The last couple hundred kilometers in to UB is newly paved and feels so smooth and amazing after 10 days of driving on the worst surfaces imaginable. You come in to the city through a pass over low mountains. Coming over the pass and around a bend, we were suddenly presented with the entirety of the city below us at sunset. When we (the Flatlanders and I) saw it like that, after spending so long to get there, we were elated.

With the party tunes cranked up we rolled in to the city and were quickly given the driving equivalent of an ice-water bath: the worst traffic ever. There are no rules when driving in UB, except possibly that pedestrians must always yield.

But let’s go back to Altai. The convoy was feeling a little bit sore that day about Joe and Tim of Rubikcrew taking off without us. In addition to feeling under-appreciated for help rendered two days before when Rubikcrew’s Fiat broke down for several hours, members of the convoy had also loaned several important items to Rubikcrew that we were now unlikely to see again. Bembeltoads lost their air compressor (for inflating tires), I lost my map of Mongolia, and Flatlanders lost most of their food. That said, it was understandable why someone with a tight schedule would take off– we were very slow.

Although that was the mood, the time in Altai went pretty well. We (my car) got there a couple hours earlier than the rest and had some time to visit the internet cafe and get some buuz (pronounced more like boodz, potsticker-like dumplings full of gamey mutton, the national fast food of Mongolia). The other two cars managed to get their tires/wheels repaired and we got back on the road– briefly.

Driving through the countryside, it was normal for the three/four cars to space out a fair bit for various reasons. We’d choose different routes through the terrain, some cars would handle certain conditions better than others, and also just to get out of each others’ dust wake. But even given this we still tried to maintain visual contact (should have been easy this day because the terrain was flat and open for miles).

Maybe 50km outside the city I stopped the Skoda since we noticed we hadn’t seen the other cars behind us for a number of minutes. We waited another 15 or 20 minutes before another passing rally car told us that the two other cars were stopped 13km back.  Somewhere in here the Flatlanders drank an entire 750ml bottle of vodka. Since it was starting to get late in the afternoon, we turned back to meet up with them before dark. We found them near dusk and heard the story: the Bembeltoads had hit a bump and their entire roof rack had come flying off, flinging its contents over several meters in front of the car. At first the rack looked like a goner, but with some intrepid hammering was made to fit again.

Karsten, Juan, and Robert inspect the damage after the Bembeltoads' roof rack goes flying off

Unfortunately by this time it was dark, so we made camp right there where we were, although maybe 1km off the main tracks. The drunken Flatlanders passed out immediately once the tent was set up, and missed dinner.

From that point on the driving was largely uneventful. The landscape continued to be spectacular, and the road continued to be terrible, but the occasional flat tire was as bad as it got for us. We spent a night in Bayankhongor and a night in Arvaikheer, then rolled in to UB the next day.

I feel like I’m not really doing justice to how bad the roads were. It seemed that every other car not in our convoy had broken something major. Suspension problems were the most common. Dave and Alex broke their rear shocks, had some new ones (that didn’t quite fit) welded in, broke the weld, and drove without them (but with springs) for the last few days– it was hilarious to see their car bouncing wildly over the bumps. Dan and Stuart broke their leaf springs a couple times and drove at a snails pace to avoid jarring all the teeth out of their heads.  The garage in Altai was full (literally) with rally cars in various states of wreckage. Probably 20 cars  were inside and around the garage when we were there. Some other Spaniards, friends of Juan and Nuria, broke their timing belt and had to leave the car where it was. Another Skoda team broke their serpentine belt with a similar outcome.

Another common problem was fuel-pump shut-offs triggered by big bumps. Modern cars have an inertial switch that will shut off the fuel pump in the event of an accident in order to prevent fuel leaks, fires, and explosions. The problem was that some of the bumps on the road were so big (or people hit them so hard), that the sensor would think there had been an accident and shut off the fuel pump while the car was still driving. It’s not hard to reset the switch, but for most of us it was the first time encountering this problem and it was unexpected. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear about anyone setting off their airbags this way (the Skoda didn’t have airbags, but I’m sure many of the cars did).

I’m going to credit our success car-wise mainly to careful driving. Slow and steady definitely wins the race here. For instance, if you don’t hit bumps at 50 km/h, you’re not going to trigger the inertial sensor or dent your wheels. Other than that I should give credit to the Uniroyal tires we bought in Austria. I only had 2 flats across the whole of Mongolia, and the first one was more than 1000 km in. For comparison, the other members of our convoy had 4 or 5 each, and other teams had 30 or more (I’m telling you, these rocks are sharp).

That’s all for now. More photo posts to follow as I process the back-log of pictures! See the rest of my Mongolia Pictures here and the rest of Bembeltoads’ here.

