All right?

We three idiots jumped into our Punto on 18 July 2009 and joined the Mongol Rally, driving 9,000 miles from Cornwall to Mongolia to raise money for Cornwall Hospice Care.

Yeah, we weren't sure whether that was a good idea either.

We got way more than we could have hoped for: a Caspian ghost ship, a broke border crossing with no visas, an Uzbek wedding and countless attempts to get us to pay for sex. All designed to test our team philosophy:

Duntwurryboudit

You can read all about the trip in the archive to the right. There's an entry for each day, and all of them are way too long and detailed. We saw it mainly as a record for ourselves, but it may be handy if you're planning a similar trip. There's literally nothing of practical value in it, but it should make you smile.

You can make a brew and start at day one, or navigate around based on whatever catches your eye.

The result of it all: we managed to hit the ridiculous fundraising target of £5k (plus £1k for Mercy Corps in Mongolia). Which essentially shows that our mates are brilliant. Thanks.

Day 50: never any doubt

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We've driven over 9,000 miles in the past seven weeks. By comparison, our final task doesn't sound quite so epic: crawling about 500m across Ulaanbaatar to the finish line. Woo-hoo. Still, that's harder than it sounds when you've got no idea where you're going, the electronics in your car are buggered, and you're sharing the road with a bunch of utter lunatics. It's even harder when the owner of the guesthouse buggers off with the key to the car-park so you can't get out. In other words, we're not counting it as a given till we've got that damn Punto across that damn finish line.

We're up early unloading all the shite from Mr Wazzboobleyoid in advance of the handover. It's a weird feeling. To be honest it's pretty ace to be able to ditch most of the stuff, as it's caked in two-months worth of general grime and a shitload of dust from a week in the desert. And Jeff peed on the back seat. But I've become used to life on the road, and thinking about giving away Mr W, who is essentially my first car (at age 32), it's a sad day.



I unload my drum kit into Guillermo's ambulance - he knows someone who runs a school project that would love to take it on. So it's all worthwhile - we lugged it all the way here on the roof, and I only played the fucker once, but at least now some kids are going to benefit. Who knows, it could inspire the next Phil Collins. Genghisis.

The drive to the finish doesn't feel anything like a cert. We're all a bit on edge as we meander our way lost round the city, trying to avoid collisions with these maniacs. Any fuck-up now would be unbelievably dumb. But after several laps of the place we manage to find a useful landmark and work out where we are.



We spot the sign for the finish line, and Steve drives us through a car park towards it. A bloke unchains a barrier, and we're in. It's all highly surreal. Loads of people are staring at the car. We get out. Now they're staring at us. 'Welcome to Mongolia,' says one guy. Thanks. We arrived a week ago.

We soon realise it's because we're about an hour away from one of the auctions, and these people are looking to be first to get their grubby hands on our merchandise.

Next up it's a beer, and chucking shampers around, taking a few photos. Then I fill out a couple of forms, hand over the keys and we're done.

Done. Stenalees to Ulaabaatar. 50 days. 9,101 miles.

We hear word that an auction has started inside, so we go in to get a taste of what awaits Mr W once we're gone. It's weird being in a roomful of Mongolian city-dwellers bidding for piece-of-shit cars that are totally unsuitable for use in their country. Especially ones that are covered in stickers and marker-pen scrawls. As Jeff points out, the roads are gridlocked. Who needs another city car? I wonder where everyone is going. The city is small enough to walk around, and there's bugger all beyond the city anyway.

Still they're snapping up the cars. We watch the Potters' Punto go for, I think, $999. I wonder how much they'll pay for an identical car with only one back seat. And one which is covered in wee...

Thanklettes

In true hip-hop album sleeve style, I'd like to give a few shout outs. We'd like to say thanks especially to Gabi and his family for befriending us back in Bulgaria and for staying in touch with the story all the way through. I'm sorry to report no Big Problems, not even the horrific sexual abuse you predicted for us in Turkmenistan. The idiots won...

