• Russian embassy in Mongolia would not give us a visa for longer than ten days to get home.
• It’s 7000 kilometers
• The Lada is a bit broke
• Rusian police love stopping us to pay “fines”

But anyway, 9 days out of Mongolia, we’re in St. Petersburg, 200k from the Finnish border abd then a few ferries, bridges and Autobahns to get home.

The Lada is acting up a bit due to the mileage (around 800 k a day over some pretty horrible roads, filled with potholes and trucks doing 60 kph).  I broke the exhaust and there’s no time to stop to get it fixed, so it’s earplugs when driving.  We have no third or fifth gears and the dffs need topping up every other day.

Camping in Siberia in September not to be repeated – waking up to ice on your tent and having to get on the road before sun-up is not nice, and he mozzies are effing huge.

Anyway, looking forward to getting home now – the Lada definitely is.

Well, chilling out in Ulaan Bataar, but it wasn’t too easy getting here.  We had the usual fantastic scenery for camping,

Local visitors on horses, all willing to help – we were changing a tyre at the side of the road here – trying to remove a commercial tubeless tyre, with tyre irons.  We managed it, but it was slow work:

The roads were great fun, splitting in the middle of nowhere, possibly joining at some stage, possibly not, only way to find out is to go.  The maps are pretty useless and the locals can’t really understand them – knowledge of the layout of the land is learned by experience, but maps just confuse them. 

Lots of breakdowns:

The river crossings became pretty tough too.  The Niva really showed it’s strengths here:

We considered the next one a bit more carefully, no problems there though:

Lost again:

These things, called Oovo’s are scattered throughout the countryside, at the top of hills, if you pass one, you have to stop and walk clockwise 3 times around it, for a safe journey.  Modern Mongolians don’t have the time so just beep 3 times instead. 

Not very many of these around:

Octane, down for maintenance:

Sometimes though, I got the feeling I just didn’t fit in:

We thought we were hard, but then we met this girl, Danelle, from New Zealand, she’s been to Laos, Cambodia and is heading to France, on a 250 cc Honda bike:

Eventually we made it to Ulaan Bataar, tough place, especially for tourists, we met another guy, Richard, who did the rally in a Shogun, so far he’s been mugged twice. 

Secure parking for the Lada – most hotels have no parking so we paid for the best spot:

As soon as we arrived, the head of the charity wanted us to go to the border to make sure the most important rally car made it through, 2 guys were driving an ambulance, complete with piles of medical gear.  We got to take our pick of rally cars.  Had to be the Land Rover.  We escorted them back to UB that night. 

Our second arrival in UB:

This time, we got to celebrate properly:

Thanks again to all who donated and helped – we’re catching up on the charity later on and will report back on what they’re up to, and what we’ll be doing to help.

Departed Almaty in Kazakhstan and after giving the Lada a good once over we were on our way again.  Hoping to get to Novosibirsk via Omsk in Russia in time for the eclipse on the 1st of August.

Arrived in time to get the best eclipse view in the world. Lots of others there too for the same reason so great party atmosphere.  Making good progress and fixing some scary squeaks, grinding and other fearsome noises all round the car.  Still going well.

Into Mongolia – now in Ulaangom in the norther area of Mongo.  Hope to make it to UB in about a week.  Mozzies really hungry at this time of the year.  We have had some rain so the river crossings are a bit of a nightmare or great fun!  The Lada is just the man for the job though.  Yesterday we pulled Larry and Maureen, the flying Blaa LiteAce, out of a river.  No prob for what must be the best 4X4 .

Hope you all well.  Missiing you all like hell, but don’t worry -we are having a ball.  Really sorry about the lack of photos but promise to try to correct that as soon as we get a reliable connection.

Ladas are still cool cars over there, every single one seems to be fitted with lots of plastic bits as soon as it leaves the factory:

Octane: Branches worldwide:

Up into the Altai mountains heading for the Mongolian border:

Always following our shadow,

Off to the beach in Kazakhstan to test out the Nivas off-road abilities:

And then get embarassed when the Liteace copied us:

We came across a few interesting potholes in otherwise good roads – I drove straight into this one and I have no idea how the Lada survived.

There are lots of these great ramps all over the ex-soviet countries for working on your car at the side of the road:

Blinged police Niva:

The Russian word for Juice is Cok, endless entertainment:

We camped up on the first night and got a fantastic welcome from the locals

We reunited the Niva with some of it’s long-lost brothers too.

Really nice here and hoping to take another break.  Met one of the guys from the Lada Forum, that helped us to get up and going with the car.  He took us on a tour of the city and its really nice.  Hotels are a bit on the expensive side at 100 Euro a night.  However we have to put our heads somewhere.  Now we are off the the beach.

Hopefully we might get some photo’s online here here.  Could’nt get good enough a connecton anywhere so far.  We know that ye are all dying to see a bit of the action – however the best is yet to come!

Heat is not giving up, Claudine suffering from heat exhaustion so taking a break here.  Iran was a complete pleasure, except for the driving.  Guys would pull up beside us in a crappy old Pazkan and roar “welcome to Iran”, before cutting us up at the next set of lights.  They don’t seem to take it seriously at all though.  Life is just fun.  We saw a good few cars embedded under trucks, drivers obviously brown bread, so they do get caught out eventually.  Once they find out were not American, we are very welcome. Offered a smoke on an opium pipe and Iranian “Whisky” (goodway to get blind quick I think).

Turkmenistan was just like the border guards made it seem. We were shafted there for about 150 dollars and that was just about what the rest of the place was all about.  Everything was openly advertised at a certain price and then multiplied by 5 for tourists.  We slept in a car park because I refused to give the feckers 20 dollars for a fleapit.  Just mean, cranky people, in a country where almost every hotel room is bugged. Left the secret service with lots of work to do “the cat is in the hat”, “commence operation failte romhat”, “chuala me torann ufásach” etc. Police were on every street corner, watching everything; we were caught out after the 11 pm curfew once, not a nice experience.  Looking down the barrel of a gun is hardly a welcome, but ensures that you give the right answers first time. Glad to be out of the place.  They had an earthquake in the 40’s and I think that it must have left a bad after taste.

Just over the border into Uzbekistan now.  What a change. Only a fence and a bit of paperwork, but the people are as nice as the Iranians.  No shortage of welcome.  Cheap everything and everyone smiles.  We head for Samarkand today.  The Lada is not getting a great reception; mostly they just seem a bit disappointed that a westerner wouldn’t have a more expensive car. The car’s going OK, still losing water and making a few scary noises.  Going to call into a friend in Almaty in Kazakhstan and try to get it sorted.

No photos, because we are on a dial-up everywhere so far. Connection here takes an age to upload an email. So I’ll upload some as soon as I get a chance.

The capital, Ashgabad was flattened to make way for a new, marble faced capital with monuments everywhere. 3-4 lane roads go everywhere and the place is filled with hotels. Unfortunately there aren’t any locals driving anywhere and no tourists, so streets and hotels remain empty:

The currency, Manat is 14,000 to a dollar and that pile was just about enough to pay for dinner that evening. Locals carry around a bag with their money, and tourists pay 5 times the amount for everything. Even hotels have 2 pricelists on the wall, one for locals one for foreigners. The worst thing about the place was the fact that nobody was welcoming, everybody looks at you suspiciously. We won’t be going back there.

12 metre tall gold statue of Turkmenbashi, taken from spot where a guy was washing windscreens, begging for a few pence.

Luxury parking for us and the Lada.

Tripod tractors, not sure why.