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A new month, and a new country beckoned! We awoke early and set off on the final stretch to the border. Back on the road and … “What the deuce?! Why isn’t it changing gear?” Great. We were stuck in first gear. After a quick diagnosis, shrugging of shoulders and a couple of ‘shutdown-restarts’ to no avail, we had little option but to limp back 10 miles or so to the last town where we had spied a Jeep dealership the previous night (we were desperate). At 12mph, and with angry Russian lorry drivers trying to overtake, this was painfully slow. After an embarrassing eternity, or perhaps only 15 minutes, the gearbox finally changed up to second, third and so on as usual. We carried on to the Jeep garage hoping it was just a Land Rover glitch that had sorted itself but we would ask them to have a look at it if possible. That was not possible, they were fully booked for the next two and a half weeks (we thought they would have jumped at the chance to work on a real 4x4). We now had the choice of heading back towards Helsinki where there was a Land Rover garage nearby, or continuing to Russia, where we were confident we could find a solution if necessary in St. Petersburg or Moscow. With the gearbox still warm, we headed towards Russia, with a full complement of gears immediately available. On arrival at the border, uncertain of the protocol, we adopted a very English approach and joined a queue. We began to diagnose the gearbox as we waited. Symptom: Sticks in first gear when cold. Diagnosis: Something to do with the oil? We checked shortly afterwards and the level was fine. As we reached the front of the queue of vehicles, with no signs in English, we decided to copy the person in front of us and began following them from window to window, queuing, smiling and handing over every piece of paperwork at our disposal in hope that one of them would be the piece the official was looking for. We bumped into a Dutch man living in Russia, who bore a comforting resemblance to Rene from the TV programme ‘Allo,’Allo!, and managed to get hold of some English language customs cards which we diligently completed. Our honesty was our downfall; having declared our travel books and malaria pills under ‘Written Literature’ and ‘Drugs’ the cogs of the Russian bureaucratic machine were compelled into motion. Our books were dismissed as acceptable after a short perusal by several customs officers and, as Dave set about completing the necessary forms for the Disco, Al was on the phone to a local doctor trying to explain that we were not British drug barons but just sensible, mild mannered, tourists with some over-the-counter malaria drugs. After a couple of hours we were told to complete our customs forms again, in duplicate, declaring ‘no’ to everything. We suppose it makes it easier for everyone. The penultimate step was the dreaded vehicle inspection, and by this time we had been ushered over to one side as there was a considerable backlog of cars behind us. We had heard some horror stories of peoples’ cars being turned inside-out by power tripping inspection officers. Thankfully we must have taken up enough of their time already and the guard seemed satisfied with a quick glance inside the cool box and a squeeze of Dave’s memory foam pillow. Given the all clear after a near four hours, we paid for some third party car insurance and, thoroughly sick of border paperwork (but perhaps not sick enough!), we headed out into the unknown. It was a hair-raising experience driving to St. Petersburg with the crazy Russian drivers disregarding any road laws that may have existed, and a stark contrast to the impeccably behaved Scandinavians. Somehow alive, we arrived in St. Pete’s with dusk encroaching and began searching for accommodation in vain – everywhere was either full, didn’t exist, for Russians only, or staffed with a blank faced receptionist only capable of delivering a drowsy, disdainful “Niet!” to any enquiry. They obviously didn’t like the cut of our jib! Battling against the foreign city traffic and rumbling stomachs we eventually found a hostel in the suburbs, checked in, and walked into the first restaurant still serving, treating ourselves to a cracking welcome to Russia meal! The look of shock on the face of the receptionist, the previous night (when we said we were leaving our car outside) had set the alarm bells ringing that maybe this wasn’t the nicest of St. Petersburg’s suburbs. Despite having taken all the valuables out of the car already, the first task of the day was to tentatively peer out of the window and ensure that a) it was still there and b) it was in one piece. Check and check, relief! The hostel was in a five storey dilapidated building (like many in Russia) with a strong musty smell in the once quite grand stairway and was generally in need of a bit of TLC. It did, however, have hot running water, warm beds and a very helpful receptionist making it more than adequate for us! In light of our gearbox situation, the order of the day was to try and visit Land Rover to see if they could shed any light on the problem. First though, we decided to try and get a better understanding of what that problem was so we could at least pretend we knew what we were talking about. For that, the internet comes into its own! The advantage of Land Rover’s somewhat dubious reliability is that when things do go wrong, and they will, it can be virtually guaranteed that it has already gone wrong for loads of other people and there is a wealth of information on the net about it. Some might argue it is better just to have nothing go wrong at all, but where’s the fun in that? Armed with a new understanding of the problem, and the address of a Land Rover dealership, we took to the streets, in first gear, to battle through the traffic and hopefully sort the problem. At the second attempt we made it to the garage which, overcoming the language barrier (surprisingly our Russian phrase book doesn’t cover the scenario of your automatic gearbox sticking in first gear when the oil is cold), we managed to ascertain the garage was only a showroom and didn’t have a workshop; they did, however, give us an address of a transmissions specialist at the other side of town. With the oil now suitably warm we set off once again with a whole host of gears to find the shop. On arrival, after driving through a courtyard that looked as though it had been recently bombed, we made the unwelcome discovery that the place was closed until Monday. It being Saturday morning, and us being quite impatient, we decided to see what could be done ourselves. The problem was caused by crud in the oil clogging the governor valve, so the first thing to try (being the easiest and cheapest) was to change the oil. Spotting a car parts place, where (judging by the amount of stock they had) you could have built yourself a brand new Lada, we cleared the shelves of the oil we needed, as well as picking up a wing mirror glass for a Lada that looked a similar size to the one we smashed in Norway on the first day! Back at the hostel we set about changing the transmission fluid at the side of the road (attracting many a curious stare) and even managed a Heath Robinson installation of the ill-fitting new wing mirror glass. Jobs done, we washed away the oil with a nice hot shower and hit the town. Still heeding the advice of our Lonely Planet guide to Russia we set off in search of beer, vodka and dancing! After wandering the streets in search of the recommended watering holes, to no avail, we gave up and opted for the next place we came across - a far better solution. A couple of drinks later and having learnt much of the Russian alphabet by deciphering a cocktail menu, we were ready for a dance. Once again our ears led the way, and, following the music, we were soon rewarded with a queue of the young and trendy of St. Petersburg. Once inside, a quick scout around revealed two dance floors, one of which, although still early, had a spattering of people pulling of some Dirty Dancing-style dance moves! After a couple more beers and a vodka or two, the time had arrived for us to unleash some dance moves of our own on the unsuspecting crowd. Dancing with and chatting to a few locals saw night turn to day and, after several hours of tireless dancing and singing along, we ventured outside at around five o’clock well and truly ready for sleep! The excesses of the previous night, unsurprisingly, gave way to a pretty late start. We showered, grabbed some breakfast, then set out for a bit of culture and to see the sights that St Petersburg has to offer. Unfortunately for us, in addition to feeling slightly hung over, the city was is the midst of an unseasonably cold and rainy spell, not the most appealing circumstances for walking round a city by any stretch of the imagination! Unperturbed by the situation, we donned the holiday standard of shorts and flip-flops and headed out. The walk from the hostel to the centre and the sights was, in the rain, quite a bit farther than anticipated and after an hour of trudging, quite wet and starting to get a little cold we arrived at our intended point of cultural learning where (out of the rain) we could look round the much acclaimed Hermitage in the Winter Palace and warm up again. This was such a good idea, in fact, that a hundred or so other people had had the same one. The queue that stretched across the courtyard, uncovered in the rain and moving particularly slowly, was, no matter how nice the exhibit beyond, too big of a hurdle for us to overcome in our current damp state - meaning that an alternative had to be found! A quick dive into the tourist info centre and a new course of action had been set. We headed to the very impressive Saint Basil’s cathedral where, after a trip up onto the roof, we ambled around for a while reading the information boards, admiring the architecture and trying to avoid the large number of tour groups that we somehow kept managing to get stuck of the middle of as they were officiously herded around by their tour guides. Not relishing the prospect of another hour’s walk home, we took the easy option and jumped in a taxi. The rest of the evening consisted of a Sushi dinner and a somewhat futile attempt at diary writing before calling it a night and hitting the hay. Refreshed, but not ready for the outside world, we opted for the breakfast on offer at the Hostel. On arrival at the breakfast room, we were hurriedly ushered to some just-vacated seats at the end of a long bench by the cheerily fussy old man overseeing proceedings. Cereal, bread, a little milk and some jams were whipped away from some other guests who were just finishing their breakfast and placed abruptly in front of us. The departing guests clearly saw that we were first timers and kindly informed us that there was a 20 minute time limit so we had to eat quickly. No problem! Having had our fill with time to spare, we set about our final task for St. Petersburg – registering our visas. Whilst this service wasn’t offered by our hostel, the excellent visa agency we had used (www.realrussia.com) had a partner travel agency on the next street, much to our convenience. We presented our passports and copy border customs forms at the agency and were quickly informed that we should have ‘migration cards’ that are issued to all foreigners on arrival in Russia and in fact are necessary, firstly, to be able to register our visas, and secondly, to be able to prove our whereabouts to border control when we leave Russia. Where can we obtain a migration card? Nobody knew. It was accepted that, as we weren’t planning on staying in any one place for more than three working days, we technically did not have to register our visas at all, although there is some literature on the internet to the contrary. The travel agency was kind enough to write us a note in Russian, explaining that we were never issued migration cards at the border and would not be staying anywhere for more than three days. Hopefully this would be enough to satisfy the army of GAI officers rumoured to line the road to Moscow preying on foreigners to supplement their income for the slightest discrepancy.
With no choice but to ‘wing it’, we spent he rest of the day eating away at the 700km congested, potholed track of a main road to Moscow. We passed several police stops tentatively, on our very best behaviour, and seemed to be invisible to their beady eyes. That was some relief. Eventually the road and traffic took their toll and we called it a night, paying the nominal fee of 50 roubles to park in a roadside truck stop. That morning, waking up to the not so lovely surroundings of the truck stop, it was clear that there was no possible way that we could maintain the high standards, set in Scandinavia, when it came to choosing a camp location. For the time being at least, we would have to take what we could get!
We carried on towards Moscow making some steady progress amongst the huge number of trucks that infested the road linking the two cities; the good progress continued until around 20km out of the city when everything ground to a halt. For just under two hours we maintained an average speed of around 4km/h. Nearing the centre and with the gearbox still misbehaving, we called at the large Land Rover garage en-route, in the hope that they might have a service department, or at least point us in the direction of somewhere that can help. After some initial confusion involving a valiant attempt from a young Russian woman to sell us a brand new Discovery, we were introduced to Sergei, a senior guy in the service department with more years Land Rover experience than there were Range Rovers and D3s in Moscow, and an impressive level of English to boot. Result! We described the symptoms and gave him our diagnosis. Our faith in him and his knowledge of older Land Rovers was confirmed after he asked if there were any leaks, and our response of ‘it is a 12 year old Land Rover, so yes.’ had him agreeing it would be more worrying if there weren’t any. Some strings were pulled and he fitted the car in for diagnosis the following morning, leaving us free to brave the roads and carry on into the centre. And brave we needed to be; our tiny map bared little resemblance to the actual roads so we just tried to follow the flow of BMWs, Mercedes and every other top-end European car that make up Moscow traffic, until we found the centre. The next job was to find parking and then some accommodation for the night. This could be tricky, as every parking spot was taken and the flow of traffic was not much more than a crawl. To our amazement, as we drove past the Marriot Hotel, a man, in official uniform, moved aside a barrier reserving one of the last remaining parking spots in the city, and waved us in! I am not certain why he did this but we are sticking to the story that, despite having spent the night in a truck stop, the three of us (car included) are the type that this high class hotel wish to be associated with. With our luck on the up, car booked in for work and parking space found, a hotel was the next requirement on the list. Without too much trouble we found the one we were looking for, dated rooms but cleaner than we were, and fairly cheap: All good. Or not. The migration cards, neglected to be issued to us at the border, are in fact necessary to stay in any hotel, ‘no card, no room’. A quick check with the embassy failed, as it was closed, leaving us with only one option… We returned to the Land Rover dealership and with a quick explanation of the situation sheepishly asked if we could spend the night in their car park. Happy to oblige, we were led round to the staff car park where, after a quick visit to a nearby supermarket, we settled down with a variety of interesting looking Russian beers for the night.
