We made it!

Limped in the last 400 km with a bent chassis that was one pot-hole away from breaking.

Spent the last few hours with fingers crossed and praying that the tarmac would continue all the way in. Which it did.

Great atmosphere in Ulaan Baatar as the teams rolled in throughout the afternoon and evening.

In fact it all got a bit messy….

The “road” from the Mongolian border to Ulaan Baatar is littered with the dessicated carcasses of camels, goats and horses.

It is also littered with numerous Mongol Rally vehicles that, for various reasons, have given up the ghost with the finishing line in sight. (For “in sight” read 500 miles of punishing Gobi Desert sand track away).

These vehicles have survived the worst that...

The main topic of conversation after our trip through Kyrgyzstan?

The several burned out houses – stark reminders of the trouble that flared up earlier this year and which apparently continues to simmer beneath the surface – on our way north from the Tajik/Kyrgz border to Osh?

Cold.

The large number of police/army with big guns on the streets of Osh itself?

Colder...

Everyone is losing weight.

The long drives to hit borders and to make up for mechanical down time restrict you to a maximum of two meals per day, sometimes only one.

And a meal can be a hunk of bread torn by grimy hands and washed down with de-carbonated water.

For some reason still bottled water is increasingly hard to come by. And we’re getting sick of the fizzy stuff....

Capturing, collating, calculating, connecting and communicating GPS position, altitude and speed data is a non-trivial exercise when "mission control" is the back of a hot, sandy ambulance.

I'd like to use the word "patina" to describe the film of dust that covers everything here in the ambulance, but that would be to dramatically understate the thickness of the layer of talcum like...

An acquaintance who knows a fair bit about travel and an awful lot about mobile devices advised me to buy a basic Nokia handset for this trip.

The basis of this advice was that Central Asia doesn’t have the same disposable culture of more “advanced” Western nations. They don’t chuck malfunctioning phones away. They fix them. And Nokia is the brand that they are most likely to be able to...

Expect the unexpected when crossing borders by car in Central Asia.

Anything from 90 minutes to 5 hours to cross from one country to another.

“Souvenir hunting” customs officials in Kazakhstan. A coolbag that mysteriously disappeared (we think) in Turkmenistan. The Tajik border shakedown.

The one thing you can rely on is that it’s several orders of magnitude easier to...

Tajikistan, oh in how many ways was it difficult to leave you?
Emotionally.

Tajikistan (apart from what we saw of Dushanbe, where our hotel was a disgusting Soviet hangover that undoubtedly gave at least two of our party the runs) is a beautiful country, populated by friendly, happy and in many cases beautiful people.

The scenery is stunning. The vegetation is lush and...

We’re in Tajikistan and making our way to the start of the fabled Pamir Highway – the second highest road in the world. We’re making our way pretty slowly it has to be said, because the road to the Pamir Highway is pretty spectacular in its own right – huge peaks, winding mountain roads, vertiginous drops just a few feet from the edge of the road.

We’re also making our way in convoy....

It’s too early to say what this journey “means” but enough has transpired to justify a little philosophical reflection.
In Atyrau, Kazakhstan (my my that seems like a long time ago) we bumped into an ex-pat Brit who gave us some no doubt well-meaning advice on things like the state of various roads between point A and point B.

The sharing of our intended route prompted him to...

We're making our way in convoy through Tajikistan towards the start of the Pamir Highway, the second highest road in the world.

The convoy consists of team Erro from Seattle (an ex Washington State police interceptor highway patrol car), Flaming Badger (two merchant seamen in a Toyota Yaris) and us.

The road to the Pamir has been pretty spectular in its own right. Huge peaks....

Abandon all hope of sanitation all ye who enter here.

This is the last place on earth that you'd want to need to go to the toilet.

It would be most inconvenient to have to use these conveniences.

This is the public toilet on the Kazakh side of the Kazakhstan/Turkmenistan border south of Aktau.

It is both literally and metaphorically a hole.

Trust this...

Lots of things are happening very quickly.

At the same time access to the internet is getting more sporadic. So this is a compendium style update. The blogger in me is hurting a bit because several of the excerpts below would lend themselves to full-blown posts if time and connectivity permitted. Hey ho.

RECALIBRATION

Already this trip has caused me to recalibrate

...

Lady Luck moves in mysterious ways.

Bad luck - rear suspension blows out on the road from Atyrau to Aktau.

Good luck - Russian truckers stop,lend us their heavy duty jack, and we make running repairs that allow us to limp into Aktau.

Good luck - Russian truckers flag down lorry and convince driver to dip into his cargo and give us ice creams in the desert.

Good luck...

When not if. What not whether.

Pretty quickly on this rally you get to realise that stuff is definitely going to happen.

Like Calum's prostate cancer implants setting off the radiation sensors at the Russia/Kazakhstan border control. (One hour in 39.6 degrees later.....)

And then yesterday we wrecked the rear suspension of the ambulance on the road between Atyrau and Aktau...

The early parts of this journey have been characterised by the LACK of revelations.

Take Ukraine for instance.

Flat as a pancake. But for the most part, at least the most part viewed from main roads, it looks a lot like many places in Britain. Leafy and green.

The only real distinguishing features are the roadside watermelon sellers and the occasional bloke waving a...

Now you can follow our actual progress versus our best laid planned route in this visualisation of GPS data that we’re collecting as we go and collating via the software kindly donated by our friends at Fugawi.

The visualisation turns GPS latitude, longitude, altitude and ‘velocitude’ “words” into Google Maps and dashboard style pictures.

The data will be collected in real time s...

We made it to the Czech Out party in, you'll never guess where, the Czech Republic in good time.

The party marked the coming together of teams from the UK, Spain and Italy the night before we all went our separate ways to Mongolia.

The dress code was "Jules Verne" and so there were plenty of Captain Nemos knocking around, along with what appear to be the obligatory Danish...

Along with around 50 other emergency vehicles in a field of around 400 teams, we completed a parade lap of Glorious Goodwood before heading for the Chunnel.

So began the 2010 Mongol Rally for The Ambeciles.

We temporarily removed the roof window to allow Alan to wave the Canadian flag to the spectating public.

We think he was a dog with big floppy ears that liked to stick...