Since ahem, launch, I haven’t really given much of an update on our rally progress as yet. There’s been a good reason for that though – we haven’t made any. Until yesterday, when we paid for 6 of our 9 visas. If progress is measured by how quickly a bank account can tend towards zero, well then we made a shitload of progress last night. But any sense of satisfaction at having ‘done’ something has been quickly lost in the ream of paperwork now due to various embassy offices ASAP. My fellow LRDGers and I are now auditing our initial ‘comprehensive’ travel plan submission made late Monday to Adventurists HQ.
And to be frank, it’s total shite.
Dart board dates, non-existant routes & towns that are in a different country are all heavily featured. I should point out that when we originally planned this out there was no planning, nor was the future need for it planned either. This seems to us contrary to the ethics of the Mongol Rally and so having to actually think through such concepts as ‘routes’ beyond anything more detailed than country level just seems like rallying heresy.
So we haven’t really done it.
But whatever, we’re almost done writing words in boxes and inserting random numbers in correctly formatted date spaces. We’ll be sending them all off sometime this week and then biting our nails and ringing up the Adventurists every so often for progress reports I’m sure. Mostly though we’re just going to sit back and with the help of a few cold beers reminisce about all the old adventures we’ve had and discuss all the new ones we’re going to have.
To get me in the mood I’m going to repost something that showed up on the Rally forums tonight, from the 2nd year of the Rally back in 2005:
These interesting tidbits are from the first (proper) year of the Mongol Rally, 2005. Yes, they are all true.
43 cars left London.
27 cars reached Mongolia.
14 cars reached the finish in Ulan Bator.
2 teams were robbed at knife point.
1 car snapped in half.
3 engines fell completely out of the cars.
1 team was held for five days in no-mans land.
1 team cycled almost 100 miles to get to the finish when their car gave in.
100’s of tires were blown.
1 team got engaged.
3 teams attended weddings.
1 team found a 10 foot deep pot hole.
1 team found a 25 ton crane rolled by a pot hole.
1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all but one forward gear.
1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with five crimes against the state.
1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad, who then shot at him with a gun (and missed).
1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons.
1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital.
3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year.
As a result of an incident with a cow, one person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf.
2 cars flipped over in Mongolia.
3 teams were chased by armed bandits.
0 team members died.
We’ll be visiting at least one active warzone while we’re away so kind of hoping the last statistic isn’t bettered…
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