The Mongol rally 2011- Team Broke Yak Mountain
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Team photo Sam King photography : Rory SD, Oli Hester, Dan Evans, Josh Aburrow-Newman, Ollie Burston.
After a few drinks and a night out we all registered to do the Mongol rally 2011 costing £700!
This is an event where a group of under powered and poorly prepared vehicles embark on a journey in aid of two chosen charities to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
We all spoke about what our team name should b, we came up with some names like Yackson 5.
We chose a Suzuki carry 1.3 Lt van. We purchased this with donated money from a few different companies that are included at the bottom of this post. We found this van in up north somewhere after purchasing it for £ 1700 ish we took it on its first voyage back to Brighton. It felt small and slow, this was without all our things and everyone in it!
Van is purchased!
After driving it back to Brighton we made contact with different businesses and they seemed interested. Over the Easter break, Josh and Rory spent a long time on the van fitting different things that we needed. This included a triple van seat in the back as it originally was a 2 seater van which we made a 5 seater. They also fitted a roof rack with a roof box, and a safe that was concealed below the 3 seats that they welded to the body of the van. This took a month or two. They also made it so there were areas that we could store water, fuel and spare tyres as this could be essential later on!
Van is ready, Thanks Josh, Rory and Alan!
We soon made contacts with different businesses to help us and the van get ready for the trip. This ranged from getting car stickers printed to going to junk yards to find spare parts, to having a presentation stand at the British leisure show! The British leisure show was a really good event and we raised a lot of awareness and money there, we stayed at my house (thanks to my parents) and managed to get to Windsor racecourse everyday even after celebrating most of the nights and not getting much sleep.
British Leisure show stand, Windsor Racecourse.
The Adventurists are the company that run the rally although they give very little guidance and they even say
“There’s a place to start and a place to finish, but where you go, and what happens in between is anyone’s guess.”
They definitely live by this motto. However they put on different events during the build up and actually on the rally itself which were wicked. The first of these was a club night in London,
This night was themed as a brass punk theme and so as we didn’t want to spend £100’s on dressing up we went in bow ties and colourful waist coats which cost us about £10. This was a really good fun night and we met some really good teams. The second of these events, The Adventurists put on a ‘tea’ party in Hackney. We had the day in London then went onto this.
Adventurists Tea party.
On arrival we were given drinks cards which entitled you to hendricks gin samples which were all free, this got a bit out of hand and after talks from Sir Chay Blyth and other explorers we all were very inspired and wanted to leave there and then! We all still had a term to go at uni and quite a bit to to be getting on with.
Slogging away at uni we all got really excited about the trip and summer couldn’t come any sooner.
After all of these preparations we were as ready as we were ever going to be. We then spent a week down in Brighton sorting out exactly what we needed to take, as there was very limited space in the van. We thought we had thought of all issues and problems that we would come across (even down to persuading a carpet shop to give us some spare carpet in case we got stuck in sand) but some of the situations later proved that we hadn’t thought of everything!
Brighton, some of the things we took, (notice the Nerf) !
My bag (excluding the tent)
After our final night out in Brighton we were delayed leaving for Goodwood race course as the Kazhakstan map had not arrived and was due to arrive that morning.
After its arrival we made our way to Goodwood race course for the first night of camping, and then the next day for the official start of the rally after a lap of the famous Goodwood race course near Chichester.
Leaving,
Good wood race track.
After camping we set off, we spent the morning waiting around and signing certain papers and collecting the official mongol rally buffs and stickers. We then left to get one of the latest ferries you can get out of Dover as we thought this would be a massive convoy of cars getting to the ferry terminal. However we were so slow because we had lots of weight, we quickly got left behind. Some teams even in this first stretch broke down, not too promising for times to come!
Ferry sunset,
Having some beers as the sun set and the journey ahead of us, we didn’t have any idea where we were going now so we spoke to some teams and saw what they were up to, they didn’t really know either so we just decided to drive towards Brussels which was a clear route. We had planned out certain countries that we needed to pass through as we had visas for some of them, but this did not dictate our route and order in which we went through the countries too much!
Brussels Camp, ‘Gingalinger’
Camping next to the motorway just outside Brussels, we were next to a popular cycle route and as it was a week end a lot of people were using it! Waking up to ‘Gingalinger’ as cycling teams passed our tent was a highlight as we had no idea what it meant and so we replied! We then walked round Brussels and had some waffles and belgian beers.
