Wednesday 07 Jul 2010 22:43

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads...

by Tony Edgar of Steppe By Steppe

I thought the blog title was quite topical, both in terms of the recent hoax that has been doing the rounds and the - shall we say, "path" - that lies ahead.

I must admit that life would potentially be made easier in a flying DeLorean, but given the hassle we've had just trying to find cheap Jerry cans for spare diesel, the thought of running out of plutonium in the middle of Kazakhstan doesn't bear thinking about. Having also checked out a few pictures on Google Earth, finding a nearby bell tower is a remote possibility, never mind a bolt of lightning.

As for any potential problems with the flux capacitor.....well, whilst I have enduring faith in the power of the global village mechanic to fix just about anything (and have in fact built our entire rally maintenance strategy around it), I think even he might struggle to mend Mr Fusion with some baler twine and an old pushchair.

My point is - for all that an admittedly-cramped 1980s sports car might win on looks and aerial ability, we have supreme confidence in our small but mighty Genghis Van, who we picked up from the hospital earlier this evening.

Admittedly we had the same level of supreme confidence before he went in for a service, emerging four days later with £400 worth of repairs to his name (cam belt? brakes? who knew they needed replacing?), but now he's patched up and ready to rock even harder than before. We were talking to the mechanic about the trip and whilst we got the usual half-smile and raised eyebrows, he replied "it's a good van, it should get you there". Said mechanic is a Macedonian called Dragan; if he says so, I believe him.

Last day at work tomorrow and then we have a whole day to get the rest of the stuff we need, work out a plan for packing the van and actually doing so. No time for pimping our ride or even cleaning it, but we have a 'New car smell' Magic Tree that we firmly believe will right all wrongs. 

We also won't have time for organising some of the basics - like memory cards for the camera, music to listen to en route, or mastery of any Russian language whatsoever. It will be hectic, but why change the habit of the past 8 months? Time to put our faith in the Gods of fate and adventure.

I'll try to blog regularly from now on, and to those of you who have recently signed up as supporters - thank you, welcome and I promise my posts will in future be more about the rally, less about semi-obscure Back to the Future references.

Genghis - the mightiest Kangoo in the West. Or the East, now.

Monday 03 May 2010 12:00

We can do it too! With...

by Tony Edgar of Steppe By Steppe

We have wheels! And a dashboard! And seats! And.....well, you get the picture...

We received official confirmation from Mongolia today that our vehicle has been approved! On July 10th, we will purr out of Highbury fields in a pretty dang sexy little white Renault Kangoo van. It's a veritable young pup of a thing - only emerging, blinking, into the world in late 2002 and currently almost as poorly-travelled as its occupants, with a mere 70,000 miles on the clock.

The journey from "souped-up Toyota Hilux Surf" to Kangoo as the wagon of choice for our journey was long, twisting and at times frankly preposterous - much like our eventual route from London to UB will no doubt prove to be. Following the rally meet up in November, we returned enthused and determined to do something huge for charity. Several glasses of Cava later, we'd nailed it: why not take a load of teaching supplies and name ourselves "Ulaan Book Tour" - and do it all in a mobile library?!

It quickly became apparent "why not". Mobile libraries are huge. They only have one seat. They weigh a ton. They cost a fortune. You probably need a special licence to drive one and the thought of trying to get it out of a pothole in the middle of the Gobi desert didn't exactly fill us with confidence.

So we kept planning and searching; licence restrictions meant Justyna could only drive a van up to a certain size, and once we were down to two in the team it was clear we'd need something we could manouevre, and conceivably push out of a sticky situation, between us. We also had to ensure we could meet the customs rules on tax exemption - which eventually led us to the perfect solution: a car derived van.

For those who aren't skilled tradesmen or small business owners, a car-derived van is one with the same front end as a car, but a van bit on the back. You probably could have worked that out yourself. Our theory, such as it goes, is that these things are meant for a bit of abuse by white van men up and down the country - if they can survive being revved around building sites and barged through non-existent gaps in city centre traffic, they can surely cope with a bit of corrugated desert track? Also, the space in the back could potentially provide enough room to curl up for a sleep should fear of the Mongolian Death Worm prove too much for us as we travel through the wilderness.

We've been really lucky to get the van we have, and I have to thank everyone involved in making it happen. Our focus was eBay and trying to fix up a 'spares or repair' Ford Escort or the like - to be presented with the opportunity to take such a mighty French steed is beyond our wildest expectations. We've not yet picked it up but the V5 is off to the DVLA and we're trying to sort insurance out.

Pics will, of course, follow once we can post them. Now, just got to sort some corporate sponsorship to give it that authentic "rally" look.

And so it begins

It's June the 11th, 2011. 11 long months to the day since we trundled out of Woburn Safari Park at the beginning of our trip of a lifetime to Ulaanbaatar.

It wasn't my intention to take this long to document memories of the trip - I wanted to do it immediately upon returning. But normal life got in the way - plus there were 1800 photos to sift through, edit and upload to Flickr; 150 minutes of video footage to work through and edit; friends to catch up with and a relationship that, having (spoiler alert) survived 5 weeks of trials, tribulations and exhaustion, wouldn't have taken too kindly to my spending more hours in front of a computer.

It's exactly a month to the launch of this year's rally, and the pangs of jealousy are starting to kick in, along with temporarily forgotten memories of how we were feeling at this time last year. May and June 2010 were a blur of lists, stresses about finance, shopping for equipment, hanging around obscure embassies in west London and thinking constantly about everything that needed to be done prior to departure. Of course, things got forgotten about, other things were prioritised but never utilised, but we got there. And back. Just in case you were wondering how all this ended.

It seems appropriate now to begin posting about our adventures, to help ease the frustration that we're not on the journey this year, and to ensure that I get everything written down before I forget any more. For completeness, I'm going to post up every post from the Charity Rallies website as well - providing 'director's commentary' behind the posts as far as I can remember.

So... shall we begin?