I’m in Altai, Mongolia at the first internet cafe I’ve seen since leaving Russia a week ago. Most of the towns here don’t have electricity reliably or at all. Even cell phone coverage is really spotty.  Mongolia has been amazing so far, in almost all ways.

The border experience was absolutely awful, to the point of some very serious talk of suing The Adventurists in to bankruptcy. Flatlanders, Rubikcrew, and I showed up at the border last Monday evening and got out of Russia in to no-man’s-land Tuesday morning. We drove about half an hour across the giant area between the borders and got in to a Mongolian holding area shortly thereafter. And that’s where we stayed for another full day with almost no information from the authorities about what was going on. Eventually we (39 teams) staged a sit-in protest in the customs office and were allowed to leave after paying $17 each.

Mongolian Border Complex

Then it took us a day and a half to reach Ulgii. There’s some craziness that happened in there that is probably better related by one of the other teams. Flatlanders Andrew and Mike abandoned their Citroen Saxo in Ulgii after basically everything broke on it. We spent another night there sorting that out. They’re now traveling with me in the Skoda.

Flatlanders' Saxo on its last day

Since leaving Ulgii we’ve spent two and a half days on the road to go about 400km to Altai. The unpaved “roads” are unbelievably bad. Huge washboard sprinkled with bowling-ball sized rocks. We’ve joined up in a convoy with some Spaniards Juan and Nuria and some Germans Karsten and Robert. Joe and Tim (Rubikcrew) left us yesterday to try to make better time to UB, and I think we may have to leave the convoy tomorrow as well. The convoy has been great but I feel it’s slowing everybody down to stick together.

Sorry the story is a bit disorganized. So much time has passed since the team left in Novosibirsk and I’ve just been driving the whole time. I’ll try to set aside a little time at night just to write down what’s happened that day so I can keep track of it all.

Time to see if the garage in town can pull the CV joints off a wrecked Felicia rally car here to put on mine.

I was also going to put a bunch of Sumela pictures up here, but you might as well just take a look at them in situ in my flickr stream.  All my (good) pictures are now online.

We then hit the road to Goodwood, a renowned car racing track in the South of England (though you wouldn’t know it from the lack of signage). We drove around the English countryside for about an hour asking directions, rolling into Goodwood in typical CBPG style around 2:30pm (the launch was only scheduled until 3). We went to the Media tent, picked up Anand’s passport, stickers for our car, and T-shirts, and headed back to the car to give it a cleaning and apply the decals.

Jessie and Anand are excited

Half-way through applying our stickers, the marshal came over and let us know we’d missed our chance to take a lap at the track. Unfazed, we headed on to Dover for the ferry to France. We rolled through lovely English seaside villages like Brighton and Rye, saw the white cliffs of Dover, ate some Burger King, and hopped aboard the ferry across the channel to Calais.

It rained steadily on the night drive to Brussels and our plan was to find either a cheap hotel outside of Brussels or a field that didn’t look too damp to set up our tent. As we drove and drove along the E40 past Brussels and Liége there didn’t appear to be any obvious opportunities for lodging. On we drove, stopping at gas stations and bars, turning on dirt roads looking for a camp site, and observing fake cows that turned out to be real. Eventually, all the way back in Liége, we found a hotel, booked a room, and promptly passed out on the smallest single beds ever seen (one of which was miraculously shared by Jessie and Sarah). It was 3 AM.

We just got an email from the Adventurists, who run the Rally, telling us that you’ll be able to watch the launch live online!  Here’s the information from them:

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The Mongol Rally Festival of Slow LIVE online…
Saturday 18th July 11.30 – 15.30 BST
www.festivalofslow.comThe Mongol Rally launch will simultaneously fart in the face of boredom from Barcelona, Milan and Goodwood in the UK. The English launch of just over 300 teams from all over the world will be broadcast live for your amusement so bookmark http://www.festivalofslow.com for the broadcast. We’ll even have a highlights show posted on Saturday evening…

This Saturday Goodwood Motor Circuit will be temporarily declared the ‘Independent Republic of Adventurism’ complete with menacing border guards, maurauding entertainers, live music, cossack dancers, Russian strongmen, real ale, properly made lamonade, and more than 300 Mongol Rally teams from more than 20 countries.

A fire engine completely covered in fur, London Taxis and a tiny car with a 15 foot Viking long boat on top feature among the ‘Vehicles of Significant Comedy Value Category’. Before they depart for a gargantuan party in a Czech castle on Monday each team will enjoy a parade lap of Goodwood Motor Circuit and they will be flagged off by former rallier and all round top chap Nick Hewer, who you may have seen on the tellybox in The Apprentice.

There are also 100 teams heading out from Barcelona and another 50 leaving from Milan simultaneously this Saturday, check the website for updates.

Festival of Slow website.