Day 45: the ghosts of rally future

Khovd, Mongolia. We're at the Mongol Rally graveyard, a garage full of wrecks of rally vehicles that died in the country and could only make it this far on a tow-rope. It's an eery sight.



There's only so many blown tyres and wrecked windscreens you can look at before you start thinking there's no chance your little Punto will ever make it. Thankfully Mr W is parked outside and doesn't have to see this.



One car advertises its sponsor, a motor parts supplier, as 'one of the cheapest in the UK'. Seeing their dead motor here, that's not a great advert. We're here to try and score a spare tyre. Trouble is, as we've already noticed, no-one round here drives Puntos, and tyres are particular beasts. But Jeff and Steve go off to a mad market full of watermelons and animal skins and manage to find a wheel that's both the right size and has the right bolt spacing on it.





So we leave safe in the knowledge we've got a fine rear end and a couple of proper spares. Which is handy - the road from Khovd to the next town is an infamous 200km car-killer.

We woke up that morning at the ger camp, refreshed from a decent night's sleep and a shower powered by a particularly shit generator. Much faffing ensues, with the convoy taking practically all day to get almost nothing done. The only achievements are Steve having around $20 nicked from his wallet, and Robbie, one of the blokes from the Mong Way Round team, being relieved of $100. Thieving shits.

There's also chance for Greg to discover he's snapped a rear spring in his Daihatsu. Luckily we've still got the Audi springs that were too crap to take Mr W's weight and had to be replaced. They do the ridiculous and stick one onto his wagon as a temporary measure. It seems to work.

Paul continues his run of fine cow-shit chefery by cooking a ridiculous breakfast of omelette and beans. It's a sad day for us, as we have to say our farewells and god-speeds to Greg and Karmel and the German boys. They're up for making their way to the finish line incredibly slowly, heading off into the countryside to check out more lakes. It's a shame, as they're ace people and we've had a cracking time together, arse-fat and all. If you're reading this, chaps, remember the door is always open in Cornwall.



After way way more faffing, we finally get on the road at about 6pm. We're starting to get a bit frustrated with all this. It's clearly just a product of moving in a large group, but coming as it does right near the end of the trip we'd much rather be moving - at whatever pace - than sitting around waiting for other people to sort their shit out. You never saw Rubber Ducky parked in a lay-by waiting half an hour for the other truck drivers to buy crisps. But it's a convoy and that's what you do. You don't want to be the bell-ends that cane off ahead only to break down and need people's help four miles down the road.

We drive past some guys in a Mongolian van, who gesture at us to stop. One guy comes over wearing camouflage gear and stinking of booze. 'What is your name?!' he shouts. 'How old are you?!' Turns out he's a Mongolian throat singer. He treats us to a little burn...





When we do finally get on the road there are problems straight away. Mong Way Round's Skoda punctures its gearbox when we're out in the middle of nowhere. As usual I get stuck right into the engine work:



Light is fading, so this dictates where we camp - next to the Skoda. It's not like there's a road you can camp next to - there's just a series of trails. We just need to set up somewhere in between them, and hope no-one decides to forge their own new path right through us in the middle of the night.



We sit around drinking vodka. Stunning place. Blah blah blah. Tomorrow, however, we have to face our futures - on that car-killing road...

Day 44: tears of a marmot

Somewhere between Olgiy and Khovd, Mongolia. Mongolians tend to be very curious and hands-on. Take the woman who joins us at our campsite in the morning. She's intrigued by an aerosol lying next to an empty vodka bottle, and sprays it into her own face from about 12 inches. It's a stimulating insight into the effects of pepper spray.

She's there for about an hour pouring water into her streaming eyes until Paul, the purveyor of said spray, emerges from his ambulance and points out that water only makes it worse. What she needs is milk. Something like this was bound to happen eventually - the people here do like to rummage. They've got their hands all over everything, asking if they can have it. Greg compares it to a jumble sale. 'You can't take that,' he says to one woman. 'My pants, my beans, I need those.'