As we awoke that morning we were greeted by the sight, only a couple of metres from our heads, of two of the Land Rover mechanics inspecting the car. The tint on the back window of the car is dark enough so that people can’t see in but we can still see out, quite a shock first thing in the morning nonetheless! As soon as there was a big enough clearing between staff arriving for work we escaped the car, got dressed and made what was, at this point, a futile attempt at looking presentable before Sergei, having found out that we were sleeping in the car park, came out to say good morning. After graciously accepting his offer of the use of a toilet, a sink, a cup of tea and a bite to eat we collected our necessary valuables and paperwork out of the car, handed over the keys and set out to tackle Moscow’s public transport system. First up was a bus, followed by a trip across the city, towards the embassy, on the impressive underground network, the Metro. With Metro successfully navigated, we were soon inside the embassy, back on British soil - everything would be fine now. The embassy staff told us not to worry, that occasionally they do forget to issue a migration card, and that the post office would be able to issue it for us. After a quick visit to an internet café and a check on Google maps, we found the central post office. Once inside, we were greeted with a large, long room, along one side of which ran numerous different windows, each with a specific sign (in Russian of course) saying what it did. Our incredibly limited Russian vocabulary was way out of its depth so we joined a queue in the hope that the woman serving would be able to help us. Between her lack of English and our lack of Russian she soon got bored with our plight and dismissed us. Not easily perturbed we split up and joined another queue each - in the hope that the next woman would be able to offer some assistance. No luck in either queue but we were both pointed in the direction of a member of staff who did speak English, things were looking up! After a short queue at the English-speaking woman’s counter, we made it to the front only to find out that the English-speaking woman’s vocabulary left a little to be desired, consisting only of the word ‘envelope’. As useful a word as it is, when working in a post office, unfortunately in this instance it did not fully satisfy our request. At a loss we decided to head back to the embassy where, even though officially closed, they let us in and kindly booked us rooms at Godzilla’s Hostel. Back on the underground, we crossed town to check into our new lodgings. Due to our lack of a migration card we were omitted from the hostel’s register and, of course, if questioned, we were not staying there at all. We dumped our stuff in our room, showered (long overdue), grabbed some food and once again attempted to catch up on the diaries, as we seem to be doing for much of the trip! The dorm, despite being quite nice and much preferable to the alternative of sleeping rough, was shared with a couple, both of whom were on the large side and who treated us to fine cocktail of snoring and some rather questionable odours, delightful! A hearty breakfast of five eggs each and a few jobs on the internet done, we had a call from Sergei asking us to come to Land Rover to decide what was to be done with the car. Easier said than done. Even taking advantage of the efficient Metro it takes around an hour and a half each way to get there from the hostel. Once there, enduring the obligatory Russian custom of being ignored for a while, we managed to get a message to Sergei that we had arrived. He agreed with our diagnosis so we gave our permission for the gearbox to be stripped and the offending governor valve to be cleaned and made our way back. We had been inspired the previous evening by an Irish girl and her rather impressive sandwich so we hit the supermarket with plans for our own. Some time later we had created a sandwich of epic proportions, which we battled to eat, before once again following the advice of the lonely planet (when will we learn?!) and heading out in search of some non-existent bars. Despite the lack of bars, the evening was not a total loss as our roaming saw us stumble upon the infamous Red Square before catching the Metro back to the hostel.
