Arrived in Mongolia!

We have arrived in Mongolia! Got here yesterday and camped next to a huge lake about half an hour past Olgij. Despite a huge influx of assorted flies and mosquitoes seemingly guarding the lake, we also attracted the attention of two Mongol Rally cars full of half crazy spaniards who set up camp with us and kept us entertained til the early hours!

We should also point out that those teams yet to cross the border should be wary of a dodgy old man in a white shack just after the border who will try and sell you car insurance for $41 (or more going by what other teams have told us). After not being entirely convinced by his insistance we needed it, and realising that if we needed insurance we would probably have paid for it at the border itself - and watching other tourist cars drive straight past without being stopped - we decided against it. However, I stupidly gave him my passport (initially thinking it was just another pointless check) and he refused to give it back until I paid up!

After 10 minutes of heated arguing I walked back to the border and got a female guard who agreed he should give me it back, but still he refused. So after 15 minutes of more arguing the guard decided to call for someone higher up, at which point he came out and gave me my passport back, shouted at me loads and thumped his fist on our bonnet! My advice is to just drive through without stopping.

It's beena while since the last blog so I guess we should update you on whats happened since. Kazahkstan didn't provide us with the best of experiences. After finding the Tashkent border closed we made a 100k detour to the nearest smaller one and had four different border guards try to extort from us, to no avail. Once in Almaty, after staying at probably the worst hotel so far, we went to the market to buy fruit and Mat had a nectarine stone thrown at him by one of the fruit sellers. Driving out, we found our Transmission temp light on so went to a garage who tried charging $250 for a fluid change, and after declining (on the advice of a garage in England who said it was probably a faulty senser) one of the garage assistants threw half a tomato at us as we were walking out! Seems a very xenophobic place, but I guess if we'd had more time we could've seen a different side.

We drove out of the city and camped next to a lake, eating watermelon til the sun went down. Just as we thought our look had changed a full on rave started on the other side of the lake which kept us awake til the early hours!

Russia was much different. Aside from being stopped by a police officer whose sole purpose was seemingly to insult us in Russian, to the amusement of the other two officers, we found Barnaul to be a good stopover. Not least because we got interviewed by the Barnaul city newspaper. Should be in today's edition if any ralliers happen to be about. Was a slightly strange interview. We were taken into the offices of a large publishing house which also put out various gardening and lifestyle magazines. After asking us about the eclipse and our trip, the translater suddenly started asking us about our views on Russian women, what English men find attractive about women, if they ever go online to meet Russian women etc...

So who knows, maybe we'll appear in some women's magazine as well. Certainly took enough pictures of us!

Guess that's it til we reach Ulaan Baatar. Wish us luck and maybe see some of you there!

Mat and Varnish

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