Good News from CNCF

It was great to receive the following email from Tom, organiser of the Mongol Rally yesterday. Whilst in Ulan Bator we were saddened to meet a number of homeless children living in the city's sewers. Thankfully, one of them has been picked up by the Christina Noble Children's Foundation...

A quick message to all those who made it to Dave's place this year. A load of you will have met the incredibly charming little street kid (his real name is Batbold although he was nicknamed Franco) who was sleeping rough around Dave's place. Many of you looked after him for the time you were around and he was having a great time. As the time wore on and the ralliers grew thin on the ground he was looking pretty dejected. Great news however, Dave contacted CNCF and they came and picked him up two days ago.

It seems he does have a family but they abandoned and possibly abused him. CNCF have been fantastic and have found a space in their Ger Village. This means, he will be looked after, fed, given a bed and a "Ger Mother" until he is 18. He will receive medical care and a great education. Basically the little fella is sorted for life! CNCF will contact his parents with social workers and access the situation. If it is deemed safe, there was no abuse and the family want him back he will be helped back into his family, which is the the best place for him. If this happens he will be monitored and supported by CNCF to ensure he he is safe and happy. If not he will be looked after in the village until he has grown up, safe and cared for.

So thanks to all who took care of him while you were around and it was this that brought him to our attention and got him into the village.

I dropped by today to see how he was getting on and attached are a couple of pictures of him in his new home. The first is him and Eamon (CNCF director) and the second is a picture of him in his ger.

Thought you might like to know how our little chum is getting on, and CNCF will keep us informed of his progress over the years.

Cheers, Tom

We're back

We've finally made it home safe and sound after spending a lot longer in China then we ever anticipated. It came as no surprise to us that it costs twice as much for the 2 hour train journey from Heathrow to Peterborough as it does to go from Beijing to Shanghai (12 hours overnight and about 10 times the distance)!

The event had raised over quarter of a million pounds before we even set off and will undoubtedly continue to have more money coming in over the next weeks. We saw first hand in Ulan Bator that there was a great need for charity support and are sure that all of the money raised by the Mongol Rally can start to make some big differences.


We have so many people to thank for making this trip a success. Everyone who has contributed, whether it be financially or by providing support or a service has been an integral part of the team. Particular thanks need to be extended to the following...

Roger's Bodyshop, Crowland - Before the rally our 150 quid banger was out of action with a failed alternator and didn't look in such good shape. Roger and Richard, it is testament to the quality of your work that the repairs you did managed to last nearly 10,000 miles and delivered us safely to Mongolia.

Heltwate School & Sir Harry Smith School - Your assistance in raising money for the two charities was vital and special thanks go
to all the pupils and teachers who were involved in making the rally the triumph that it was.

Continental Tyres - For sponsoring the team by supplying a full set of Eco Contact tyres for Molly. We had two blowouts on the way to Mongolia and neither of them were the Conti tyres! In fact they were still in excellent condition when we reached UB which says a lot about the exceptional build quality.

Collins - The Collins Mini Atlas (2003 edition) is perhaps the finest navigational tool known to man. For thousands of years we have been looking for the best way to find our way around the world, originally using the stars and sun and more recently with the internet and global position systems. All are now obsolete. If you don't own a mini atlas of the world you should definitely pick one up. At very least they have some interesting information on world climate and the oceans. Useful for passing the time on long car journeys.

Ben Shaw - Considering you didn't know us all that well it was great of you to let us stay for over a week in your apartment. You have a place to stay in Peterborough should you ever need it... Travelodge.

Other Teams - Felix Joseph and William Mark for the company, kettle and easy perks. Dave and Dave for the Volkswagen Polo snow tyre and 10 litres of fuel on our last day. Anyone who lent us local currency or bought us food/drink on the way.

So that concludes Operation Panda... We'll get a picture online for every post soon and setup a gallery so you can all see more of what we got up to.

Thanks again,
Tom, Tim and Molly x

Ni Hao!

We've been living the high life (literally) in Beijing for a week now and are really grateful to Ben for his awesome hospitality. We're on the 20th floor of one of the many posh appartment buildings in the Pingod development, with such luxuries as a bed, separate bathroom and dvd player!

This city is crazy. It seems to sprawl endlessly in every direction, but it could be a trick of the haze since it is impossible to see any further than half a mile into the distance. We've been shown some excellent local cuisine, great bars and have also been out to the Great Wall which was incredible. It's nice to have the time to be tourists after rushing across the rest of the world and not seeing everything we had wanted to. We visited the Forbidden City last week which gave us our first real taste of Chinese history. It really was a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of a city which is changing so fast.