Belgian beers and waffles.
We then drove towards The Czech out party which was in a town called Klatovy about 2 hours outside of Prague. We met a team called Hit the road Yak two really nice guys. We then went in convoy with them as they had a very similar car to us and seemed to be going at the same pace, here they are just before we left at Goodwood. They had some walkie talkies and this was really funny between cars, which kept the straight German and Czech roads a bit more entertaining as we were going at an average speed of about 50 mph.
Hit the road Yak, Goodwood Racecourse.
Mid way transfer on a German motorway, with Hit the Road yak in the fast lane.
This was a pretty funny place to camp, right next to the motorway and under some high voltage power lines and when it rained it got reallllly loud!
The two Yak teams leaving for the Czech out party, in Germany.
After quite a long days drive through most of Germany and some of the Czech rep, we got to Klatovy, with the vague directions provided by the Adventurists. We managed to find
Klenova castle, this was the venue for the Czech out party.
Prior to this we were told by the Adventurists that it had an ‘Arabian nights’ theme, so typically, we didn’t buy anything at all for it, until we got into a nearby town where we were luckily found a small market that sold things that were vaguely Arabian nights themed!
After drinking hideous amounts of whisky we put on our Harims and white coloured scarfs and went towards the Klenova castle. This proved pretty difficult after the amounts of drink consumed!
Hung over post Czech out party!
The night had many different sides to it. Firstly there was a BBQ to begin with. This was great tasting but wasn’t quite up to the standard Broke Yak meals of starchy pasta and the cheapest pasta sauces available! We all managed to get a sneak a few drinks into the castle which made the party a lot cheaper as the bars were really expensive! There was a live band, an internal bar which was in the one of the castles main rooms and a CAVE! This was the main place to dance and generally have a really good time so we found ourselves there for most of the night. This was a really hot venire but the music was wicked!
Hung over after the Czceh out!
First mountains, in Austria.
We then drove on into Austria, we drove until sunset and managed to find an idyllic place to camp just off the side of the road and next to a mountain river, we all wanted to have showers and get clean. The mountain river was so tempting that we didn’t bother checking the depth, Rory jumped right in and managed to twist his already bad knee. Thankfully the roads weren’t too bumpy and it healed up pretty quickly.
Austrian camp site,
Showers in the morning!
A waterfall and a bridge you could get inside!
Some of the roads we drove on in this section had some amazing views, we seemed to want to stop everywhere along the way. This meant we saw a lot more of the places we drove through. The meals we had on the road sometimes got quite adventurous.
Austrian Bridge,
After Austria we briefly drove through Slovenia, reaching Croatia in the afternoon. The border at Croatia proved difficult. On arrival everyone but the driver had a few drinks as we were planning on going out that evening in Zagreb, so feeling a little drunk we got pulled over by the border officials. This began with a search of the van and examining our passports in detail. We were then told to walk into this waiting room, ‘You have drugs, you have drugs’ an angry tall and plump border official barked at us. We obviously didn’t but he kept on at us, maybe for a bribe, after a few threats with sniffer dogs searching our car he signalled for Rory to come with him, so he did. They went into a room for a couple of minutes, Rory walked out then Josh gets called in, this was all done in silence as we didn’t want to speak or ask what has just happened in case to draw attention to ourselves. Everything was fine and we were sent on our way. Only when we had passed a few yards out of the Croatian border control gates we found out that both Josh and Rory got strip searched by one of the border officials!
This taught us a bit of a lesson as we thought European borders would be a bit of a push over, they had all the right reasons to suspect us as we were all wearing our Harims and head bands and hadn’t washed for quite a few days!
We headed to Zagreb to stay the night, and met up with some friends who were in Croatia for a music festival, was good to see them! Although we had a room in a hostel only some of us managed to stay in it that night and others had to sleep in the van. It was really wet and the van leaked so it was quite a long night for some of us! Some of us went out in Zagreb and as quite a lot of local residents head to the coast for the summer the city was relatively quiet. Although we managed to find one of the only clubs that was open after meeting some great Croatian people, and danced the night away to Elvis and some 80s classics in the basement of a Croatian town house!