I'd also like to thank Alisher and the guys from the wedding in Uzbekistan for the warmest welcome of the trip, and to remind anyone in a position to carpet-bomb rural Azerbaijan to do so, in a bid to eradicate the menace that is the little shepherd twat who stole Doug and our football.

Thanks also to Andy, Dan and Lamorna at the Adventurists for helping set up such a memorable trip. And for reading and enjoying the blogs. Finally I'd like to thank everyone who sponsored us - you easily passed the fundraising target for Mercy Corps, and are so close to the Cornwall Hospice Care total. Another cheap party should sort that out. It's all been a massive laugh. And finally again I'd like to thank everyone for reading this blog. I'm genuinely chuffed to know that people have been out there following the inane crap we've been getting into. We'll be tweaking the blog over the next few weeks, putting in the best pictures and more video clips once we have the luxury of a bit more time.

And I'm brewing up another trip for next year that will be designed to keep people entertained. So stay in touch for that.

A special final shout goes out to Greg in the Daihatsu, for a comment that really tickled me:

Greg meets a bloke on the road who keeps referring to the Lonely Planet as the 'Lonely P'.

'Please don't speak to me,' he says.

------

Well that about wraps her up. This blog has been brought to you by the letters S, S, and C, and the number 3. And the music of Talking Heads, Beck, the Raconteurs, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, System of a Down, Guerner, Cinematic Orchestra, Aphrodite's Child and two iPods'-worth of shuffle.

As a potentially over-informative aside, my challenge of avoiding self-pleasure for the duration of the trip proved too much. It was a close-run thing but, over the course of the seven weeks, wanks beat wet dreams 3-2.

We'll leave the last word to my big bro: 'Keep on truckin'...'

Thanks again for reading,



Stenalees Surf Club Mongol Rally Minstrel Division

Day 49: the end?

The road to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Steve and a French guy are trying their best to wrap a bandage round a Mongolian's head to hold his skull together. The poor bloke has flown down a steep slope in his van and rolled it, hammering his head into the desert through smashing glass as the vehicle tipped. His moaning is rapidly becoming a gurgle. He's punctured at least one lung, which is clearly filling with blood. He has about 10 minutes to live.

Minutes before we'd come to the bottom of the track and seen the guy's van lying on its side, a massive sattelite dish and a load of wood overloading the roof that faced us, a crowd of Mongolians sitting around his body as it writhed in pain in the sand.

People are trying to move him - Steve tells them to stop, and asks the French guy if he has thought to try draining the bloke's lungs. 'Yes,' he says, 'but think about it - if we try it out here and he dies these people will kill us.' It's time for quick decisions. Steve has done everything he can to help him, and quickly opts to move us on urgently before the guy passes on and things turn hysterical. We leave as a medical team arrives, too late. Steve says it's one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make.

It's an otherworldly moment for the final day of our trip, and it really puts everything into perspective as we finally reach the fabled tarmac for the first time in this country. The mood in the car is sombre and philosophical. Jeff points out it's a good thing to be reminded of bad things in the world. 'I fucking hate people who are ignorant of everything,' he says.

Seconds later his point is brought home when we see another wreck by the side of the road, this one put on display by the government as a stark warning to motorists to watch their speed. Judging by the state of it, the owner clearly went the way of our friend back up the road. That hasn't stopped one rallyist slapping a Mongol Rally sticker on the door. Seeing that straight after our last encounter, the intended irreverance doesn't really cut it.

But what can you do? Soon the music's back on, and we're singing along in an effort to lighten our mood. Led Zeppelin. We all remark how unfortunate Stairway to Heaven sounds right now. But the road is good, the sun is blazing, and the scenery is back to its stunning best. The day passes with a particularly poignant beauty, as we watch men on horseback herding goats in the epic landscape.



We'd had a coffee and hacky-sack break earlier beneath one set of mountains; now we stop for lunch in another incredible spot, watching loads of huge birds circling overhead. As we're cooking up our pasta we notice an ambulance approaching. It's a rally vehicle. It pulls up, and out comes a beaming gregarious Argentinian called Guillermo.



He actually finished the rally a couple of weeks back - at least he hit Ulaanbaatar, he just never bothered crossing the line and handing his vehicle over. Instead he's been driving round the countryside alone, meeting locals and trying to find a worthy recipient for his ambulance and medical kit.



He leaves us to eat. By 4pm we're back on the road. The sign says 362km to Ulaanbaatar. We start getting excited. Less than 250 miles left of a 9,000-mile journey, and smooth tarmac to bring us on home.

I take the wheel for a couple of hours. As my last ever drive with Mr W, it's particularly beautiful. Then I ask Steve to take over as the light fades - our headlights are crap, and I trust his eye-sight more than mine. This turns out to be the jammiest move - within 20 yards of the swap, the tarmac suddenly disappears, and we're thrown onto the worst road we've seen since Semey in Kazakhstan, and possibly the worst road of the entire trip. What crushing timing. We're meant to be rolling in on smooth roads. As it is we're suddenly sent crunching cruelly through lethal potholes - in the dark. It's potential suicide.

Thankfully, through some unlikely gremlin of chance, we're reunited with Guilliermo moments before. He comes past us as we're swapping seats, as he gives the local chief of police a lift to Ulaanbaatar. Guillermo knows the road, and tells us to follow him and his undulating headlights through the maze. He's an absolute god-send. If Jack Kerouac met this man he'd describe him as a mad burning Argentinian saint. In an ambulance.

Heavy rock is essential at this point. The fury of System of a Down carries us through the night. We crunch into a few pot-holes. We're only a couple of hours from our destination. Can't let Mr W die now.

Guillermo's ambulance is crucial to this whole endeavour. Without his headlights we'd be struggling. Jeff realises this, so when he needs to use the loo he decides to do it in the back of the car in a bottle, so we don't lose our escort. It's not so easy over bumpy roads, especially when the bottle has a leaky neck. He's soon complaining that he's covered himself in his own wee. About 20 seconds later the ambulance pulls over. Steve and I get out to take a leak.

Then we see lights looming into view beneath us. Ulaanbaatar. This is properly exciting. At that moment, Cinematic Orchestra comes on the iPod, Fontella Bass belting out the word 'evolution!' It's all becoming a bit lyrical. We entered the country a week ago, thrust alone into a beautiful wilderness blazing trails of dust. Now we're on to smooth tarmac, rolling easily past choking power stations and crazy traffic. We've basically driven the course of the country's evolution. If that's what it is.

Guillermo's ambulance leads us on a merry dance round the city. Our indicators are fucked, so we have to signal by winding the window down and sticking an arm into the freezing night air. Junctions are madness, cars flying everywhere. He drops off his passenger, then tries to guide us to a guesthouse. We'll tackle the finish line tomorrow. After half an hour of wrong turns, he finds it - a place with secure parking and wi-fi. We've done it. We've arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

The host takes us up to our room. Fourteen hours on the road today, all we need is a shower, food and a decent kip. And to unleash our delirium. Turns out we're in a shared dorm. There are people everwhere asleep on bunk-beds. We have to talk in whispers. And there's only one shower which is constantly in use. Shit, we say - quietly.

Soon enough though we're all cleaned up and back out in the streets. It's 1am, and Guillermo is leading us on another merry dance to find food. The only place open is a Mongolian R&B club, complete with Mafia dudes and girls in short dresses bumping and grinding on the dancefloor. We pay the door charge, and wander in unkempt and boasting an enormity of beard, ridiculously paying the fee to occupy a VIP table. After seven days out in the desert, the mountains and the steppe, we tuck into pizza and chips. Evolution indeed. But we made it. And the beer tastes incredibly good.

Tomorrow, barring any crushing disasters, we'll cross the finish line.

Day 48: masters of our domain

From Altai to Bayan Khongor, Mongolia. Like a true pro I'm checking our instruments - we've gone 10 miles in three hours. Now I'm no Clarkson, but that is rubbish. Today we finally have to break out of the convoy. We're all for hanging out in a crew, especially as everyone's a really good laugh, but we've clearly got different aims. And we start to go a bit mental if we don't feel like we're moving.