After a little digging around we have managed to find very well priced flights that leave from Shanghai, so the Operation Panda team will be heading home tomorrow after.

See you soon x

Lagodekhi

The last few days have been highly random. We had the post rally party on Friday night at a Mongolian club called Strings. Tim immediately challenged the British Ambassador to a drinking competition and was subsequently found lying face down on the floor sleeping. Tom managed to get equally drunk, albeit in a more respectable timescale, and woke up on the floor of an unknown hotel room with hairy Dave.

It was perhaps foolish to have booked a horse riding and ger experience for the next morning at 9am, as only Tim and not-so-hairy Dave made it to the collection point in time. Tom and hairy Dave managed to arrange an experience of their own at a more hangover friendly hour. Much cantering, whipping, drinking of yak milk and eating of fat balls went on at our respective camps and we all felt like we had experienced the real Mongolia.

We were greeted by the sight of Will and Felix's red Panda outside Dave's Bar on our return, the engine held up by rope and the whole car basically tied together! They had come in the evening before with a few other teams who crossed into Mongolia at Tsagannur. Word among the other rallyers was that at least 6 bottles of vodka were consumed in celebration and that some teams had tried to mount a statue of Mr G. Khan. Last night was spent revelling in our success once more, as ten of us went down to Ristorante Marco Polo for a slap up meal that cost more than any of us expected.

Throughout all of this we've been trying to get a way out of the country sorted, and today finally found a viable option. Since the Russians won't let us back in we are getting a train to the Chinese border, walking across and then getting a sleeper bus to Beijing. Hopefully flying home from there should be relatively easy, although we have come to expect difficulties to arise from nowhere. We're bloody bored of Ulan Bator now.

And in 16th place...

... is Operation Panda!



We arrived in Mongolia on Tuesday at lunch time and could easily have been in UB that evening. It would have been a shame not to experience the Mongola countryside on the way though, so me, Tom and the two Daves we had bumped into in the middle of the Siberian forests set up a campsite in the hills and got a campfire going under the stars and played a little golf from the top of a massive hill. The first annual Mongolian Open?

The scenery here is spectacular in a different way to the other countries we have passed through. Less dramatic but almost totally unspoiled. Wild horses, meandering rivers and gers all dot the landscape. We're disapponted to not have entered from the western border as we don't get to do any off roading from the northern route. We may take Molly out west into the Gobi over the next few days, if she feels like working!

We started to have a few mechanical problems on our way into Mongolia, with the engine cutting out whenever the revs dropped low. Not too much of an issue, but very annoying to stall at checkpoints and then struggle to get going again. We think we stalled at least 40 times driving through UB.

We got to Dave's Place (the checkpoint) yesterday afternoon at about 2pm after shredding a tyre on some rocks halfway to the capital. Thankfully Dave and Dave gave us their spare off road snow tyre which was able to get us the 60km we needed. We we're 16th to arrive in UB, and the first of the Caspian Sea southern routers which was a surprise. We had been convinced that Smith Monkey Madness were a day ahead of us but later foud out that they had stayed 2 nights in Novosibirsk after seeing how attractive the women there were!

A beer was awaiting us on our arrival along with many other teams, and a game of cricket was organised by the owner of the Taj Mahal restaurant. Operation Panda were easily the best cricketing team there, taking three wickets and scoring about 20 runs between us. We lost, but claim a spiritual victory over the other team because they were so crap at bolwing that it made it impossible to hit the ball. After such a long drive the game of cricket was pretty surreal.

We've got a guesthouse to stay in and will probably be spending most of our days eating and drinking around the city. Teams keep rolling in which makes for good banter. Everyone has some mad stories of what has happened to them en route. Hopefully we'll be able to get another Russia visa and some train tickets soon and start to head home!

In summary... we've only gone and bloody done it!

Forward Russia!

We are in the city of Barnauld in Siberia. It was a long trek across Kazakhstan with a few problems on the way. The red panda lost its exhaust 3 times in one day meaning we only covered about 300km and then we hit a pothole and mangled one of our rims. We were able to hammer it back into shape though and were soon back on the road.

Kazakhstan was excellent and didn't deserve any of the bad press it got prior to the rally. We found the people to be helpful and the authorities to be pretty decent. We did get pulled over in a small town by an unmarked police car with blacked out windows though. They managed to get the equivalent of about 20p out of us as a souvenir (a 2 pence piece, 50 uzbek money and 1000 turkmen).

