Candy Ballfinger

We're Candy Ballfinger, three colleagues from London who decided to have their mid-life crises a little early and attempt to drive from London to Mongolia from 11th July 2009. The M25 on a Saturday? I have no idea what we were thinking...

Preparations to date are going well. The route is becoming clearer all the time (see below), we have visas for Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, a nice big pile of visa application forms to be completed (for Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia), a team logo, and a bursting library of guide books, maps, and travel books.

Candy Ballfinger?

Yes, that's right, Candy Ballfinger. The first thing we had to do was come up with a team name. The one we ended up with is a disturbing hybrid of two equally disturbing team names, 'we taste like candy' and 'ballfinger', from a bowling evening Martin and I (Dave) went to a few months ago. I mentioned it to Will as a joke, and to my horror found that he'd entered this team name on the rally website. It is, and I can't stress this enough, a working team name, to be changed as soon as we can think of something better. All suggestions are welcome.

Who's the little chap in the logo?

That's Ballfinger, our mascot. He's what I imagine a candy ballfinger may well look like, part fingers, part balls.

The route

The route we're planning (below) takes us through Southern Europe, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, up through Kazakhstan into Siberia in Russia, down into western Mongolia and then across to Ulaan-Bataar. We'll be dealing with temperatures around 40 celcius for the most of the route. Perfect... If we find a van with air conditioning...

Quote of the week

"Our society isn't mature enough for a multiparty system" - Former Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov