Kaz : Addendum.

Richy: Last night I had horse penis for dinner.

Kazakstan - now it gets serious!

Nic here. We have made it to Kazakhstan! Since leaving Russia we have met a few other teams and have been travelling in convoy with Team Mongolia Adventurers since Volgograd. We are now in Atyrau about to head to the Uzbekistan border today. The border crossing was a much more enjoyable experience from Russia to Kazakhstan; the Russian border guard kissed us on the cheek when we filled out the forms correctly and on the Kaz side there was lots of hand shaking and gold teeth. We crossed about midnight which unfortunately meant we were surrounded by millions of mossies and spiders and wierdly there were also hundreds of frogs. Kaz roads are in a different leasgue to any we have seen before. Although crossing the border did involve a boat it does seem like we are in a completely different place. There are camels on the side of the road, HUGE pot holes and the people are beginning to look mongolian rather than causcasian.

First Taste of Russia

Hello everyone! Richy here.

Since we last "blogged", a lovely morning was spent on the beach at Odessa enjoying the warm weather and admiring the (ahem!) scenery. I even went for a swim in the sea which for anyone who knows me I generally try avoid like the plague.

After a hearty lunch we then set off with the aim of trying to get as near to the Russian border as possible. With time not on our side we pushed our trusty car to the limit and actually a little beyond when our rear right tyre started to disintergrate and we had to change it by the road. (see middle photo). The air jack was cool but it did cause a few cars passing to stop and check as being wired from the exhause it did make it look like we were trying to top ourselves!

Pushing on into the night and with fatigue setting in we encountered another problem, Ukranian road signs are bollocks (see example above), several times we got lost and had to backtrack. With no available hotels we spent our first rather uncomfortable night sleeping in the car being periodically disturbed by inquisitive truckers - a most umpleasant experience.

The next day we crossed the Russian border, although this took a few hours it was quite painless and the guards compared to Ukraine were pretty friendly. Rostov was our overnight stop where the most frustrating problem was encountered; Russian policemen are absolute w*****rs. On the main street trying to find a hotel we were flagged down 5 times in the space of half a mile. Clearly they were radioing ahead to their colleagues up the road with the aim of making our lives an absolute misery. Much disjointed arguments, arm waving and document showing occurred, the result of which was payment of a bribe of 50 Rubles (about a quid). Annoying but at least it won't be bankrupting us!

Next stop is Volgograd, scene of one of the most destructive battles in military history! Hoping to get some cool photos of Soviet military statues on the way which I will post next time I write.

Catch you later......

Ukraine

Hello, Nic here
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We seem to be having computer issues again so I hope this works. After a harrowing 4 1/2 hours at the Ukrainian border we have made it into Ukraine. A rally car in ront of us had to unload their entire car, at least we escaped that. First 20 mins into thecountry though Robs speeded through a police checkpoint and we were pulled over. He and I spent a while in their hut apologisig, they thoiught the hole in robs shirt was funny and we told them we were
going to Mongoloia and they let us off with some money for coffee rather han a fine.

As Rob's said 'fuck me, this is crazy driving nation'. The overtaking is unbelievable, I am expecting to see a head on collision at every bend.

I am very glad I learnt the cyrillic before I came, without it we would be totally lost. Looking forward to getting my pigoen russian out in a fw days.

Haven't seen any other rally cars for a while but I think we are staying in slighty more upmarket accomodation than them, last night we had a suite!

Best go, we are off to the beach. In Odessa now and we need o check out the Black Sea.

To the Black Sea!

On into Slovakia

OK, foreign keyboard skills have
improved a little but this is still rather painful. Current problem too is we are about to hit the land where the language goes completely mad. Should be fun. We are currenly in Slovakia where we spent the night in a town called Kosice in the worlds hottest hotel room. Discovering that our late night urban map reading skills are a little on the weak side we have decided to try to get to our desitnations in daylight from now on, which may be tricky since Rob being a teenager struggles to activate his brain before 10am. He did earn his lie in today though as he did drive for about 10 hours yesterday. I managed a paltry one hour which was my first experience of driving on a foreign road and my 37th hour of total driving ever so pretty scary.

Anyway, onwards and Wedtwards. We are trying to get to Odesa on the Black Sea in the next two days so we can have a little bit of R and R on the beach there.

23RD Struggling with forgine kezboards

Hello hello, made it to Olomouc ¨which is apparentlz east Czech Rep. Dozy Rich left the camera thingy in the ca¨r so no photos yet. He is getting a kicking as we speak, all else is well. Spent hour and a half yesterday trying to fix then towing a 4x4 off the AutoBahn, got our first fine for driving down a pedestrian street which was fun............not.

Got to saz bze for now, sorry about the rubbish kezboard our parking permit is up.......now i guess.

Cheers,

Rob, Nick, Rich

And they're off .....

Hyde Park, 21st July 2007, a date they'll never forget.

A good idea at the time ? - now they are off to find out.

All smiles as they left as you'll see from the photos. Long may they last!

Any more toilet rolls in the car and it'd be sponsored by Andrex ....

(Posted by Ben and Jill)

We're Ready

Well the time has finally arrived. After hours of exhausting work at Base Camp Cheam by Nic and her gallant team (big thanks to Larry and Mother!!) the car is ready for the off, and boy doesn't it look great! With the strength of a Sherman Tank and more spare parts than the Space Shuttle it would be impossible to be better prepared.

We set off 1pm Hyde park tommorrow, next stop, Prague!....

An early setback!

This wasn't supposed to happen, cars are meant to break on the rally, not before it! Our trusty Fiat Panda has met with an early demise, or maybe it was just psychic and knew what we were planning to put it though. Anyway a new car was required and pictured left here it is (bonnet up of course to instil that extra bit of confidence!). We will now be driving to Mongolia in a Vauxhall Astra Estate, luxury or what!! It even has a 1.3litre engine for some extra power, paid for by the fact we received so much money in donations that we could actually afford the penalties charged for going over the 1 litre limit. Cheers everyone!!
Means our team name is now a little redundant though. I wanted to change it to "Team CatAstraphe" but Nic not really having a sense of humour advanced enough to deal with puns refused blankly hence we will keep our current name in loving memory of our poor little deceased Panda.