We're going to be puching on towards Irkutsk from here, and the red panda is heading southeast towards the western border of Mongolia. So, we'll be going it alone for a thousand km! Chances are that we will bump into other teams on the way as we know there are more to come.

The Collins mini atlas is working a treat. The fact that it has so little detail and just a few main roads means that we don't take wrong turnings onto the deadly pothole ridden B roads. We should be in UB before the 18th.

Uzbekistan / Kazakhstan

One of the easiest countries we've tackled so far, Uzbekistan was a nice experience. We'd had to hammer it through Turkmenistan in order to get ourselves into a position to leave Uzbek by 8pm Monday.

Tom, Will, Felix and I set off for Samarkand from the Turkmen border at 9am and were there in good time without any problems from the police. They seemed more friendly and less corrupt than over the border. Once we'd found the centre of town, we stayed in a really nice little B&B near the Rejistan mosque. Dinner was good, beds were comfortable and the showers were very welcome. At about 9pm 6 other teams rocked up to the hostel having tackled the central route.

Tom and I were the first to set off in the morning as we had to be out of the country a day before most. The drive to Tashkent was decent, apart from a moment where we had to dip in to Kazakhstan en route (the mini atlas didn't tell us this). The guards there were fairly mercenary but we got away without having to pay them anything because of the language difficulties.

We made it to Tashkent by 5pm, drove around town for a few hours looking for a bank and then headed to the border. Smoothly passed into the country with a little help from a Kazak officer who seemed to like the English. The plan was to sleep on the other side and wait for Will and Felix to cross over in the morning. Their exhaust fell off (again) which changed things.

We found a nice bar and restaurant about a kilometre outside of the border town and tried to communicate to the staff that we'd like to sleep in their car park and have a few beers. After about 10 minutes of sign language and drawing on post it notes we were drinking and relaxing.

Then the local youths turned up. 6 lads out on the town looking for beer, girls and money from the English people that had turned up in their local. Ilia, the boxer and main beef of the operation was kind enough to offer not to hit me with a metal stick in exchange for $10. We endured their drunken torment for 2 hours, paid them nothing and met a really nice chap called Xavi who allowed us to sleep outside at his family home with the dogs and ducks. He also guided us to the road to Shymkent this morning.

We've seen a lot of other teams in the last two days and they are mostly heading in the same direction. Can't believe there are only two countries to go after Kaz! Almaty is next, probably get there tomorrow as we have taken it easy here in Shymkent.

Will update as soon as is feasibly possible, Tim x

Turkmenistan

Our time at Camp Baku sadly came to an end after three nights and four days of sleeping on car bonnets at the port. We were relieved of $250 per vehicle in exchange for a space on the boat, which didn't seem to unreasonable considering they originally wanted $400. The captain was drunk and we had to climb what was basically a rope ladder to get aboard! After 20 hours at sea Turkmenistan appeared on the horizon, filling us all with a sense of anticipation and dread.

Turkmen customs are perhaps the most thorough we have experienced yet. It took 8 hours in one big office before all five teams were allowed into the country. A further $200 was spent here on car insurance, road tax and fuel surcharges. At about 6pm we set out into the desert unaware of what was waiting for us.

The roads were pretty good and Molly was able to tick over at 60-65mph for most of the time. Unfortunately police checkpoints are stationed at about every 20km of the country! We were pulled over at least 13 times during one day and every police officer was looking to get some cash out of us. We paid our first speeding ticket for doing 72kmh in a 60kmh zone (there were no signs) of $15. The officer put the money straight into his top pocket. We were caught speeding two further times across Turkmen but managed to pretend we didn't know what "dollar" meant. After we'd been stopped a few times we realised that the police officers pulling us over didn't have cars so it was safe to pretend we hadn't seen them and drive on.

As the miles ticked over the checkpoints became less frequent but the guards more cheeky. One tried to tell us we had a faulty handbrake, gearbox and chassis and needed to pay a fine. Another stole my mobile from the car whilst I was at the document office (we realised this about 30km after). The temperature hit 48 degrees in the desert but we didn't suffer too badly since we were nearly always moving. Team OB1-2-Gobi broke down on the way to the capital. Last we heard it was a head gasket failure.

The Turkmen people were lovely, offering us food, drink and directions. We decided that the people in authority do not represent the real Turkmenistan. Thankfully, getting out of the country was much easier than getting in!

Ach!

4 days at camp Baku, 20 hrs on a boat of greedy gits, 8 hrs in customs and $450 later and we're finally in Turkmenistan. We now have 3 days to do 2000km! Tom

Camp Baku

Time to update you on our progress. There has been none.

