The Bone Church

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We'd got some miles behind us the day before and had stayed at a small campsite called 'Santa Barbara' . Our convoy of five teams drove the 5km to the 'Bone church'.

I drove for about seven hours and by 6:30pm we were at the Auschwitz holocaust museum. Standing in a gas chamber and seeing the ovens was an unsurprisingly grim experience.  

The museum was closing down and alone, upstairs somewhere, I found myself walking past some horrible photos when the lights went out and I was thrown into complete darkness. The longest ten seconds of my live passed before they came on again. "Sorry, we were closing." the caretaker said. I bet he does the same thing to people every evening.  Bastard.

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Had a pizza and headed towards the Ukrainian border where we set up camp for the night.

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Still in Prague

After two-and-a-half hours of sleep, I got up at 9:30 am.

We started at the ailing Terios and decided to find a local Toyota garage. After finding a Toyota dealership in Prague the mechanics peered dubiously under the bonnet and told us it should be scrapped. Arse. Options? New car? If so, then import documentation for Mongolia? How to register a new owner. Buying a new car sounded expensive so John and Cillian decided to wing it and just drive the old one.

Rattle. Rattle. Thunk. Thunk.

Prague

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Asleep by 3am and up by 9:30. Had a shower (no doubt the last for a while) and packed up my stuff. Met the others (Tim, Debbie) for breakfast.

Had a nice walk around the town square. Bought some cannabis tea. Tasted quite nice. Had an equally nice pizza.

Wandered off with Cillian to find the Kafka statue. Having found it we got a taxi back to the hostel to grab our stuff and start the two and a half hour trip to the castle at Klatovy for the evenings party.

En-route to the castle steam started to come out of Tim Debbie's car so we all pulled over. Added water, coolant/anti-freeze to top it up and we carried on to Klenova Castle at Klatovy.

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This must be Germany then

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Woke up at 11am. Bitten by bed bugs. A good nights sleep though. It's nice to have a massive sign saying "Hotel" over your hotel. Let there be no one under the impression that it's a butchers shop.

Breakfast in Burger King and an eight hour drive to Prague.

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We arrived at the "Czech Inn" (See what they did there.  Everyone loves a good pun). They had really nice open plan apartments. Not being due in Klatovy for the "Czech-Out" party until about 7:30pm the following day we decided to spent that day in Prague before driving down to the castle in Klatovy.
 

Russia to Kazakhstan

We woke up in yet another field.  A lot of driving lay ahead with another push for yet another border.  The Russian/Kazakhstan.  We'd driven 3,548 miles since home and that was more-than-likely not even half way to our destination.  We were hoping for a quick border crossing but this wasn't to be.

The Russian/Kazakhstan border was undoubtedly the most miserable experience of the trip.  The guard had obviously been given something nice as a bribe by a previous team and kept pointing through the window into the back of the car saying "Gift!".  We needed everything we had and didn't have anything to give away as a gift.  He gave me a phone and said "Speak!".  I listened.  The phone was dead.  Was this some sort of crazy mind game?  My tired mind couldn't fathom out what was going on.  I held the phone to my ear and pretended to speak for a bit.  I gave the phone back and the guard went back to this "Gift!" spiel pushing his face right into mine.  I rummaged through the car and found a tin of mints with "Grumpy Git Mints" written on it.  Seemed suitable. "Valuable mints." I said and pushed them at him.  He waved us through.  Trust me as you read this that encounter lasted for a great deal longer than you're probably thinking.  Words cannot describe what a properly miserable experience the Kazakhstan border.

F**k the Kazakhstan border guards.

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Anyone fancy a drive to Mongolia?

Anyone fancy a drive to Mongolia?

After a lap of Goodwood racing circuit we left behind family and friends and towards the channel tunnel.

We got an earlier crossing and before long we were in France.

We drove and drove and drove and by around 3am when we were just too tired to do any more driving we found a very cheap hotel (unmanned, you just push your credit card into a slot and you were allocated a room) and crashed.