We have a couple of women into our tent. They're lovely, but they're also very grabby. At the end of their little visit we've given away our jam, our bread, our penultimate packet of wet-wipes and one of our wind-up torches. Jeff then goes and breaks the other one.



At risk of sounding like a repetitive and irriating tit, the morning is beautiful once again. It's soiled only by the system people have developed for crapping in the wild flat landscape - drive your car off a few hundred metres, then dig a pit behind it and squat. Jeff takes Mr W off for a spin, and comes back beaming at having produced 'a foot-long', next to a mound with the body of a dead dog on top commemorating his efforts.

Before this trip I don't think I'd ever seen a dead dog. Now I've seen hundreds. I've also seen a dead horse. Paul makes a proud proclamation: 'I tea-bagged a marmot.' And then he mimes it. Pretty soon he's talking about going fishing, and doing even more disgusting things to a trout. Not sure why I'm telling you this, but it struck me as funny. I am falling in love with these Germans.



We drive off, again down incredibly bumpy roads, past vast lakes, yaks and more snow-capped peaks, covering ourselves in dust. Crank up the fans and you get a thick puff of choking white mist to the face. I point out there's a lot of traffic, given the fact we're off on this mental dirt track. 'This is the main road,' says Steve. 'It's the M5.'

This main road apruptly ends when we hit a river. There's no bridge or anything, you just have to pick a spot that's not too deep and hammer it across, hoping you don't get stuck.



There's much tense milling about and smoking of cigarettes as the Suzuki 4x4 blazes its way through as a depth test, following the route suggested by a local bloke on a motorbike. Greg wangs it through in his Daihatsu.



The water comes a fair way up the wheels, but it's our best hope. It's soon Steve's turn. Of course Mr W takes it in her stride.

Never in doubt. We finally wind up at Khovd, and drive past a sign advertising the 'Mongol Rally camp'. They've clearly spotted a cash cow. It's an opportunity for us to spend a night in a ger. Before that, Paul invites us to dinner, cooking up an amazing dinner of goat in a massive pan fuelled by cow shit. As a meal it'd be amazing even if we hadn't been living almost exclusively off army rations and biscuits.



It's another fine night of vodka and chat, before we experience the quiet warmth of a night in the ger. It's also incredibly dark in there - I wake up in the middle of the night, so confused in the pitch black that I can't work out where I am. In my semi-conscious state, I even call out to my comrades, to check that everything is as it should be. Cue a panicked cry of: 'Dudes?!' We laugh about that in the morning.

Day 43: pimp my Boobleyoid

Olgiy, Mongolia. Mr Boobs has had an uplift. The transformation is mesmerising: the car's rear end is now pert, and she moves with fresh vigour and confidence. Mongol heads will turn once this hot bitch hits the desert.





This is all done at a garage in the back alleys opposite our hotel, in spitting distance of horrid old apartment blocks and a cow moping in the street munching on a pile of rubbish. Giant buzzards soar about over the town. Steve manages to find a mechanic who has a sturdy old spring that's just long enough to cut in half to make two for our back end. Oo-er. His welding involves wheeling out the most lethal-looking home-made electrical contraption you could possibly imagine. It looks like a post-apocalpytic electro-octopus. Pretty soon the guy's half-way to blowing himself up by trying to weld his way through his own cables.



There's much hanging around today. A couple of other cars from our convoy need work, so it takes pretty much all afternoon to get everyone wheeled in and patched up. Then there's shopping to do. And fannying about. That's the trouble with convoys: you get the camaraderie and the support, but you also have to suffer a huge faff. The on-going delay is just enough time for someone to go into the hotel's 'safe' room, next to the reception desk, and whip $300 and Jeff's mobile from our bags. It's not a good first taste of Mongolia. It's weird - we've driven half-way round the world and had no problems anywhere, apart from the car getting keyed outside a gig in Cornwall, when raising money for a local hospice, and getting money nicked from Mongolia, when we're raising money for Mongolia. Big hairy balls.