We've been in Baku for 2 nights now, camping at the port customs area waiting for a fax to arrive from Turkmenistan confirming that we are allowed to get on the boat. This has finally arrive today at 13:00 after having to do a lot of chasing around to the British Embassy and making phone calls to the rally organisers. To be honest, I (Tim) have done nothing but sit around drinking tea and napping under a tree.

There are 5 teams in Camp Baku - Operation Panda, Smith Monkey Madness, OB1-2-GOBI, Genghis Can and Team Fiesta. We've been out in the town, seen a few sites and generally relaxed in preparation for the craziness that Turkmenistan will no doubt bring. Apparently it's 50 degrees over in the capital at the moment.

We hope to get on a boat tonight which means we should be there some time in the next few days. They can take a while as they randomly stop in the Caspian for no reason.

Who knows when the next update will be? I'm not sure if they have computers in the Turkmen desert.

So...

...We made it across Azerbaijan with no detailed maps, using only a Collins Mini World Atlas (thanks for making us take that, Vanessa) and a compass. We're in Baku about to head to the port to see when the next ferry to Turkmenistan is.

T&T

Iceberg Dead Ahead

Been a while since we had access to the internet so very few updates from us, but now that we are in Azerbaijan we have found some super-slow internet cafe in which to let you all know we are doing okay.

Turkey was a major cause of delay in our route. The country is massive and we ended up climbing about 3000 feet into the mountains which took some time. Georgia was beautiful, some of the roads weren't so good though and late last night we had our first hairy moment driving around the Tbilsi ring road at night.



We ran over a large rock, which hit the underside of the car very hard making a pretty bad racket. After pulling over and checking the sump, exhaust manifold and fuel tank we could see nothing wrong. Later we found that a large chunk of seemingly unnecessary metal has been taken from Molly. Hopefully this weight reduction will aid performance.

Animals we have nearly hit so far include Dogs, Cats, Geese ,Horses ,Cows and Goats. They roam free in these areas and seem to rule the road! You have to be on your guard in case one of them decides they feel like a stroll in front of three lanes of traffic.

The border crossing into Azerbaijan last night was the most intense yet. They were very friendly but it was manned entirely by armed military and there were spotlights on the hilltops. I don't think it helped that we were crossing in the dead of night and that the bugs were out in force. Tom, Will, Felix and I felt like we were in some cold war film.

For 100km today we have been on the worst roads yet. Potholes everywhere and top speeds of about 30mph. When we finally hit some decent tarmac and decided to get the miles ticking over a bit quicker we were pulled over by a police officer. We had been caught speeding in two Fiat Pandas! About 10 minutes of not being able to understand each other ensued. We offered the police officer the equilvalent of $2 in Azer money and he laughed and eventually let us go.

So in summary, we are fine and this trip seems to be getting more and more surreal. We've just had confirmation of our Turkmen visas so we are about to power on to Baku to get the boat to Turkmenbashi.

As soon as we can get mobile signal or internet access Tom or I will update you again.

xx

SMS Post

Progressing slowly but surely. Yesterday realised we've broken nearly all traffic laws in the maj of countries and 50 mph is standard for a wet mountain corner.

Istanbul

So we made it to Istanbul last night at about 9pm. Over the last few days we have experienced the crtaziest driving ever. We thought Romanian's were going to be the worst after several hundred miles of everyone overtaking everyone and seeing numerous near-crashes in front of us. Then we got to Turkey!

Turkey is ridiculous. On the way into Istanbul there are up to 5 lanes of traffic all doing about 70mph with no road markings. It was dark, our lights barely illuminated the road ahead and we were being cut up by massive trucks and buses. You feel a little vulnerable driving such a small car in situations like that.

Our hostel is in the old Citadel of the city within 5 minutes of the Blue Mosque. We spent an hour driving Italian Job style with team 'Ghenghis Can' and 'Pedal Faster' in our red, white and blue cars. Several wrong turnings up one way roads and crazy moments of missing lights, but we managed to navigate it succesfully and without getting inany trouble with the police.


We will be setting off from here tomorrow morning, heading up towards the north coast of Turkey on our way to Georgia. We still don't know if they will let us into Turkmenistan. Hopefully it will be okay!

Tim and Tom x

SMS Post

Covered some serious distance yesterday, crossing all of romania. It's 7.30am and we're just about to cross into bulgaria. Turkey by evening hopefully.

SMS Post

Just passed budapest, sitting in a layby cooking on our stove. Our first cup of tea in eastern europe is on the way! Covered about 1400 miles so far. Tim

Alriiiight!

