Let me set the scene a bit: I'm currently in Southampton, house squatting after my student housing contract ran out end of last month. It's eleven something pm, and I've decided to use blogger to be my main form of contact with the world whilst I'm on my travels. But I felt like I needed an initial post to introduce everything.
Okay, so here's the summary. I'm driving from London, UK to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, with three semi-decent mates I've met at University; Simon, Henry and Matt. All three of them do Physics, also graduating this year. I do engineering, hence the name of '3 Tools & a Spanner' as our group name (me being the spanner). Why are we doing the Mongol Rally? Because it looks pretty damn cool, that's why! Initially, when I first heard about the Mongol Rally, I asked myself 'which nutter would actually do this?'. 8 months after, we have become those nutters, and we're leaving for it in 17 days.
Am I scared? Of course I bloody am, I've never been travelling before and whilst I think I'm ready to travel the world, it hasn't full sunk in yet. I cant even tie my shoelaces in an efficient manner (I blame you mum*, you clearly didn't do your research in the art of shoe-lacing), how the hell am I supposed to drive 12,000 miles from London to Ulaanbataar, going through 20 odd countries on the way. Well, I don't know, but I'm going to attempt it either way.
So let me tell you a bit about the car. In February after our winter exams, we decided it was time to get a car. We needed a shit car, but something good enough to get four of us to Mongolia. We decided to get a Skoda Fabia from this little old private car dealer in Reading called 'Many Motors'. The guys there were great! Listing price was £950, and after talking to the guys and telling them what we're doing, they were happy to give it to us for just under £500! A bargain! Whilst it wasn't the best of motors, it drove, and it had a boot that could be filled with rally shit, such as water, food, camera stuff, camels, and what else we decide to put in the boot during our 5-and-a-bit week adventure.
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| Yeh... we painted bad-boy racing stripes on. It might go faster? |
Next bit: Visas. We needed visas for Turkey, Kazakhstan (double entry), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia (double entry) and Mongolia. We initially also wanted one for Turkmenistan, until we realised that we would be shit out of luck if our car broke down, and probably probed by Turkmen border guards in a prison cell, which is far from my idea of a 'good time'. A great site the Adventurists (the company who help us organise the rally stuff) suggested using was 'The Visa Machine'. They basically acted as the middle-man between us and the embassies, and did all the hard work for us, so we didn't need to travel to all the different embassies in London to get all the forms filled out! Having said that, they did charge an additional fee but I would say it was reasonable.
I want to dedicate a whole paragraph to our sponsors. As emotional as this sounds, we genuinely wouldn't have been able to get this rally going the way we have without our sponsors. The main guys who have helped us out are Station Motors; a local garage who have basically done all the main bits of work on our car for free. Awesome guys who are really passionate about our rally and real professionals who know all there is to know about cars! I feel safe leaving Quinsey (yes, that's what we called our car... Story for another time?**) with Jason and Ian (the 2 blokes who basically run the garage, Ian owns it, and Jason is an awesome mechanic there).
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| The awesome guys at Station Motors! |
We've also got several other sponsors who have helped us with tyres, tracking, stereo, stickers, hoodies, shirts, car parts, keys and satellite equipment! Basically, the local companies in Southampton are awesome and have been a huge part in our rally progress.
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| Car on 2nd July, getting kitted out with new tyres, and getting the tracking sorted |
Since getting our visas, so much has happened. Basically, our car is looking pretty cool now and is covered in signatures of all the people I love (and all the people I will never see again), there's been a couple of vehicle fires (nothing too major), we've got a roof rack, and tomorrow, I'm hoping to get some working spotlights on the car to look like an actual rally car.
Anyway, I'm going bed now. Got an early start tomorrow at Southside Car Audio (www.southsidecaraudio.co.uk) to wire in those spotlights. Will post a few pictures up tomorrow, and let you know how it goes!
Oh, one more thing. As you know already, we're doing this for 2 awesome charities we feel passionately about; WaterAid and Cool Earth. If you could donate any spare dolla' to the cause, we would be very grateful! Our virgin money giving page is: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/3ToolsAndASpanner
*I used 'mum' here to sound cool. If you know me well, you'd know I call my mum 'mummy'. Call it gay, call it cute, call it whatever you want. The reason is I never got out of the habit of it, so deal with it.
**I'll just tell you now. It's nothing interesting... Matt went into hospital a few weeks ago cos he had a cyst in his throat. That cyst just happened to be medically called a 'Quinsey'. Never heard of it before? There you go! You learn something new every day!
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