There is a big upside to convoys too of course. You're with nice people. And these people are more than happy to sort you out with some moolah to make up for the stuff that's just gone wandering. Both the Mong Way Round boys and Greg and Karmel happily fronted up some cash to help us out with the car repairs and paying for food, which we buy at the 'bar-karaoke-pub-restaurant'. Which for me rivals Old Street's fast-food joint FCKF (Fried-chicken-kebab-fish) for deft beauty of moniker.

Eventually we're all ready to leave. A proper Cannonball Run scene as four cars, two jeeps and an ambulance weave their way round the town, trying to find someone to dish us out some fuel.



By the time we're all ready to go there's barely any time to get anywhere. This is the pattern for the next few days. We're aiming for a massive lake about 70km away. But it's blatantly not going to happen, so we end up finding a smaller lake nearer and setting up camp there.



It's the most ridiculously picturesque camp of my life. There are a couple of traditional gers (round white nomadic tent things) off to our right - the women who live there come over with their kids for a couple of vodkas, as they sit round the fire. We shit outside, like wild men.



It's another great night, sitting round the fire talking shit.





Can't remember anything else. Tired. Sorry, this is the lamest blog update so far. Bollocks.

**SMS update 19**

Left at 29th August 2009 at 09:47

Recieved by SMS (Location: Olgy - Mongolia)

mr wazz has been pimped by some local dudes and is now enjoying a higher ride. On the bum side some dick has nicked all our dollars from the hotel secure room? but our new convoy buddies have sorted us out. So dunt worry bout it-All good really!

Day 42: into the wild

The middle of nowhere, Mongolia. The three of us sit looking at the three flat dust trails fanning out in front of us. One goes straight ahead, one bends to the left, the other splits off to the right. In navigating terms that's about as useful as being out to sea and someone saying 'hang a right at the wet patch'.

We're just staring at mountains ringing a load of sand.

Pass.

I want you now to go back and erase from your mind any cases in previous blogs where I've used the words 'mental' and 'weird'. As I feared, I really did shoot my bolt too soon there. This is where the trip truly cranks itself up to 11.

Escape from Mongatraz



We woke up among the detritus of vodka and flame, next to the Germans' ambulance, with the sun rising over the hills. The night seemed toasty at the time, but my body temperature has dropped right off. I've got the chills. Which isn't surprising given that even everyone who slept in cars is complaining of shivering all night. Greg tells me he was whimpering the whole time like a small child.

Despite the discomfort we're right back in the game, buoyed by thoughts of being back on the road before the morning's out. A groundhog lemming thing sniffs around at our pans. The big birds are still circling. We even spot a few choughs. 'This is rapidly turning into one of our best stops,' says Jeff. 'Ace nature, ace laughs.' We spot our first yak herd wandering past. 'Yak on,' says Jeff. We celebrate with more coffee and beautifully inept hacky-sack.

But the morning passes and we're still here. We get little Boldbaatr to demonstrate his prowess at Mongolian wrestling. After the Kazakh talc fight, it's the perfect chance for Jeff to reclaim some of his flagging self-respect - by wrestling a child.



The weather turns crap - blowy and wet. And we get tired and shitty again. If we're not out today I'm going to pound Andy's face in. Hi Andy. Steve creates a makeshift shelter out of a sheet of tarpaulin and the Mr Wazzboobleyoid's left flank. We sit under it and eat. Time passes, nothing happens. This is rubbish.



Soon there's more action at the entry gate - a few more cars of rallyers has arrived. We say our hellos, then all end up camped in the customs office waiting for some information. Any information. Please. It's not overly forthcoming. But towards the end of the day we hear word that our man on the other end of the phone has been given the green light - the money has been sorted and they'll be letting us out today.



And so, at 6.30pm, after 31 hours at Mongolian customs, we're finally free. Unleashed upon the world again, we're now part of our first convoy of the trip - five car-loads of idiots weaving their way out through the village onto bumpy dirt roads and into the void. We're away. Finally.




Within two minutes the Fiesta in front has caught fire. What is this? One of the team, Sam, is leaping about, chucking stuff out of the boot, with everyone rushing around her to coat the contents with the foam from fire extinguishers. They had a battery sitting in the back connected to a load of inept wiring and it blew up.



