A toast to success!

Christina Noble children provide the entertainment.

In for a repair.

Our lucky charms.

Pastel peace.

Yoda gains a new chariot in the form of the Rubber Ducks.

Wanger – consistently co-ordinated

Stuck in the mud. Even HMS Victory had a bad day (just one).

What Big Al say’s goes.

Rastafari Yak attack

Bye bye ducks! We will meet again.

The last remaining tin of Heinz.

Replacement bus service to Ulaanbaatar.

An afternoon of ragging put the Yak’s in bad shape…

..never give up! Epoxy steel does the job.

We dragged the Yak until the lethal combination of leaking petrol and sparks flying from what remained of their wheel got the better of us.

Yoda will prevail.

www.returnoftheyak.com

Big Al meet’s Big Bird.

Kipper, Duck and Yak pit stop.

International Where’s Wally off.

Chinggis Gold – Where the Uzbek’s use watermelon, the Mongol’s prefer gherkin

All aboard the party bus…Kipper’s and Co Ahoy!

HMS Victory to the rescue.

The camel of doom, tongue in tact.

Seeking solace in the Mongol Rally Ger camp don’t chase the Devil out of Earth.

While Car(nage)’s Punto got fixed up in Khvod we took refuge in a local Ger camp where we warned about an unavoidable encounter with the devil, by none other than Mongolia’s 3rd greatest climber! We sped on in fear an subsequently lost the Punto in a thick cloud of dust. Our only option was to leave Team Car(nage) behind…

Luckily, a day or so down the road we were reunited with the Car(nage) boys, who had broken down again and were forced to take the Megabus to UB. We rescued them from their cramped, rusty, russian metal hell-hole and insisted that they ride the rest of the way with us. The ambulance was now at full capacity as our team of 5 became 8!

If I could give one piece of advice to any people considering the rally in the future, it would be to make sure you find the biggest, most ridiculous thing possible (preferabley something you can ride) and strap it to the top of your car! Riding Return of the Yak’s Yak at around 40mph down a bumpy track was probably the most fun attractions ever to be had in the Mongolian desert!

First of all I have to say that Tas is likely to be adding some far better photos than mine very soon. I know you are all waiting antisipation for the final chapter however, so in the meantime, here it is in my own humble words…

After what was probably the biggest rave ever held in an ambulance in the middle of the sparse Russian steppe – a night in which all of our tents blew away in gale force wind and several members of the convoy were lost for hours trying to retrieve them in the pitch black desert – we finally enter Mongolia!

Of course there are no roads in this country, so there are no rules either. We continued along the final leg of the Mongol Rally, mostly riding on the roofs our rally machines, with teams Car(nage) and Return of the Yak!

I’m sure we had only been in Mongolia around 10mins before we were approached by a young man named Joy, who invited us to come and meet his family at his Ger camp nearby. They welcomed us with milky tea and some rather suspect cheese based snacks. Joy’s father is a shepherd and he explained to us how his eye sight was failing him and he struggled to find his goats. He showed me a broken telescope he used to locate his flock and taking pity on him I gave him the 1960′s Sports glasses that I found years ago in Bristol. I’ve never seen a grown man so excited in my life!

When Team Car(nage)’s Punto gave up the goat, HMS Victory valiantly towed them around 100k to the next town! Here we scouted ahead to work out the best way to drag their shitty broken down car across the river!

Hmmm… internet problems. To be continued…

The Kipper Car(nage) convoy bond had become strong on our journey through Kazakhstan. Always room on the party bus for new members, we soon met The Yak’s who’s methodology we quickly adopted “Strike tastes better thank Kippers for breakfast”…

Team Car(nage)

Watermelon chaser…the only way to finish a shot of vodka.

Wangers campfire serenade.

Riverside camp and the beautiful valleys of Kyrgystan.

Soviet presence.

Mountain graveyard by Lake Issey Kol, Kyrgystan.

Border sharades with a alco-fuelled bee-keeper.

Ice creams amidst the carnage at the Kazakstan border.

The lake we shouldn’t have gone too.

Biblical swarm of giant mosquito’s…retreat to the Ambulance!

Friendly fisherman brings us a delivery.

Kippers culinary delights.

Chai makes the itching subside…for about a minute.

Sorry again for the lack of posts. It’s a bit tricky finding internet access and the time to upload photos. Here’s a selection from the past few countries we’ve been wobbling through…

Mama, Papa and their son. This family live by the side of a dusty bumpy desert road in Uzbekistan and ply anyone who stops there with bowls of vodka and water melon! We enjoyed a very boozy lunchtime with some Uzbek truckers here, before wobbling off into the desert!

The people of Iran were absolutely amazing! Everyone was so incredibly friendly and generous. We met Ali while filling up at a petrol station. He took us to his uncle’s restaurant and treated us to a delicious chicken and rice dinner. Only 2 nights before a guy named Hassan invited us to stay at his family home. We were really touched by the people of Iran, we definitely go back some day.

Unfortunately our final night in Iran was spent in this overpriced shit hole of a hostel near the Turkmenistan border. When you arrive in a town at around midnight after a long day on the road, your standards are much lower than usual!

Please remove your towel from the hotel balcony – the president is driving past this morning.

Hell’s Door – a huge burning gas crator in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert. Quite possibly the coolest thing we’ve ever seen! Ignoring the advice of the toothless 4×4 driving gatekeeper to the door to hell, we decided take our ambulance off road and drive down to the crator ourselves. We got hopelessly stuck in the sand and had to be towed out by a truck. All good fun!

Internet access is sparse, so unfortunately our blog posts are pretty out of date. We’re doing the best we can, so please bare wit us…

It’s been an amazing five days on our first leg of the Mongol Rally. We’ve been convoying on and off with around eight other teams so far. Our Mongol caravan consists of some weird, wonderful and incredibly crappy cars – a Reliant Robin, Suzuki carry with conservatory on the back, and a Smart car to name a few. Like a long lethargic slow-worm we snaked along the roads, holding up the local traffic and making a pretty comical scene.

Over the past few days we’ve travelled through five countries and we’ve met some amazing people. We were treated to a free dinner and drinks by a Canadian expat in Germany,  raved it up at an ancient castle, danced to some techno with a crazy 70yr old man in Prague and visited a church made of human bones!

Today we had to split to head south for Romania. Most of the old convoy are now heading on along the northern route through the Ukraine. We sped down to Slovakia and found ourselves

We’ve now parked up by a beautiful lake in Slovakia with Team Smart for the night. Just had a great sausage stew and are enjoying a few beers. Tomorrow Team Smart head onto Vienna to pick up their visas for Azerbaijan. We’re gonna push onto Romania and hope to get as far as the Black Sea. Keep on truckin’.

We met these guys at a campsite in Wurzburg, Germany. Two brothers who were on their way home to Brussels after touring Europe on a couple little 250cc bikes. Had a great night round the campfire with them…

This little beauty is called Sheela! Part of our original convoy, unfortunately our pals Sean and Andy have pushed on to Russia along the northern route and left us behind…