Lunch illustrates the problem perfectly - we roll into a roadside ger in the middle of nowhere, and the woman offers us meat and noodles, which she has to make entirely from scratch. It takes an hour and a half before we're done. No-one's bothered at all, which is fair enough. But Steve spends the whole time out in the car. Different aims.

The ger woman is also cooking up tea - in a huge wok-thing cooking on a ferocious flaming cow-shit stove. I want to adopt this system for making a brew at home:

'I'll just pop the kettle on.' WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF!

Her job done, she sits down on a stool next to us and starts breast-feeding. Waitresses tend not to do that in restaurants at home. I'm tempted to profer my tea-cup but I realise, as gags go, that would be desperately immature. Plus she may well oblige, which would be weird.



It's a hell of a lunch spot (and that's not a reference to the breast-feeding) so it's a shame we've soiled it slightly by being angsty about moving. Especially as everyone else is just having a laugh and going at their own pace. But things get worse after lunch with a river crossing that takes ages, and pre-empts another bout of hanging around. We sit in the Punto sulking.

All of this is made worse by today's weather. After two months of largely glorious sunshine, we've hit a day of cold dank grey, with a howling wind whipping sand into our faces. It's rough. Not the kind of conditions for hanging about in. Better to be on the move watching from inside a warm Boobleyoid.



Pretty soon we are away again - the roads have turned from perilous hard corrugations to sand tracks, which is a good laugh to slide about in, and not deep enough for us to get stuck. So we can finally get some pace up. We're following the jeep, which pulls to one side to wait for the others and waves us on ahead saying they'll catch up. Which is highly likely, as I'm driving.



So it's a surprise to find an hour or so later that we're still out on our own. We figure they must have got caught up helping one of the other teams, but see it as a chance to recover our own feel to the trip so instead of hanging about we press on. The plan was always to drive 80km to the next town and camp just outside, so we figure they can catch us up.

We've got no map, and haven't worked out how to get M Waller's GPS thing going, so now we're out on our own for the first time in ages, in the middle of nowhere, which makes everything feel more vital again. We've got the tunes on loud, and our mood brightens, mainly at once again being in control of our own destiny.



After a few hours, just as it's getting dark, we see the town of Bayan Khongor lying nestled at the foot of the mountains ahead of us. That'll do for a camping spot - absolutely stunning. We leave the car in a prominent place on the hill and camp next to it, so if the others catch up they can see it.

Our 'calculations' put us about 100 miles from the start of the tarmac road which is supposed to lead us all the way into Ulaanbaatar, a further 250 miles down. With an early start tomorrow, and the freedom to move and stop as we please, we realise there's no reason why we can't pull that off in one day. Especially if the road is as good as people say.

All being well this will be our last camp of the trip. Which is ideal, as it's fucking freezing.

Day 47: plight of the navigators

Approaching Altay, Mongolia. People tend to love driving off-road. I like the idea of it, but I can't help feeling that giving me the keys to the car here is a little like Hugh Heffner handing control of the Playboy mansion to a eunoch and going: 'seriously chief, do absolutely anything you want'. It's a nice idea, he replies, but I'm going to need a lot of help. And a Haynes manual.

But after Jeff's willful destruction of our rear-end in last night's frenzied heavy-rock-and-Jelly-Baby rush, it seems I've gone up one place up the driving pecking order. I guess the logic is that the worst that can happen at the pace I move is that the engine nods off out of sheer boredom. But like Jeff, I too draw inspiration from the desert rock gods.

We drive on. The boys in the Suzuki Jimney score the ultimate prize - soon they're strapping a skull with horns to the front grill of their jeep. It's a good look, especially as they've also simulated a pair of bollocks hanging out of the back. Viewed side-on the car takes on the appearance of the complete beast. It's incredibly painful following on behind and watching its dangling jewels taking bad whacks on desert rocks.