Much faffing ensues, and after two days in customs we're wired and short-tempered and in no mood to remain still, so we plough ahead. Spat out of purgatory and off into the unknown. It's amazing. We're now in proper rally territory - loud rock blaring out as the Punto wheels spit up clouds of dust in our wake. We navigate by the sun and compass. Steve's driving. Our track has just split in two, each curving off into an uncertain distance. He shrugs his shoulders. Jeff points his hand to the right. 'That's south.' We go right.

A jeep comes bombing past looking decidedly local and in the know. We follow him for a bit.

Later on we take what appears to be the road, but Steve spots a problem up ahead. 'There's a gate,' he says. 'This isn't the road.' Sure enough there's a barely discernable trail curving away to our right, under the telegraph poles. Here's one tip for desert driving - if you're not sure which road to take, stay close to the poles, as they're bound to lead to the next town.



Luckily we're taking it very easy, and the others soon catch us up, which is ideal. We've enjoyed being fairly independent of the rally so far - the whole thing has wound up being a road-trip for the three of us - but we quickly appreciate that out here we're so much better off as part of a crew. The convoy gets a big 10-4.



The Aussies in the Jimney 4x4 cane ahead, led by their GPS, with the rest of us in tow. It's a crazy scene - the sun setting behind us, cars veering off all over the place, picking trails, overtaking each other, hopping off of one trail across stoney scrub land to join another. Out the window to the right, a zebra-coloured Skoda bounces along past us in a cloud of sand. To the left it's a battered blue Fiesta. It's like Mad Max has downsized to a more fuel-efficient model.

We roll past a load of yaks grazing next to a lake. They're big-shouldered horny hairy bastards. Soon we stop to regroup, which quickly turns into a chance to throw some shapes in the desert. The yaks watch me and Jeff get funky.







Our first taste of the potentially sketchy comes when the trail leads us up a steep hill. Round here they don't believe in gently winding around mountains - the road goes straight up. Mr W is in first gear giving it everything she's got. It's nearly not enough, but she makes it. Just. Like a Scottish gym teacher panting his way up the Gladiators travelator.

The reward is to look back on one of the most stunning views we've ever experienced. Jeff has a moment. Me too - it's my second nature-based well-up of the trip, after Kyrgyzstan. The feeling is one of triumph mixed with privilege. We're lucky to be here. The mood is altered when Greg pulls up, with Stenalees Surf Club's rendition of Magic Number booming out of his jeep. I gave him the CD earlier. This is ace. We formed the band for the trip, now I'm standing in Mongolia as a new mate cranks our sound out across the desert.

The only downer is that finding the chance to write is becoming increasingly tricky. The perfect writing time used to be in the back of the car as we drove, or in a hotel of an evening once we've turned in. But now we're rolling in a convoy, there's vodka to be drunk, and the roads are so bumpy that a simple sentence can all too easifsds;5ly; tuasdhkrn isnto sthissasgh ksaind oasf shit. If I try to sneak off for a cheeky half-hour in a car, someone comes over to ask what I'm up to. Even now, it's 7.15am in the middle of the desert, I've just taken a crap next to a telegraph pole, silhouetted by the rising sun, and every other fucker just got up as I started writing this. And they're making me coffee. The selfish bastards.

The convoy crawls into town under the cover of night, guided in by a Mongolian man on a chopper with a fuel tank painted up like the Stars and Stripes. We end up at a hotel which charges $20 a piece, for a shitty room with no shower. We take over an entire floor, with everyone arranging to meet in each others' rooms for booze. It's ace, if a bit too much like university halls for someone in their thirties to be totally at ease with.

We wile the night away with the Germans and Greg and Karmel, on the vodka. It's a great night, mellow, talking. Martin makes the point that if you got 15 people together to compile their stories from the rally, you'd have an almighty collection. Then they show everyone the photos of the arse-fat they were fed in Kyrgyzstan. I hadn't expected it to be actually anus-shaped.

