Made it to UB, Mongolia..............without the car!

We made it, good times! The car didn’t, bad times! After  9,670.6 miles, two wheels destroyed, a new fan, 5 breakdowns, the engine cutting out every half hour, having to hot wire it every time to start we finally made it to the Mongolian border, 350km from our destination.

As we crossed into no mans land we saw 4 rally cars parked up with no one to be seen, (two of them we knew had crossed the morning before), our hearts sunk, this was not good!  As we rolled forward we were pointed into the rally grave yard. About 6 hours later someone started making sense and conveyed to us that the import agreement had changed at the start of the month, the import tax was no longer waived and they wanted us to pay $3000 to cross the border! After another couple of hours wondering what to do, two of the other teams returned with a CDPF representative.

To cut a long story short, we’re still not sure whats going on, but we ditched the cars in no mans land and loaded 8 of us and all our luggage and 3 litres of vodka into the pink ladies 4x4 and headed of into the night for an interesting ride to Ulan Batoor.

We’re currently sorting our selves out (we stink!), and making arangments for onward travel. We’re going back to the CDPF office tonight (forgot to say very helpful and friendly) to sort out some paperwork  and probably drink more vodka. Going to realise Nicks life long dream and go horse riding tomorrow, then off to Beijing for sight seeing and taking in some Olympic action!

Signing off now after an awesome trip, thank you very much to everyone for your help, support and donations!  We will post how much we raised when the car is recovered and sold (we hope).

Don’t forget to check back in a couple of months for photos!