We've got about 1,000km to go till we reach Ulaanbaatar. We're averaging around 20 miles an hour. That's not good. We're still trying to get there in three days, and the Skoda is still having problems. Again, there's a lot of waiting. And faffing.



Soon enough though we arrive at Altay, and our second visit to a rally graveyard. This time the idea is to find someone to fix our rear suspension. A chain-smoking mechanic beckons Steve to drive Mr W in over the car pit so he can take a look. I feel bad for the car. She must feel like C-3PO when he wandered into the Jawa's transporter and saw all the broken droids screaming as the weird little dudes went to work on their feet with the welder.



But there's a stroke of luck: sitting among the car corpses there's another Fiat Punto. It's blue too. In fact it looks worryingly like Mr W. The only difference is that its rear springs are intact. So there's no reason why we can't just pull the springs out the back and swap them - at least then we'd be in the same position as we were when we left England, on springs that are short and stocky and designed to take the weight of our car.



I say there's no reason not to swap them, but that doesn't account for the logic of Mongolian mechanics. Ours is a bit of a character, an old dude in red overalls who stinks of booze. But he seems intent on denying us our plan to pilfer the springs. Instead he's trying to get us to buy brand new ones - ones which look worryingly like the soft and useless Audi springs we had back in Kazakhstan - so he can cream a few quid out of the sale.

We indulge him, figuring he knows what he's doing. And it all looks great. The back end looks amazing. Until they let the car off the jack and the back slowly sinks down about half-way over the rear wheels. It's laughable. Still they seem convinced they've done a decent job, and ask Steve to take her for a test-drive. The underside takes an almighty scrape just trying to get out the garage. That doesn't stop the mechanics getting arsey with us for being awkward.

It's a huge pain - we know what we want but we share no language, so it takes a couple of hours to convince them we're right. It's a big ball-ache, and another lesson in that quality which the rally has taught us so much about: patience. Much of the conversation takes place rubbing fingers through the dust on the Punto's back window, trying to convince the bloke it's just the springs that need doing, not the whole shock system.

After a long protracted process involving the rally organisers' Mongolian representative, we finally convince the bloke to pull and fit the springs from the dead Punto. It works fine - and could have saved us two hours. So right now we owe a debt to the Plight of the Navigators, the owners of that poor Punto, for unknowingly helping us back on the road and towards our twisted destiny.



Jeff is chatting to the mechanic about our route. The bloke uses mime to convey the idea that the last section we drove was the really shit part. The worst is behind us. But he's still warning us to be careful. He does this by chucking a stone on the ground in front of him, pretending to approach it in a car, and then grabbing Jeff by the testicles. Then he repeats it, instead moving his imaginary motor around the rock, and not grabbing anyone by the testicles. He seems to be saying that, if you're a careful driver, you won't have to suffer weird drunken mechanics grabbing you by the testicles.

It's all been a bit of a pain in the arse. Working stuff like this out in a foreign language is rubbish. But by the end we're all friends. We manage to chop a few quid off the price by chucking in one of our jerry cans. The mechanic ends up hugging it like a drunk suffocating a baby.

We celebrate our success with a bowl of dumplings in the cafe next door, and then set off. Not before the Mong Way Round boys manage to pick up a hitch-hiker and shove him into their tiny weird car. He's a Swiss guy who's ambling around the country and decides for a laugh to go back to Ulaanbaatar with them, having just left the city a day or so ago.

We can't go far before setting up camp again. And yes, it is another beautiful spot. The only troubles are the wind and the cold. We steel ourselves by dancing to Aphex Twin under the stars, and then turning in. We really have to get some miles behind us tomorrow...

Day 46: onward Mongol soldiers

The road from Khovd to Altay, Mongolia. Having woken up early, with the sun coming up over the mountains, I grab the shovel and the loo roll and head off into the brightness to take a shit under a telegraph pole. Yes, I am a man.

There's something hearty and primal about the faecal act when one is out in the mountains. Especially when you come to bury it afterwards. It's like you're finally giving something back. 'Hello world. I love you. And I made you this.'



