Prague, Graduation, Transfăgărășan, Dodgy Bulgarians and Istanbul.

Sorry for the lack of blogging folks. It's not our fault though, its due to lack of energy, wifi and laptop battery basically. But as I am sat here in the sweltering Turkish heat in a non-air conditioned hostel, I can give you my next blog entry. 

Looking at my last blog entry, it feels like months since we were in Nuremburg. And ALOT has happened since then. Like, ALOT. This Mongol Rally has been far more adventurous and eventful than any of us had expected. Nuremburg was a rubbish day. Illness, late nights, crap food and hospital visits made it a low point of the whole trip. We're currently down to 2 Tools & a Spanner. but are eagerly awaiting for the 3rd tool to make a speedy recovery and potentially join us down the road when he feels 100%.

So after a sleepless night in Nuremburg, we left for Prague at about 5am and arrived there for lunch. We were convoying with Team Blood, Sweat & Beers, drove past the red light district and stopped off at the gorgeous cathedral in the centre of Prague. This city was the first taste of the heat we have been experiencing over the last week.

Overlooking the gorgeous Prague with Jeremy (left) from team Blood, Sweat & Tears

Cathedral in the centre of Prague (excuse the fish-eye lens distortion)

We stayed in Prague until the afternoon and I was dropped off at the airport to cheekily fly back to Heathrow to graduate the next day (23rd), whilst the other 2 went to a unused military bunker in Klenova, Czech Republic for the first of the few Mongol Rally parties. Just before this however, we obviously needed a game of beer pong in Czech Republic with team Blood, Sweat & Beers. Their aim was to play beer pong in the most bizarre locations, in every country they ventured through. So we were driving about and stumbled across a railway.. Where better to play a game of beer pong, right?

Beer pong on a railway road, whilst trains went past...

I got back into Wembley the night before, drove to Southampton the next morning and graduated. Awesome seeing all the engineers having come so far over the past 4 years, very proud of the cohort in general. Graduated, went for a meal with my amazing family at Cowheards and then got dropped off at Heathrow and took a flight to Munich the same evening. We had alot of ground to cover and cover it we did. 

Cheeky mid-mongol-rally graduation.

I got out of the airport to find our team had picked up a couple of Hitchikers from Prague, so was a pleasant surprise I guess? I took charge of the wheel and dropped them off in Munich. Team 'Blood, Sweat & Beers' had gone their own way through Greece, Croatia, Macedonia etc with the promise to meet back up in Istanbul. Our next plan was to head through Austria, then Hungary and into Romania. All within 18 hours. The plan obviously didn't go as intended and we didn't make it to Sibiu, Romania for free beers at the Cotton Pub. It was too much of a big ask from the group. We did however do another full night and days drive between us, and slept for 2 hours in a lorry park in Austria. I was driving the night/dusk shift through the Austrian Alps and only til it got a bit lighter did I realise how beautiful the Austrian roads were...

Gorgeous winding Austrian roads

We covered Hungary during the day and ended up in Deva, Romania at about midnight. We were all shattered and needed a bed to sleep in. Alas, we found a really cheap hostel and had a decent 7 hour sleep in a semi-comfortable bed and were up to make it across the whole of Romania, through Sibiu, Transfagarasan, Constanza, towards the Bulgarian border by Vama Veche; the clubbing beach of Romania. But before I talk about that, words need to be said about the Transfagarasan highway. Actually, I dont think words do it justice, so I'm just going to post a couple of pictures up. It's basically a 70km stretch of winding roads that Jeremy Clarkson off Top Gear voted it as the best highway in the world. It's definitely the best road I've driven in my life. I'll definitely be putting up a timelapse of the highway on our facebook page! 

The Transfăgărășan highway. Most epic road that I've ever had the pleasure of driving. 

Vama Veche was also something else. We got there pretty late, just as the party was kicking off. A beach bar, surrounded by loads of outdoor deep house and drum n bass clubs with music blaring just as we drove in. We accidentally drove through a firebreather's display, parked up and headed to the main strip. The rest of the night I can't really comment on. Just because I don't even know what happened. I had far too many beers, tequila, other random spirits and what ever else was floating about Vama Veche. I vaguely remember passing out on the beach watching the sun rise with some girls from Bucharest, but the next thing I know, I'm being slapped and kicked by Romanian police telling me to get up. Get up I did as I stumbled my way towards the car. The heat was unmanageable, the hangover was kicking in hard and I just wanted shelter. Surreal experience. The beach itself during the day was beautiful. 

Sand, Sun, Hangover and hot Romanian women.

After Vama Veche, we were broken men. We left for the Bulgarian border at about 3pm and soon we were on the road. I was driving down this highway, looked in my mirrors only to see a bag tumbling out of a car. We had been driving with our boot open. Turned around to collect a bag, towel, and Simon's shorts which had obviously been carried by a lorry's wheel arch a mile down the road.. After that fiasco, we headed into Burgas, Bulgaria. This was a weird weird city. It was this part of the adventure when I started to feel very far from home; no-one spoke English, road signs consisted of symbols rather than letters and the road conditions started to deteriorate rapidly. We pulled up at a very dodgy hostel that we saw a sign for on the road. After about 15 minutes of charades with an old Bulgarian man at reception, he understood we wanted a room for 3 for the night. It was an awesome room though; air con, kitchen, comfy beds, freezer, walk-in shower. All for the total of £12 for the room. That's £4 each. Ridiculous prices. We didn't however have any money, but a local Bulgarian man who spoke some level of broken English gave me and Henry a lift in his zoopped-up VW to an ATM in the deserted town. He also then went on to say he's 'seen things you wouldn't believe' at the Hostel we were staying at, and that we were in 'grave danger'. We obviously shat ourselves at this, but just powered through. After moving all our gear into our room, and checking numerous times the room was doubly locked, we headed out to explore the area and found a very small local bar. Again, language was a huge problem. I had 20 Bulgarian Lev on me, the equivalent of £8.06, so we weren't hoping to eat/drink much. We were wrong. For 20 Lev, we bought 7 beers and had 3 mains. This place was SO cheap, the beer was awesome, and the food wasn't too shabby either. We walked back, had a good nights sleep, woke up and made our way towards Istanbul.

Istanbul. What a beautiful city. We left Burgas around 11am, and made our way to the Turkish border at about 2pm. On the way there, we bumped into team 'Are We There Yet' and decided to convoy to Istanbul with them. Spent a good hour at the border, bought insurance and tax, and got all the relevant stamps and were off with our new convoy team. Upon arriving in Istanbul, wee realised that the roads were completely chaotic. No-one signals; there seemed to be no road rules to follow and everyone did their own thing. Completely different to western driving. I took charge of the wheel being the designated 'city driver', but it wasn't pleasant. Within an hour, we almost had 2 close-calls which involved screeching tyres and team 'Are We There Yet' almost rear-ending our car (On one occasion, there must have been only a few cm between our bumpers..). 

After the chaos of Istanbul, we found a hostel to stay, central to the city. Slept the night and went exploring the old town of Istanbul; the palace and the famous Blue Mosque.

Heart of Istanbul, with the Blue Mosque in the background

And here I am, writing this blog in the heart of Istanbul. Team 'Blood, Sweat & Beers' finally caught up with us last night and are staying in our hostel too, obviously getting a cheeky game of beer pong on the balcony. We now are part of a 3-team convoy, and are feeling confident for the dreaded Georgian-Russian border..