Well, the car is now officially handed over now to the lovely people at CPDF in Ulan Baatar, and it is being worked by their mechanic as I type. Thanks to all of those that have supported us on this adventure, we couldn't have done it without you.

We have booked flights for Saturday, so until then we plan to be proper tourists for the next few days - no more driving! I'm looking forward to the luxuries of home and a car with working shock absorbers.

Thanks all.

Wow driving in Mongolia is tough.

Anyone who says the southern route is easy must be out of their minds. The "main road "is terrible and takes some interesting routes (if you can find it) - whilst driving through the mountains we managed to hit a rock, bending both wheels on the right side of the car - effectivly giving us two punctures. Luckily we were near Khovd, so we stopped there and got the tires replaced. We moved on toward Altai and then got another puncture - great. We decided then to take it easy and to drive only at 25mph to actually get somewhere rather than get another puncture. Needless to say, 20 minutes at 25mph later another tire was shredded. Shit. With no spares at all we took the scenic route to the nearest town (over a landscape so rocky it looked like the moon) and then along what looked like a footpath over sand dunes.... dodgy. The next day we got a lift back into Khovd to get 2 new tires. 13 hours later, 1 puncture and 6 push starts, we had new tires.

With the new tires, we headed on (slowly) toward Altai, where we are now. After 5 days of car maintenence, sand and no water to clean yourself with a cold shower is absolutely amazing. At the local garage there are plenty of Mongol Ralliers, many of whom have destroyed their cars. In Khovd we actually saw an abandoned Mongol Rally car (the Morris Minor) which the locals had picked up to repair and sell. Our car is still going strong, so if we treat her well we should be in Bayankhongor in 2 days, and in less than 4 days we should be in UB...

Thoughts on Mongolia so far? Lovely, lovely people - can't say I appreciate the landscape though - I'm throughly fed up of sand and rocks.

Now in Olgii, Mongolia!

Bit of an update - we finally crossed the border yesterday into Mongolia - and wow what a place.

We arrived at the border on Friday at around 1pm, with a massive queue of Mongol Ralliers ahead of us, some had been waiting since 6am - not a good sign. Eventually, the border opened at 2pm for an hour - letting only 10 cars through - not including us. That was it for the whole day - so in the spirit of the rally we had an impromptu drinking session in the biggest get together of Mongol ralliers since their party in Prague. 9.30am the next day the Russians suddenly decided to do their jobs and starting letting people through. An hour of bureaurocracy later we were through - only to get to the Mongolia border where they refused to let us in - great. This was particularly annoying as the Russians pushed to the front as always and got trhrough just by flashing cash...

Anyway, we eventually got through and headed as a convoy to Uglii, needless to say we got to a village and asked for directions and they let us up the mountainside - the sight of seeing such crap cars on such difficult steep terrain was brilliant. Only 2 breakdowns and 1 puncture between 5 cars in less than one hour of entering the country - ha!

 When we arrived in Uglii we almost got a heroes welcome - the kids and passers by greated us with cheerful waves and happy smiles. Now after a great night in a Ger (the Blue wolf Ger camp) we think that we'll be taking the Southern route through Mongolia. Quite a few teams are going the middle route, but it doesn't sound like our cup of tea really - we're not sure if the car has enough ground clearance, we're not sure on the availability of diesel and we don't want to trash the car. We'll see.

 Anyway, for now the adventure continues.