The idea was to be up and off by 8am - it'd be good to see what sort of mileage we're capable of on these roads when we're not waiting around most of the day for people to patch up their motors or purchase super-noodles. We're due to face our route's most infamous stretch of road today. It's a known car-killer. We're not sure why exactly, but we've been told to fear the worst for 200km.



But that's all a while away. Once again we have to sit around most of the morning waiting for the Skoda team to patch up their motor. Their gearbox needs tweaking so they can hobble on into the next town. So we eat a supernoodle breakfast and drink coffee, and then Jeff wanders off with the shepherd's staff he found yesterday, telling us to pick him up on our way past. We're now due out of here at 10am.

We kick our heels longer - more coffee, a few keep-ups and a bit of reading. While Jeff is away, Steve and I replace him on the team with a recently-filled bin-bag. He instantly fits right in. We decide he's hilarious. It's a shame in a way, as I quite liked Jeff.



We finally get back on the move at 11.30, which means Jeff has been wandering alone in the wilderness for about two hours. I seem to remember Jesus doing a similar thing. We find him about three miles down the track, a wild look in his eye and a camel's skull jammed onto the end of his staff.



A little while longer and he'd have had a massive beard, a load of followers and a B-tech in carpentry. As it is he's spent his time in the wilderness honing his woeful lack of knowledge of lizards:



It feels great to be back on the road. Movement is special. The music's on and the scenery is, once again, breathtaking. If wild. At one point we pass five eagles sitting on adjacent telegraph poles. While Steve drives, it's my job to scan the road for skulls. The holy grail is to find one with two horns intact. Instead I find a cow carcass. We decide against gaffer-taping it to the side of the Punto.



The sun's out. Again. In fact we're gradually dropping down out of the mountains and it's getting notably hotter.

We pull into a town for supplies. Fuck me. It's like a Wild West frontier town. Leather-faced dudes ride the streets on horse-back. Old men hang out on front steps, surrounded by Chinese motorbikes. One guy comes past and whips the front of our car. Everyone's drunk. I go into a shop to get water, and when I come out Jeff and Steve are urging me back into the car sharpish. Apparently Jeff had started giving out badges, which quickly turned into a scrum. People were getting aggro. Better to be back on the road with our convoy, our tunes and our packet of Haribo.

We begin to see why this road is known as a car-killer. The main tracks are largely made up of long stretches of corrugations - long series of small parrallel bumps that you have to hit at a fair lick in order to get anything approaching a smooth ride. This extra speed only leaves you open to hitting big rocks. It's also incredibly slidey. The best bits are when there's a generaous coasting of gravel, which Mr W is happy to surf around in. Much of the drive is spent hopping from trail to adjacent trail, trying to avoid the corrugated sections.

It's not actually as bad as we'd expected. But it is bad. We develop a golden rule: go steady. If you drive at a suitable pace, you're almost certain to make it, as you can see stuff early enough. Simple. The other teams in the convoy may seem plagued with bad luck - one team's had nine blow-outs so far, the other a punctured gear box and a problematic sump guard - but they're also going for it, speed-wise. Maybe we're just older and wiser, but we'd rather make it to the end than have to bow out because of overdoing it.

Which is how we do it all day. Until the evening, when Jeff's driving. The combination of the heavy rock of System of a Down and the sugar rush from our packet of congealed Jelly Babies puts him into a frenzied state. Suddenly we're in a race with one of the Mong Way Round cars, one that's been hooning it the whole time, bouncing round bends, sliding about and generally caning it.

Jeff's having the time of his life. Steve wakes up with his head hitting the ceiling. We stop to let others catch up. Steve gets out and inspects the back of the car. It's fucked. The weld on the springs has bent, pushing the whole lot against our brake pipes. Anger descends, and he gives Jeff a despairing assessment: 'You razzed it as hard as possible, on the worst section of road in the entire country.'

The mood isn't exactly bright as we hobble on to our camp. So nearly there - we'd almost nailed the worst road in the place. Now we're back to square one. Tomorrow we have to make it the 130km to Altay, and get our back end fixed again. The only option: set up camp and drink more vodka...