julia & damian's rally blog - 2005

Oh my god !!!

I've known Julia for over 12 years and in all that time I've never slept 'rough' with her in a tent, let alone sitting upright in a car, until this trip. So I was curious to discover what she would look like first thing in the morning, before she's had a shower and scrubbed-up ...

Well, now I know !!!

The moral of the story ... exactly !!!

D.

A BIG thank you to ...

We would like to say a HUGE thank you to the following people in Kiev for helping us in our hour of need.

Chris Swain and his wife Leshia for organising emergency repairs to our poorly Moo Moo last Sunday afternoon in the baking heat, with the gallant aid of their Embassy driver Sasha and his friend Slava, who both worked tirelessly for about 4 hours to patch-up our oil leaks, whilst also sorting out our radio/cassette player. We left their lock-up garage literally with music in our ears, albeit in mono !!!

D.

Don't wind me up ...

We've just had some excellent news. Nevada Radios, a business just down the road from us in Farlington, near Portsmouth, has very kindly offered to us one of their recently launched 'Wind-Up' shortwave radios, the Eton FR200 shown below.

This is fantastic news, as we weren't looking forward to listening to Kasahk local radio for thousands of miles and not understanding a word they were saying.

We can now listen to the World Service wherever we are en route. Be that keeping abreast of the civil uprisings in Uzbekistan or the impending presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan this summer. We can now rest assured that we'll be bang uptodate with the news as it unfolds.

The Eton FR200 couldn't be better for our trip, particularly in the later stages as we probably won't be able to find a corner shop, let alone some AAA batteries, just when we need them. Instead, all we have to do when power is running low, is wind it up. Perfect for all types of travelling, camping and driving, particularly to somewhere like Mongolia. So if anyone is thinking of taking a sabatical, or a gap year, here's the radio.

Nevada Radio can be contacted on 023 9231 3090, Monday - Friday 09.00 - 17.30 or via their website.

D.

Sports Bras and Mobile Clinics ....

A big thank you to Joe Browes who kindly arranged for us to have a selection of guide books for our trip.  He's also armed us with phrase books: some of the words are real tongue twisters and we'll have a better chance of being understood if we just point to the words as opposed to pronouncing them and really hash things up - knowing us we'd end up insulting someone, not complimenting them!

But dipping in and out of the pile of guide books which have taken up residence on my bedside table (no more chick lit for me before going to sleep at the moment), I've picked up on some real gems - the best piece of advice on Mongolia is that women should wear sports bras when bouncing along the rural roads. Can they really be that bad? On a more serious note, advice on the first aid kit makes me think that we'll be taking a mobile clinic with us. And the list of injections needed before the trip is almost enough to put the needle shy me off the trip altogether!

J

Who is your local MP ?

With election fever upon us and leaflet drops from every party popping through our letterbox on a daily basis, I suddenly realised that I had absolutely no idea how to get hold of our local MP, let alone know what they personally stood for.

It may be that I've reached that age where, rather than just rant and rave about how awful things are in this Country, one actually starts to seriously consider writing to one's local MP about it. So it is with great pleasure that I discovered, quite by chance, this website http://www.theyworkforyou.com that will make my life so much easier.

Now, whenever I have something to rant about, I can quickly go online, bash out an email and just send it to our local MP. Modern technology also means that I can check-up on how much our local MP spends on expenses running his office.

The fact that he or she probably won't reply, is neither here nor there, but at least I can pretend to myself that I've been heard and therefore I must be making a difference!

Now perhaps I shouldn't be so cynical, after all, many of the countries we will be travelling through on our way to Mongolia simply don't have an individual voice at all.

I just love serendipity ...

I just love what serendipity throws-up. Just when Julia and I thought we had looked at and narrowed down our possible choices of audio entertainment systems for our trip - iPods, wind-up Bayliss Radio, inbuilt car stero, etc... I've just discovered, practically on our doorstep, a company in Portsmouth of all places, that does a wind-up radio in bright zany colours called the Eton FR200 (below)

and another (above) called the Eton FR250 that also has an inbuilt torch and can even charge our mobile phones for us. What more can we ask.

I'm going to be very cheeky and see if the company Nevada would like us to road test both models for them during our rally.

D.

Am I paranoid ?

Suddenly the moment Damian & I decide to go off on this trip to Mongolia, its as if everywhere we seem to look there’s something about the region, either in the papers or when we ... 

J. 

Rally Team 'Yakety-Yak' ...

Julia and I went to our first offical rally meeting on Saturday. It was held at a rather trendy gastro-pub in Bow, East London and gave us a glimpse of what was to come. Some of the other teams were in fact quite certifiable, one pair already appeared to have their certificate stamped onto their foreheads. So all-in-all quite an interesting day.

Six or 7 teams had actually turned-up in their 'rally' cars. All were Fiat Pandas, one was even a 4x4, which I think is cheating, and all cars seemed to have only just been able to make it to the meeting. So, with Charlie currently sitting in death row, awaiting his outcome, Julia and I got chatting to some of the other drivers, and I don't quite know how this happened, but we appear to have agreed to rebuild Charlie OURSELVES, including fitting him with a new galvanised chassis. Apparently, its quite easy, its just 8 bolts, a few screws, lots of WD40 and an NVQ in welding !

Julia is now busily trying to find out what a spanner looks like, whilst I try to locate a workshop that will let us strip Charlie down and put him back together again. And in the meantime, we've had to come up with a name for our rally team and we've settled upon - YAKETY-YAK.

It all feels so terrible real now.

D.

Back to basics?

Its rather ironic that as we prepare for this journey to a far flung country, we're cocooning ourselves with many of the trappings of the 21^st century – laptops, mobile/satellite phones, short wave radio, digital camera, iPod.... 

Shouldn’t this trip be all about stripping ourselves down to the bare necessities?  (No, I don’t mean just wearing our underwear!) After all we’re going, hopefully, in a pretty basic car that doesn’t have any of the mod cons that we take for granted – modern technology for a 2CV is a hand operated windscreen wiper and air-conditioning equals rolling the roof back.

But, can we survive without our insulation blanket of modern gadgetry? Just when was the last time you went somewhere without your mobile phone?

(Thanks to Charlotte for the inspiration for this morning’s blog) 

J.

What do you mean I'm in a bad mood ...

Blogging, like so much else in life, has its ups and downs, so when I stumbled upon a website called UnkyMoods, which provides bloggers with 'how are you feeling today' mood icons, I thought they'd be perfect for Julia and I during our rally travelblogs..

No doubt, we'll have lots of trials and tribulations on our trip. So when we've just caught the ferry at Dover with a minute to spare, I'm sure we'll both feel ...

On the other hand, when its just taken 72 hours to cross the Russian border, and they've been trying to imply that we're smuggling 'cows' illegally, I'm sure we'll feel pretty ...

As they say, a picture paints a thousand words!

So in future if you see one of these 'unky mood icons' you'll know why.

D.