The very helpful hostel staff had, with a bit of research, found out that we may be able to get hold of the elusive migration cards so, after packing our things, we set off for the day planning to get the migration cards in the morning and finally do some touristy things in the afternoon, allowing us to leave that evening. With the immigration building proving further away and more difficult to locate than we hoped, we arrived at 11:45, just in time for them to close for an hour and a half for lunch. Back again, with the staff well fed and rested we queued at window 2, as instructed by the stern faced security guard. After some time queuing, window 2 told us to go to window 6. Once at window 6 we were told window 2 was the place to go, after conveying that that was where we had just come from we were told to come back on Monday! Now this left us in a catch 22 situation. To stay until Monday would mean that we will have been in Moscow for more than 3 working days and therefore needed to register our visa. To register the visa, the migration card is required which we can’t get until Monday (and maybe not even then), forcing us to break the first requirement. We weighed up the options and took the sensible choice, to ride our luck and just try to blag it at the border in the hope they let us leave! Back on the phone to Land Rover, with the discovery of a couple of other things that required attention, we decided to split up, Dave would head to the garage and Alex would return to the hostel to try and book another night’s accommodation. At the garage everything was sorted, the car was changing gear fine, a couple of bits had been replaced and they supplied us a couple more spares for things that looked as though they were on their way out. After a big thank you to Sergei, and with his wallet around £500 lighter, Dave made to navigate his way back to the hostel, with only a tourist map of the very centre to guide him, whilst simultaneously contending with the heavy traffic and the lack of regard for the rules of the road that the Russians posses. In addition to this, all the paperwork for the car was back at the Hostel with Al, not good in a country where it is a legal requirement to carry it at all times. This should be fun! Back at the hostel Al had persuaded the proprietors to ‘not’ have us for another night and paid the necessary roubles for the room and their discretion. As an added bonus we were put in one of the new empty eight bed chubber-free dorms on the top floor. As day turned to dusk, with Al starting to worry (it was now over five hours since Dave left to get the car) Dave arrived in one piece but disorientated, with little clue where he had been other than he was lost in some north-west Muscovite suburb for a while and then after getting stuck in traffic on a road leading out of the city got sucked into the one-way system before eventually making it back onto the map and home! We planned an early start the next day finally to do the obligatory touristy stuff and get back on the road by midday, but we had to have one last attempt at a night out in Moscow! Again, not much luck, we made it to one place that promised to get busier, but at 12:15 it was still quite empty and with a busy day to follow we headed home. The failure of the night out paid dividend the next morning as we awoke fresh and early, ready to see the sights of the Kremlin. We nipped onto the Metro and emerged outside the main entrance where we made a bee line for the already slaloming queue. This turned out to just be the queue for the ticket office and we now had to join the queue for the entrance to the Moscow citadel. On a self-imposed tight schedule and remembering the need for a Russian-English dictionary, Dave shot off to the nearby bookstore while Al bustled in the queue with the Japanese tourists, meeting up at the front a quarter of an hour later. Once inside, we spent an hour or so strolling round and, to be frank, it was a bit of an anti-climax. The large tour groups detracted from the site’s exclusivity and were plain awkward to navigate around. We did enjoy an ice cream, the weather, and the horse guard patrol, and the huge broken bell was to our juvenile amusement the subject of much innuendo, but we had seen enough and our feet were getting itchy. We headed back to the hostel, via a Pizza Hut (our last western treat for a while), and started driving to Mongolia.
Our exit from the Russia capital was an acute reflection of our entry four days earlier. We averaged 15km/h for the first two hours which was a little disappointing given that we had 4000km to cover and only six days until our insurance ran out! With the leftovers from our enormous Pizza Hut lunch to fuel us, we were able power-on uninterrupted late into the night. As night enveloped, we hit another tailback and, eager to make good time, we began to familiarise ourselves with some advanced Russian driving techniques. A car flew past us on the gravelly verge and we followed, chuckling like school children as we undertook countless idle lorries and cars. Our small express convoy was halted by a lorry parked up on the roadside so our comrade Russian cars in front nipped through a gap in the queue of traffic and shot off in the other lane against the flow of traffic! Hooked on the adrenalin rush of getting one over on the Russian traffic we just had to get past this lorry to get another fix, but driving the wrong way down a main road was a step too far. However, being in a tricked-up 4x4 gave us another option. We could off-road! The nearside of the lorry was on the edge of a large drainage ditch, but the grassy sides were shallow enough for us to tackle without fear of rolling. As long as it wasn’t too boggy, we would be fine. Dave jumped out and walked in front. “Nice and firm” he confirmed and Al eased the Disco down the bank under the astonished glare of the motorists from the queue of traffic. “Is that a wheel spinning?” A bit more gas, and then a splutter and then the engine cut out. It wouldn’t start up. Bugger! We quickly realised that with less than a ¼ tank of fuel, the angle of the slope was enough drain all the diesel to one end, clear of the uptake for the fuel pump. Dave, with his very limited grasp of the Russian language and our newly acquired dictionary, attempted to persuade the driver of the parked lorry to tow us out. “Niet.” A few Russians had got out of their cars to amuse themselves at our predicament but they were of no help either.
