all!

Thanks to Will's hard work the car has a new and considerably better radiator (this one feels less like it's made out of papier mache) and some decent off road tyres. The interior trim has also been carefully restored to its original 'luxury' level.

I'm taking the car tomorrow for its most gruelling testing yet - the mean streets of south London. Hopefully spare wheels and fog lights will still be on it by Saturday!

Random Pics

Everyone loves pictures so here are some more random ones from the last week or so!

Most of the time the mechanics were working hard... (Tom lent his expert electrical engineering hand for a couple of days)









...but you have to do something to pass the time whilst working!



Vicki (Jules other half) bought us a very nice Thorontons chocolate Mongol Rally car (actually a Mazda MR2...wish we had one of those!) which has been devoured. Not before taking some silly pictures!