Sweet sweet tarmac

Finally on a piece of good road after 6 days of Mud and Gr(sh)it our spirits have lifted enormously as we make the final 500km dash for UB. Location: Arvayheer

Tough

Toughest day's driving yet. Flooded roads, broken suspension and river crossing following torrential rain are making progress very difficult. 3 days to UB City? Location: N 46deg11.637min E 100deg43.115min.

Rain on the Plain

It's raining heavily on the plain, heading towards Bayanhongor. Finally got gearbox oil (via the gear stick). Broken front suspension. 4 hours to fix. Tough.

Altai City, Mongolia

The cars in our convoy have taken a real beating. The Mitchell Brothers are onto their 6th set of leaf springs and progress is slow. The stutter bumps are like a pneumatic drill to the cars, punctuated with axle eating pot holes. Our spirits are still good except in banks where they won't change our money (possibly because we haven't washed for 4 days).

Fortunately the nights are warming up and the transfer case mounts have been bodged with an inner tube and Araldite.

We've see illegally sold rally cars which is a little down heartening but onwards we trudge towards UB and a cold beer.

650 miles to go!

Slow progress

Covered 300 miles in 3 days. Forded rivers. Pulled friends out. Washed in rivers. Should be in UB in 5days. Location Khovd City.

Mongolia!

We're in Khovd, Western Mongolia. We've been traveling for 3 days and have barely covered 300 miles. Not because the roads are terrible - they're not, nothing like as bad as Kazakhstan. More because we're with a convoy on vehicles that are going slowly because bits are hanging off. The Mitchell bros' SJ has had no rear suspension for 2 days. Our transfer box is still untied and bouncing around underneath the car. Four wheel drive now only works in low ratio mode.

We've done a couple of river crossings, which didn't cause us any problems. We towed our 2 wheel drive friends, Team Ski (http://teamski.awardspace.com) out of a spot of trouble.

We're heading into the Gobi desert next...

Blog again in a few days.

Last border crossing. Hooray!

We're in Mongolia! As amazing as we'd expected. Incredibly friendly locals, stunning scenery, freezing nights. We've decided on the southern route. Looks tough.

Barnaul

We're heading into the final fling. 2 days from Mongolian border. Looking forward to the 9000ft climb to the border crossing. Border crossing from Kaz into Russia a new record. 1.5 hours. Magic. Russian roads so much better than Kaz, but people not as friendly. They're alright if you talk to them for a bit, but it's always you that has to break the ice and be funny and make them laugh.

Looking forward to getting in convoy with Mitchell brothers through Mongolia. www.mitchellbrothersrally.co.uk

Back to Kaz:

Left Kyrgz after 3hrs sleep. Back in Kaz in convoy with bikers and mitchell brothers. Roads are Ok-ish. 1000km to Semey.Sheared gearbox mountings...have bodged for now.

Into Kyrgystan

Easy border into krgystan. Stayed in Osh, far west Krrg.m Beautiful mounyain climbs and crystal clear lakes. Now inh convoy with three other teams. Position: N 41 Deg 46.6 Mins E 073 Deg 02.2 Mins.

We've had a change of mind. Now on our way to Kyrgyzstan. Finally out of Tashkent! Soaring mounting ranges. We have suffered a rear tire blow-out and lost a bit of our wing but nothing major. Current position North 40 Deg 32.8 Mins, East 071 Deg 06.4 Mins

50mph syndrome

5000 miles and counting...

We're now in Tashkent after trooping the length of Kazakhstan and traversing Uzbekistan. So much has happened since our last full blog entry, not helped by the fact that blogs are blocked here as they're seen as politically unsuitable. We can't even read what we've written.

Having fallen into convoy with the Mongol Bikers and the Sand Badgers in Atiyrau, we've seen off the searing 45 degree heat of the Kazakh desert, a complete lack of roads, towed beached cars out of sand, encountered scorpions, black widows, wild horses, camels and various mechanicals and come out relatively unscathed.

Atiyrau was a wonderful start to our Kazakh adventure and after driving the world's longest and straightest roads, we pulled into the first hotel (which turned out to be run by teenagers)with Mongol Rally cars parked outside. After a brief photoshoot with the security guards we headed out for a beer and a sandwich at the only place open in town...only to meet the General Director of KazTransGas and pals! After a some hilarious banter concerning Litvinyenko, Abramovich and Putin we found ourselves our latest sponsor! 100 dollars peeled off a fat roll of cash is impressive anywhere. We'll be putting this kind donation to towards our tally when we get home (no secure card payments here...)

It's probably worth mentioning that whilst it's always good to meet other ralliers, other ralliers going the opposite direction is less amusing. Before entering the desert we met 3 rally teams heading north. After rumours of bandits and highwaymen, meeting this bunch was the final straw. They had bandaged feet, ruined cars, red eyes, dirt from head to tow, and looked like the kids from Lord of the Flies. With much trepidation we continued, only to find the roads were more like mortored a battle field, punctuated with deep sand. 4 days later we emerged unwashed and caked head to tow in cement like dust and with a broken motorbike. The cars will never be clean again...

Richard nearly had us through the Uzbek border in under an hour until they decided to close for a 3 hour lunch break to watch browse porn on their laptop, leaving us surrounded by 40 inquisitive Uzbeks who it seemed had never seen a motorbike before. Finally cleared the border to find no towns for 300 kms. Pressing on to get the Sand Badgers leaking gearbox sorted turned out to be a mistake and as night descended we lost Sand Badger Tom for 45 minutes, suffered 4 motorbike breakdowns including a complete loss of bike head lights, lost our fuel filler cap and hit a cyclist at 2am...well me didn't, Mongol Biker James did. What could have turned out to be an absolute catastophe worked out okish, solved by a can of Savlon and half a litre of Vodka. Onwards we rolled through mosquito infested swamplands where exhaustion struck and hallucinations at the wheel ensued, including coloured cows and walls in the road.

We finally rolled into the ex-Soviet chemical testing ground of Nukus at 3am to find a hotel. We emerged the next morning to confront our mosquito ravaged reflections in the cracked mirrors.

We stayed another day in Nukus, as James had a serious visa issue and a twisted bike to sort out. Also, Tom's Peugeot needed the gearbox looking at. We took it to a Daewoo expert called "The Master" and he fixed it up good.

Nukus to Samarkand was the plan for the next day. We got up early, had breakfast and hit the road. Or rather hit the town looking for petrol. After an hour of pointless driving around a man very kindly offered to escort us to a petrol station. When we got there he revealed himself to be a TV reporter and we then had to do an interview for Good Morning Uzbekistan. When we got out of town we drove 400km through an endless desert. All was going well until it got dark and the number of cyclists and donkey carts increased as our speed dropped to a crawl. All you can say is that driving at night in central asia is scary and bloody dangerous. We decided to pull up short at Bukhara

In Kazakhstan

In convoy with 2 rally teams, top guys. Camping for the third night in Kazakh desert. Roads are unbelievebly hard- 10 hrs to do just 100 miles. Sand dunes scorpions and camels. We'll be in Uzbekistan by 10am tomorrow.

1 August

Finally in to Russia. Air temp 35oC. Heading to Volgograd. 3 hours to cross border. Met another team late last night at Hotel Lubansk. Couple of lads from Scotland. They helped us out with some exhaust putty to fill all the holes. Really motoring now.