Day 41: purgatory

The Russia-Mongolia border. Customs. 'You don't sound too wound up about the whole thing, so that's good.' Andy, one of the rally organisers, is on the phone, referring to our reaction at being held by customs until we pay $,2000 tax to bring the car into the country.

Indeed, we are quite mellow now, because Andy and the Adventurists were straight on the case to sort it out. Go team. But 20 minutes ago I had them being buried neck-deep in the Gobi desert, giant marmots gnawing raw meat from their twisted faces, as I poked at their eyes with our lucky wolf's claw.

'Loving the blog,' says Andy.



The day started bright enough. We wake up with the rising sun, to discover that the Russian border, our home for the night, is in the middle of yet more beautiful hills, with more snow-capped mountains in the distance. Birds of prey are circling above our heads. We eat super-noodles and drink coffee, propelled by the caffeine into a laughable game of hacky-sack. There's an ace toilet. All is good.



Soon a load of Russians and Mongolians show up to queue for the border too. We've foolishly left a car's length between us and the one in front, and watch incredulous as a bloke performs a protracted 15-point turn to wedge his 4x4 into the tiny space. Utterly pointless. Foreigners, eh.

It soon opens and we're through in a couple of hours. It's relatively painless, and we're just excited to be getting on to Mongolia. We drive out into what seems like no-man's land - things turn barren immediately, and we drive 20km seeing only the occasional truck. Where's the entry border? We pass a final checkpoint signalling the end of Russia, whereupon we get an immediate taste of our new home - the road goes from being a smooth strip of tarmac one side of the gate, to a shitty bumpy car-pummelling dirt track on the other.

This bumps along for 7km, before we pull up to the entry border. We're queuing behind a few Russian trucks. 'Welcome to Mongolia!' says a cheery soldier. Very mellow. He takes me to sort out some car documents. 'Change money?' That doesn't normally happen. As usual we've no idea what the exchange rate's supposed to be, so I take his offer of 1,000 tugrug to $1.

Inside a shed there's a bloke watching TV on a black-and-white set so shit he'd get more entertainment out of watching a microwave. 'One dollar,' he says. What for? 'Vehicle decontamination.' This involves driving through a small pool of filthy stagnant water - which seems more like vehicle recontamination. Steve asks whether they offer a full valet service. By now it's not the outside of this car that's carrying the virulent disease.

I give him a dollar. He tells me to drive round the decontamination tank. I like his style. I wonder how much I owe him for not giving me a cheeky hand-job. 'Change money?' This is weird. We'll need more than $100-worth, so I take his offer of 1,100 tugrug to $1.



Our passports are stamped immediately. 'Welcome to Mongolia' says the girl behind the desk. This could be the easiest border crossing ever. It's all pretty mellow: there's a few kids hanging around the office, one of whom seems to be the handler for the sniffer dog. It's a new approach to 'bring your spawn to the office' day.

We do our vehicle document bit, and get asked to sit down on a row of plastic seats by the wall. So we do. We wait. And we wait. And we wait. A little man in a suit beckons us into his office. 'Change money?' We've got plenty of money now, so we turn down his offer of 1,200 tugrug to $1.

We wait. And then they close for lunch.

It's all fairly mellow round here, so we decide to wander out of the compound to get some grub. The guard at the gate asks us where we're going. To the kafe. Ok. Brilliant.

The town isn't so much a town as a settlement. Nothing but a handful of concrete bungalows dotted about, with the odd white wall covered in spray-painted words like 'shop' and 'kafe'. A guy shows us into a building. It's basically someone's kitchen, full of women and raw meat. If only sex were on sale too it'd be ideal. It actually looks like someone's house. The weirdest thing is that the girl from the passport desk is in here, sitting at the table next to her mum.

They show us to the other room, which is full of beds and a table. There's no choice or anything, they just bring us bowls of dumplings. An old woman comes over and asks if we want chi. Yes please. Then she goes over to a bucket full of milk and asks if we want it. We don't want it. She ladels it into the chi. Oh. 'Mama,' she says.