We got to Prague at about 3pm today, having made several detours through the German countryside and into the mountains. Once a lovely couple who ran a local pub had sent us in the right direction we managed to find the main road to the Czech Republic. When we got there we were surprised to find that we were the first ones to arrive. We think some teams must have bypassed the stop-off in favour of getting a head start on the rest. It won't do them any good though, the Pandas and Minis are the fast cars out there!

Sad to hear that some teams have already suffered in England, we saw the hearse on the A20 on our way to Dover. Would have stopped but we would have been no use to them. omically, on the way from Nurnberg to Prague our electrics went a little crazy and we had no fuel guage, engine temp, indicators, horn or stereo. Less comically Molly has started to emit a high pitched rattle from underneath our feet whenever we accelerate.

Loads of teams are parked up in the underground car park in the centre of Prague so we're all going to have a few drinks and sort out who is doing which routes. Thankfully, some chap caled Rich thinks that he has daignosed both our problems as non-fatal (dodgy earth connection and something to do with the exhaust manifold). Probably fix them tomorrow.

Tom drove us through the centre of Prague earlier and I navigated. It was a disaster. Not quite as bad as our attempts to get out of London, but still pretty funny. We think we've driven down every street in the city leaving a cloud of fumes and the resonance of our squeaky brakes behind us as we went.

SMS Post

Day two, we're about 40k's from frankfurt on the A3. Tom's done a pretty massive driving shift overnight to get us here. Proper update to come soon, tim.

SMS Post

After some navigational issues in central london we are finally on the m20. We have about 40 minutes until the ferry leaves. We are about 40 miles away!

27 hours & counting

This morning at 9:20am Operation Panda got it's third and most important team member back - Mollyinha! Afforded a new lease of life thanks to the work of Roger and Richard at Roger's Bodyshop in Crowland, she's driving a lot better and seems to be more eager to get going than we are! This is very good news, meaning we have almost a whole day in which to prepare for the big departure tomorrow afternoon! We reckon it's in the true spirit of the rally to be getting all this sorted so late... honest.

Things done to make her more likely to make it to Mongolia include:
Spark plugs
HT leads
Dizzy cap
Timing adjustments
Wider front tyres

Things that we plan to do today to make her look more comical include:
Blue metallic window tints
White wheel hubs
Home made roof rack

Ach! Really can't wait to get going now!

SMS Post

If this appears on the blog, then our sms updating service is working!

Five Days...

With less than a week between us and the start of the event, I (Tim) have decided to sleep outside in preparation. I may even try and cook all my food on a small stove and only drink my cups of tea from a metal tin.

Boot Sale

An early start this morning as OP (featuring Thomas Andrew Glavina) headed down to the Peterborough Utd Football ground to sell everything we didn't really need.

Once the initial morning blues had been combatted by drinking coffee we were on top form, developing the awesome game "Wheel of Deals" in which one child left our stall with 6 items for a pound! Eventually we gave pretty much everything away to this Polish couple who seemed very happy with the useless tat we filled their car with.

We think we managed to raise about a hundred quid from the sale today, but then you have to factor in the 2 burgers, 6 coffees, 3 cans, 6 pints and round of pitch and putt. Think we're looking at more like ninety. Cheers for coming down, Glove.

The Blog Goes Live

With 8 days to go until we set off for Mongolia, we thought we had better get something like this sorted out. A place to let all those who have sponsored us and all those who care about our well-being know how we are getting on!

Both Tom and I are currently in a state of limbo, unsure of whether to be excited or scared of the journey ahead. There's a lot to get done and not a lot of time to do it in.

Thanks to the pupils at Heltwate School in Bretton and at Sir Harry Smith Community College for all their help in fundraising. We had a great day at the sponsored walk and lots of money was bought in for the charities. Molly the Panda is now sporting some amateur graffiti thanks to the children of class 7NM, who have nearly all written good luck messages on her. The only exception is whoever wrote "you're gonna break down". Thanks!

Molly is now back in the garage having the engine looked at and some new tyres fitted. Thanks go to Roger's Bodyshop in Crowland for taking pity on us and offering some mechanical assitance in our hour of need. We've recently had the alternator replaced and the clutch adjusted to ensure we don't conk out on one of the parkways next Saturday. Roof rack is to be fitted soon, a few space saving adjustments to be made to the boot and we might try and bodge together some kind of device to increase our air intake too.

We can still push towards our intial target of £3000 with your help! Please visit www.justgiving.com/operationpanda and make a donation if you haven't already done so. To those of you who have, we are really, really grateful and will try and bring you something back from Mongolia!