Zagreb Street eating.
We decided after hearing from the locals to head towards the coast as this seemed a lot nicer than driving along motorways through the centre of Croatia. We found some great spots along the way!
Hung over we drove west, we had some awful traditional cheese on route and then we climbed a massive hill at around 30 mph and came out at the top of a brilliant view down into the Adriatic sea.
View down into Adriatic sea.
It was so hot, (35 degrees) so at nearly every swimming opportunity we stopped and made the most of it!
Adriatic hung over swim.
This coastal road was amazing to drive along it wove its way through the steep hills and local fishing towns, we didn’t have a destination we were just heading along the coast to see how far we were going to get. Getting hungry we stopped off at a small town which hugged the coast line. This was an excellent evening with really nice food and red wine! Just before this meal we had walked to find a small camp site just along the coast and decided we were staying here. So we all had some red wine and chatted the night away.
We ended up sleeping on the sun beds and getting woken up by German tourists putting there towels out! Then going for a quick dip and heading on our way towards Split.
Split old Town entrance gate (left) Old town photo Ollie.
Getting into Split we parked up and went to look for somewhere to stay, we for the first time went to the tourist information centre in the Old town. We found a really nice hostel in the Old town, it was full at the time but we were given space on the balcony!
That evening was a pretty crazy night, it was a pub crawl type evening and so we went on that, there was a free bar for an hour and a half and the rest is history! The next day we ‘split’ up Ollie and I went round the Old town and the others went and chilled on the beach and stuff.
After a good day we got on the road and went through a very small part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and got into Albania.
Swimming in a very hot Montenegro.
After this we then bumped it a team of Canadians, they wanted to convoy with us but as we were so slow we soon got left behind by them. We started a long drive as we thought we were a little delayed on our planned route. So we drove constantly for a bit, set up camp just outside Montenegro and then continued into Albania.
I had been driving quite a bit and so decided to share some of the driving a bit more. I handed over the driving to Rory pretty late on in the evening, as he pulled out he was driving on the wrong side of the road, a moped was driving towards us. Luckily between Dan and Rory they managed to get the van off the road. We did clip the moped very slightly and the guy riding it was ok but it was a wake up for all of us!
The road down in Albania after passing over a pretty hairy mountain drive, and the petrol station/lorry park where we had our motorbike fall out!
Restaurant we slept above, and the lake we woke up next to!
After a long nights driving it was pouring with rain and we could see thunder storms brewing over a lake that seemed endless in the hazy night light. We had no currency for Albania at all so food became a bit of an issue. Luckily we met a restaurant owner and he let us sleep on the roof of his restaurant, and offered us some food and coffee’s in the morning. We gave him a small bottle of whisky for his hospitality, which probably got placed above the bar for other customers!
We now continued onto Greece where we were going to speak to Tina to see if she was able to put us up in her house. We only had a vague idea where she lived, however it turned out almost exactly on route! The map we were using through Europe was only a motorway map and getting locals for directions often turned out for the most interesting routes!
Arriving in Thessaloniki we had to find where Tina actually lived so went to find an internet cafe, we by mistake left the van unlocked in the city centre, luckily we had no problems! After finding where she lived we got on our way to Polygyros.
Tinas house was amazing we stayed here for a couple of days and had such a good time eating amazing food and living the typical Greek summer!
We had to leave the comfort of Tinas and get on the road towards Turkey. After filling up with traditional Greek breakfasts we got on our way!
We were advised that we should take a cross country route, we got pretty lost but managed to find our way in the end! After Josh helped fix a random German camper van we found our way out towards Turkey.
Istanbul was our next stop and we were planning on staying there for maybe a night out, this wasn’t on the cards as they were on Ramadan during the day. So it made it really difficult to get any food at any point.
Just before the border we went to a lidl trying to stock up on food and fuel, as we had heard Turkey got expensive.
Crossing the border into Turkey we had no issues other than crazy amounts of mosquitos! We made our way to Istanbul and found a campsite nearby to the city where there were quite a few big houses on outskirts, this was a great camp and we went swimming first thing in the morning as it was so hot!
Leaving Istanbul we then continued along the northern areas in Turkey, here is where the roads started to get worse and we started meeting some unusual people.
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