We eat loads of dumplings, and then go to pay. Comes out at $18. Jesus Christ. These Mongolians know how to screw people. At least people who they know are stuck at customs.

Back at the office, I ask a dodgy-looking bloke what's going on. This is where he drops the bombshell about the $2k tax. We don't share enough common language to discuss it. All I know is it's not true. One girl here speaks a little English. She tells me we have to pay, and to call the rally people. 'Wait in the car please,' she says. There's little in that request to suggest the wait will be another 24 hours.

This is the point at which my mind starts to fill with the image of kidnapping a load of clever young entrepreneurs, burying them up to their necks in sand and unleashing ferocious beasts upon their features. Nice marmot. Then we have a nap, and I wake up feeling a bit better. I recall the logic of the trip - to trust stuff and watch it resolve itself. I look at Pete, the nodding dog, and notice his head is nodding, ever-so-slightly, even though the car isn't moving. I decide to call the Adventurists instead of killing them. I speak to Lamorna, who immediately tells me to ring someone who'll sort everything out. Ideal.

I call and a dude called Aruka says he can sort it. Minutes later Andy's on the phone, reassuring us that they're on the case and that they'll have us through tomorrow morning at the latest. We'd expected it to take a while, so this is all no biggie.



We're not moving, so Steve takes the opportunity to tinker more with the rear suspension, taking the springs out again to repack them, filling them with bits of hardboard. A Mongolian kid shows up and watches intently through the fence. He's ace. His name is Boldbaatr, he lives in the village, and he already has a handshake that can have a grown man whimpering. He becomes Steve's little helper, running to find stones that Steve can use to jack the car up.



Towards the evening we spot an odd-looking vehicle in the distance, just pulling into the compound. It's an ambulance covered in stickers, clearly a Mongol Rally vehicle. It's driven by two Germans, Martin and Paul. They're joined by a couple, Greg and Karmel, who are driving a battered Daihatsu 4x4, which looks like it's been through the ringer.

We give them the lowdown on what's happening, and once they go through the paperwork bit we settle down for an evening in the car compound. This means creating a sesh. Steve and I wander out to grab some vodka from the shop. This gives us such a great taste of Mongolia - stooping through a tiny doorway into the darkness, pushing on a big wooden door and stepping into a large empty room with a bloke surrounded by small piles of groceries at the far end.



We return to find we've been locked out. Which puts us in the unusual position of having to break back into somewhere we've been detained. Being Mongolia, that's easy enough - just hop the fence - then it's on with a sesh. We start a fire, neck vodka, and get to know each other. Greg and Karmel have had a hell of a time - they suffered an almighty blow-out in the heat of Turkmenistan, which flipped their Daihatsu and sent it flying 30-feet off the road. It sounds horrific - Greg had to pull her out all bloodied and, as he says, make sure she was ok before he could start getting photos.

The beautiful upshot is the good that came from it. The accident led to them spending three days with a Turkmen family, Greg off having a laugh with the boys, Karmel expriencing what it's like to be a woman in these countries.

The German guys are classic, and they've had a hell of a rally, taking in everything from dodgy dealings with patchy Ukranian hookers, to meeting the dog-fighting champion of Kazakhstan, and staying with a family in Kyrgystan who slayed a lamb in front of them before feeding them the whole thing, including its balls and, much to our amusement and Paul's continued dismay, the arse-fat.

This rally is brilliant - everyone has had a mad time, and each story is completely different. It allows for myriad different experiences, from the extreme to the beautifully minor. What I hadn't expected was people doing the rally as part of a wider trip - both the Germans and Greg and Karmel are going on afterwards, to China and Oz.



The night winds up with us performing our first live music since Dortmund. Everyone has a good time, depsite the fact we keep forgetting everything, and it all reaches a glorious crescendo with the improvised magic of the Arse-fat Blues.



Then we sleep, outside the car, on the concrete. It's fucking cold. The RAF sleeping bags do us proud, despite the near freezing temperatures. All being well, we'll be out in the morning.