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.
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