So it begins...

Off to the Ace Cafe!  Whilst it's not the official start line it felt like a fun place to begin and other teams were stopping off there too.  A hearty breakfast before tomorrow's "Big Day".

Soon enough were at Goodwood Racing, Sussex.  Back then out to Halford's to pick up some "stuff" to stop the car leaking.

Soon enough it was late and with the tent up I retired to a cold night.

Cars and Jabs

Kieran and me drove up to look at a car. My mechanical know-how being virtually non-existent meant that it looked fine to me but Kieran pointed out some lights that were flashing in a way that was "Not Good". We decided against it.

We needed visas for Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. Disappointingly pricey at just over £400 each, they are now in the hands of the Visa Gods. Okay, not the Visa Gods - The Adventurists Visa Service.

It's hard to know what the genuine risks are when you're going to places outside of Europe. Sure Mongolia suffers from plague in August, but really - are you likely to catch it? So what vaccinations to have?

A map

The map of Kazakhstan arrived this morning so i'll be checking to see how accurately it seems to match the satellite photos and will plot a prospective route.

It's nice to find the Russian/Mongolian border crossing on the map.

I had a passing thought that perhaps you could run a small fridge off the cigarette lighter... mmmm.. cold beer.

Yes, apparently you can.

Camping... the morning after

I woke at 4am with a blinding heading (not I hasten to add through any sort of alcohol consumption as this was in great moderation). I sat up and snot just fell out of my face. I lay back down onto one of the many stones that we'd failed to move before we set the tent up. God it was bloody freezing. I lay there for a few more hours until dawn broke properly and took my hurting back, painful head and streaming nose out of the tent to go and make a mug of tea. Camping sucks.

We both sat in the car with the heaters on and wondered what the hell we were getting ourselves into. This was just one night in Bournemouth. How would we all manage when there was hundreds of miles of nothingness in every direction?

Grabbing our freshly baked break rolls from reception on the way out (yes, more slumming it) we headed back to Yucels.

Before heading back home we popped into town and dragged ourselves round a camping shops (Blacks) and ooed and ahhed and the exciting lightweight metal sporks and the dazzling number of types of compasses. Looked like it's about £100 for a sleeping bag in which I won't freeze to death in the middle of some desert.

A browse through a bookshop lead me to read an interesting fact about Mongolia. Apparently you get bubonic plague there between July and August. A shame really as that's when we'll be there.

Camping 101

I like the Great Outdoors but I like to admire if from the other side of a window. But this attitude isn't going to help when we're going to be taking six days to cross Mongolia which doesn't - if I understand the situation fully - have a huge number of supermarkets along the route.

A bullet had to be bitten and a first experience of camping had to be undertaken. Now I'm not for one minute saying that a nights camping in Bournemouth is going to compare but surely it all helps.

Worryingly we packed the whole boot with stuff. Bearing in mind this was just for two people, for one night I think we may have to re-think our strategy when we've added a third person and we're off for thirty nights.

I think it's fair to say that our complete lack of navigational ability was highlighted when we tried to find the campsite. Firstly it was about ten miles away from Yucels house. Secondly we were using GPS. Even with this two things in our favour we still had to phone through for directions. Really, this wasn't a good omen.

Having arrived we got the tent pitched with relative ease and set about getting some dinner. Having discounted the possibility of snaring a rabbit or eating a raw squirrel it was decided that the most sensible course of action was for Yucel to heat some water to boil pasta and then mix some Dolmio sauce with it.

The first casualty of camping is excitement and standing in the middle of field lost its novelty pretty much as soon as we'd eaten. It was getting dark and so grabbed the torch and wandered up the lane to see what was there.

Twenty minutes later we were sitting in a pub with a couple of pints in front of us, our hands smelling of lavendar and patchouli oil from the campite bathrooms and we were wondering whether we were really roughing it. It was obviously a close all.