We had one option for self-recovery: winch ourselves out using the land anchor. We unpacked the land anchor (Dave very nearly breaking his nose as the angle of the car and weight of the driver’s door caused it to swing open and hit him full in the face) and spooled out the winch line. Hopefully, we could get the land anchor to dig deep enough at the top of the embankment and provide enough purchase to pull us clear. It was a tall order as the ground was hard and the Disco was heavy. With Al at the wheel controlling the car and the winch, Dave made himself useful and acted as a dead weight, trying to get the anchor to bite into the ground. All that was accomplished by the first attempt was to plough a nice furrow in the side of the road; damn it, the ground was too hard! Just as we were setting up for what we predicted was a futile second attempt, our saviours pulled up. The two guys and their Jeep were on their way back home to Omsk and had taken pity on us. But it wasn’t over yet - we still had the task of pulling our immobile Land Rover, weighing over two and a half tonnes, out of the ditch. With the winch hooked onto the tow bar, the Grand Cherokee took up the slack and, snaking sideways across the hard shoulder as it battled for grip, began to pull us out back onto the level ground where we could once again access our dwindling fuel supplies. With a very grateful thank you said, and hands shaken, both cars carried on their long journeys east. Exhausted, after 10 hours on the road (and our recent spell off it), we retired to a truck stop for the night. We were back on the road by around 10am. After the last night’s excitement, we welcomed an uneventful day’s driving. The roads were surprisingly busy for a Sunday so progress was slightly slower than we had hoped, but the road surface was consistently fair. We stopped for lunch at one of the many roadside cafes, where we enjoyed a traditional Russian meaty soup topped with a dollop of a creamy mayonnaise and an olive, called Salyanka. We continued driving until dark when we pulled off the road and made camp for the night on the side of a track at the edge of a large corn field. However, with the recent dry spell the local farmers were working all hours on their harvest, and just as we were drifting off to sleep a huge combine harvester, all lights blazing, appeared through the back window and just managed to swerve to avoid us at the last minute. Thankfully the farmer carried on down the track and left us to have a good night’s rest. We were up early, aware that we would have to up the miles per day if we were to get out of Russia by Friday. However, we then realised we had crossed two time zones the previous day so we had already lost two hours. On the plus side though, lunch would be two hours sooner too! We pressed on through the rolling hills - which turned out to be the southern Russian Ural Mountains, the meeting point between the European and Asian continental plates. Whilst technically in Asia, we were certainly still in Russia. The GAI were quick to remind us as they flagged us over at one of the hundreds of checkpoints along the highways and around the cities. The protocol is to approach the checkpoint, which is usually signposted in advance, very slowly and crawl past the officers standing by the roadside - hoping that they don’t wave you over with their stripy batons. We had been stopped a few times already, mostly out of curiosity, and been able to satisfy them with an international driving licence and passport. On this occasion, the officer asked Dave to follow him and get into the back of the parked police car. The officer took his driving licence and placed it in his pocket, explaining that Dave had performed an illegal overtaking manoeuvre and had to pay a fine of 3000 roubles (about £65). To clamp down on corruption, the GAI officer are no longer allowed to accept fine payments, instead they issue a ticket and you have to go and pay the fine at a bank. However, in practice, this just sets a ceiling at what they can charge you to overlook your unlawful actions. Dave and the officers agreed a ransom of 1000 roubles for the return of his licence and to let us on our way, still unsure as to whether the overtake was actually illegal or not.
