The Mongol Rally - 8,000 miles in a 1982 Ford Fiesta!
Book Details
Author(s)Luc Jenkins
ISBN / ASINB00B7IP73E
ISBN-13978B00B7IP735
Sales Rank1,318,806
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
Three young men, inspired by a lack of anything better to do, decided to drive a 1982 Ford Fiesta with a cruising speed of 45mph through Europe, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan to Ulaan Baator, Mongolia to raise money for charity as part of the Mongol Rally 2006.
Despite being crippled with youthful ignorance and a lack of planning, foresight or any mechanical know-how they bumbled all 8,000 miles and had a great time doing it. This our comic story over 20,000 words reconstructed from scrawled notes on the back seat.
Below are a few extracts:
"We departed our families from the Hemsley household waving “Tara!†with all the spirit of the 1914 enlisters at the crack of late mid-morning, all slightly worse for wear from our epic all-nighter beach party farewell celebration. With fear and trepidation we cranked our beloved steed up into her fourth and final gear and before we had even left Pembrokeshire we surpassed all our expectations and managed to overtake a tractor! "
During our entry to the Ukraine Oli managed to just about fill out his customs form but put he did put his passport number down in the section marked in Ukrainian as “number of accompanying childrenâ€â€¦.two million is a lot of kids! The Ukranian border guard didn’t seem to care; he was far more concerned with our possible possession of “Knives?!†– We showed him our kitchen knives and he went all Crocodile Dundee on us by saying “too small, knive this BIG†and using his hands to demonstrate the sort of “knive†a samurai would use in battle. “No, no we definitely don’t have any of them.â€
We stopped at a petrol station and swapped some Dollars and Euros (twenty each) for 500 and 600 Roubles respectively, a rather good rate from a dodgy gangster looking fellow who had to prop the boot of his Lada open with a baseball bat whilst he rummaged around to find Roubles for us. He also noticed we were perusing the alcohol section and he kindly suggested we opt for some Russian Special Brew style lager at 7.2% with a comedy “glug, glug, fall over dizzy†mime routine. With a recommendation like that how could we decline!
We also made a film as a preview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6fc9ozB6Vs&feature=youtu.be
Despite being crippled with youthful ignorance and a lack of planning, foresight or any mechanical know-how they bumbled all 8,000 miles and had a great time doing it. This our comic story over 20,000 words reconstructed from scrawled notes on the back seat.
Below are a few extracts:
"We departed our families from the Hemsley household waving “Tara!†with all the spirit of the 1914 enlisters at the crack of late mid-morning, all slightly worse for wear from our epic all-nighter beach party farewell celebration. With fear and trepidation we cranked our beloved steed up into her fourth and final gear and before we had even left Pembrokeshire we surpassed all our expectations and managed to overtake a tractor! "
During our entry to the Ukraine Oli managed to just about fill out his customs form but put he did put his passport number down in the section marked in Ukrainian as “number of accompanying childrenâ€â€¦.two million is a lot of kids! The Ukranian border guard didn’t seem to care; he was far more concerned with our possible possession of “Knives?!†– We showed him our kitchen knives and he went all Crocodile Dundee on us by saying “too small, knive this BIG†and using his hands to demonstrate the sort of “knive†a samurai would use in battle. “No, no we definitely don’t have any of them.â€
We stopped at a petrol station and swapped some Dollars and Euros (twenty each) for 500 and 600 Roubles respectively, a rather good rate from a dodgy gangster looking fellow who had to prop the boot of his Lada open with a baseball bat whilst he rummaged around to find Roubles for us. He also noticed we were perusing the alcohol section and he kindly suggested we opt for some Russian Special Brew style lager at 7.2% with a comedy “glug, glug, fall over dizzy†mime routine. With a recommendation like that how could we decline!
We also made a film as a preview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6fc9ozB6Vs&feature=youtu.be
