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.

Saturday night, when we tried to go through the border from Bulgaria to Turkey, we were informed that the plates on our car did not match the plates on the registration. Apparently we failed to acquire the new plates in France! The border guard suggested we might be able to get through at the Greek border, Ipsala. We backtracked and headed toward Greece. While waiting at the border line, literally 10 meters from Greece, our car suddenly began idling rough and puking white, anti-freeze-smelling smoke from the tailpipe. Uh-oh…

We turned around and headed for the nearest gas station which turned out to be Eurooil 2002 in Svilengrad, Bulgaria. We rolled up and pantomimed with the gas station attendants until they finally agreed to drag their auto-mechanic friend a.k.a “the Maestro” out of bed. The Maestro arrived and promptly shoved a water hose into our coolant overflow tank. After much massaging of hoses, he told Anand to start the car again. About a gallon of water flew out the tail pipe! This elicited much shaking of heads.

Maestro determined that he could fix it, but he wouldn’t get the part until Monday. Rather than spending the night in a field infested with gigantic jumping spiders and who knows what else, we decided to take the night train to Istanbul. This was hilarious on many levels. You can read more about it on the Outside blog (link fixed, thanks Mom Patil!). The team saw the sights around Istanbul for 2 days and then headed to Dikili, south along the Aegean coast, to visit Sarah’s music teacher, Husnu, Husnu’s mom Akile, and his son, Oral. After two more lovely days trying to figure out logistics from the stunning and sweaty beaches of the Aegean coast, we finally hit upon a plan:

Yet again, Camille proved an invaluable ally by getting her mother to make new a new plate for us and overnight it to Istanbul, where the ladies would pick it up from Cordial House Hostel, where we’re staying. With the help of Andrew’s Bulgarian friend Ina and another friend Matt, we have been able to locate the car at the Maestro’s place and the boys went to get the vehicle. Right now the boys are in Greece trying to get through the other border and the girls are in Istanbul and hopefully the car is soon to be united with its new plates (either at the border or in Istanbul) and then we can get the heck through Turkey and on to more Eastern destinations!

P.S. Anyone who’s heading to Istanbul soon should definitely check out our new favorite breakfast place, Erhan Cafe and Restaurant. It only opened a couple of weeks ago, but Erhan is so exceedingly nice that when we ordered breakfast the other day he said “of course, come in” and then had to send out some little messenger boys to buy the vegetables at the market! And when Anand wanted cream for his coffee, he went out and bought that too! Not only was it one of the cheapest meals we’ve had since arriving in Istanbul, it was by far the best, featuring home-made cherry jam and orange-peel marmalade. CBPG gives it 5 stars all the way!

Our car is so eco-friendly, it grows lichen

Felicia in the poppies

The team

Upon arriving in Vienna, we grabbed some döner kebab and went to see some sights like a cathedral and a palace, a candy store, and ice cream store, and then to a pizza place for dinner – as we were traveling with Ben, it was naturally the eating-tour of Vienna.

Team relaxes after ice cream at Tichy

The next morning we bought some new tires and then went to the museumsquartier to see an exhibit of Klimt and Schiele and the Jugendstijl at the Leopold Museum and Thomas Ruff at the Kunsthalle. After cooling off in the lovely air conditioning (it was HOT in Vienna!), we headed to the awesomely fun trampolines floating on the Danube.

Anand flips out

Sarah and Anand work on their circus act

Jessie rocks out in mid-flight

We finished the day with the most delicious Halloumi sandwiches on earth, some refreshing beverages, and tortes at Cafe Goldegg.

Team CBPG at Cafe Goldegg

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.

Looking up the Shakhimardan towards Kyrgyzstan

As a p.s., it’s not actually too dangerous for Americans to be traveling in Uzbekistan.  We’d have to be more worried if any of us looked Muslim (we’ll have to make sure Anand shaves…).  Although it’s ostensibly a Muslim country, the government is staunchly atheist and has done much to try to suppress the post-Soviet resurgence of Islam.

We are starting a blog about this for a couple of reasons.

1. We thought our friends and family might be interested in our progress both preparing for the race and while we are in the field.
2. To raise money! On this blog you will find a link to our cafe press store where you can buy cool shirts and other items, the profits from which will go to paying for the car, charity, and other expenses. We will also have a paypal donation site and I’m thinking of selling off some other stuff (mainly photography related), so stay tuned for that!

Ok, that’s pretty much the main two reasons. Please stay tuned for more developments as they arise! Also, please let us know if you have leads on any good, small cars located in the UK or have other fund-raising ideas