The land flattened and the roads straightened as we journeyed further east and, having made good progress, we halted proceedings at one of the ubiquitous truck stops for the night. Our target for the day was to get to Omsk and our early start, combined with thinning traffic, meant we had arrived in central Omsk by early evening, with time to find a hotel and get some food. We found a deserted hotel but were informed, in a not unfamiliar dismissive Russian way, that they were full. Our back up option was a little too pricey but they pointed us in the direction of the tourist hotel just across the way. This was not hostel cheap but, after four days on the road and with breakfast included, it was justifiable. After much needed showers, we strolled over to a riverside marquee for some dinner and a few beers, noting how the place resembled a family party with all generations embarrassing themselves on the small dance floor. We had a few jobs to do the next morning and wanted to be back on the road by midday, so we retired early, planning our morning assault on the breakfast buffet. First job of the day, as promised, was to go and get our fill of the inclusive buffet breakfast and by the time we left, with a range of Russian breakfast delights on offer, full we certainly were! Next on the list was the internet, including posting our latest diary offerings to the web site. This quick job, after some problems with the pictures we wanted to send, ended up taking much of the rest of the morning and we still hadn’t sorted it! Checked out, it was now on to the supermarket to stock up our supplies to see us through much of Mongolia. It is always interesting to wander around foreign supermarkets looking at the weird and wonderful things they offer and trying to figure out what the things you are buying really are (they are often not what we think at the time). ETime was now starting to press on and, with cash still to get, it made sense to grab some food before we set off. By the time we had eaten the sushi to which we had treated ourselves and then managed to find an ATM that would accept our cards, it was 4:30 before we were back on the road! With our deadline for leaving the country fast approaching and, feeling newly re-energised by the 24 hours we had spent out of the car, we pushed on until well into the night, finally stopping at around 2:30am and crashing out in the back of the car. Despite driving well into the previous night we were up and back on the road by 8:30, determined to make it to the border by the next day. If we missed it, for whatever reason, we would have to wait until Monday before we could make the crossing, as the border is closed on the weekends. The day’s drive saw us travelling along wonderfully quiet roads through some picturesque valleys, over mountain passes and through beautiful landscapes. Quite early in the day, when passing a lay-by, we happened across three kitted-out expedition Land Rovers parked up - so we pulled over to have a nosey and see what was going on. That is when we met the Yekaterinburg Land Rover Club on their annual expedition - this year’s being through Mongolia to the Gobi on quite a similar route to us. Out came their cameras, taking pictures of the car and of us - they even had a professional standard video camera with which they keenly interviewed us about the trip we were on. Feeling like celebrities, we gave them our website address (we really need to get business cards made), and in return were given some DVDs of previous years’ expeditions.
Back on the road, and taking a particularly long and steep section of road through a mountain pass, Dave noticed the engine temperature rapidly starting to rise and promptly pulled over to let it cool. Not to miss a trick, and enjoying the sunshine, the football was out and an impromptu game in the road commenced, interrupted, not too long in, by the unexpected sight of a 1988 C-reg Nissan Micra, fully-loaded and sporting British number plates. Spotting our GB sticker the car pulled over and after a quick chat we found out that the four English guys crammed into the clapped-out Japanese super mini were taking part in the Mongol Rally (www.mongolrally.com), a charity event involving driving from London to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar in a car with a sub-one litre engine, the crappier the better. The reason there were four of them packed into the one car was as the second Micra in which they had left the UK had blown up in Germany. Despite putting us to shame by getting further up the hill than our kitted out Land Rover, we were able to claw back a shred of dignity when we had to give them a helping push to get them started up the incline again.
Engine cooled, we carried on, stopping briefly for food and to get the dead-bug-covered car washed, before, now close to the border, finding a nice campsite by the river on a lovely flat bit of ground in preparation for the next day’s crossing.
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