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Tapped does Mongolia
Tapped clothing recently sponsored a few friends who did the Mongol Rally. After leaving from Goodwood on July 18th in 2 ford escorts along with 350 other cars, they then spent the next few weeks heading east.
In there words….
The trip was a great success and we made it all the way to Ulaanbaatar with both cars 9800 miles and with all six team members - Arthur Forbes, George Forbes, Jon Christian, Archie Montigue-Pollock, Josh Newiss and Olly Leeming.
We went through 17 countries and the route was down to Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and then crossed in to Mongolia on the Western border. We all raised money exclusively for BrAMS this is a charity based in Bristol helping MS and It specializes in Stem cell research. This is a world first and Cambridge university are deciding to take it up as well. We raised £47,000 through friends, family and businesses, it is going to fund a professional project for two years in the stem cell research department.
The trip was a lot harder then expected, with many problems along the way and so many points were we just didn’t think we could make it. 40% of teams that start do not make it. We had many visa troubles, the first came when we arrived at the Iran border and realized that george had not been issued with a visa and the Adventurists had not informed him. This caused a lot of stress and money, with not enough time to get issued another visa, which would have taken 5 days and by that time our Turkmenistan visa would have expired, we had no choice but to drive back 400km and put him and Jon on a plane over iran and straight in to Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan (weirdest place in the world).
Both our cars were registered under George’s name so this caused even more problems, as you cant enter a country with a car and not have the registered owner. So with a bit of forgery and some bribing we eventually managed to cross the border…
Our other main problem came at the Mongolian border, were we were held in no mans land for 3 days due to an agreement error by the Adventurists (organizing company) and the Mongolian authorities. So eventually the 25 teams that were being held had to protest in customs until they had no choice but to let us go.
Many car problems all the way, because the roads are so bad the cars just get shaken apart. We blew our head gasket in Bulgaria which took three days to fix, smashed our suspension springs and shock absorbers many times, had about 15 flat tires and 3 blow outs, electrical problems with the fans, ripped our fuel line from under the car, and smashed our exhaust, also one rear wheel bearing went which took a whole day in Russian hitch hiking to get sorted.
But all in all, it was a great experience and we’re all glad we did it.
This entry was posted on 06/10/2009 at 11:26 pm ..View all other posts