We were traveling through Turkey whilst it was ramadam, so it was difficult during the day to get any food at all! Lukily in Istanbul they were a bit more relaxed and so we managed to get some food in a kebab shop on the road side. We then walked around the asian side of Istanbul. We then continued on our planned route towards Trabzon, a port town on the north coast line.
We traveled along the north road in Turkey arriving in Trabzon after a couple of days of driving. Our plan was to get a ferry from Trabzon to Southern Russia. We woke up early in the morning after staying in a much needed hostel in the centre of Trabzon.
We went on towards the port, the ferry we were supposed to get was going to cost a lot of money to bring the car roughly $1000 and then on top of that we had to pay to be passengers too and it was leaving in about a weeks time. This was out of the question, so we had to discuss a different route.
We decided to continue on towards Georgia and see if we were able to pass through Azerbaijan. So we headed towards the Georgia Turkey border. Luckily these roads were in a relatively good condition. So we managed to get to the border by the afternoon. There was a very large queue for the border and we thought we may be waiting for quite a while.
We got through in about 2 hours roughly.
After driving into Georgia we needed fuel and stopped just outside a town called Batumi. We played football in the petrol station with some guards and it started getting late. We decided to stay in Batumi. We all went out that evening and drank the uzo that Tina’s parents had kindly given us!
Turned out to be a really good night, there was a small music festival on and we started off in a beach bar and then onto a tented club, where they set the bar on fire and I didn’t even notice! At different times in the night groups of us went off and did random things. Rory burston and myself went swimming in the black sea and Dan and Josh managed to get into a really smart hotel bar with a swimming pool and got bought many drinks between them both!
We all woke up and felt very hung over and met some really nice people who spoke English quite well, one of them was called Emre. We remembered that we did not have a map at all for Georgia and so this was a bit of an issue as we were planning on crossing the majority of the country to get to Azerbajan to get to Southern Russia.
Luckily after walking round loads of different book shops and stores we found a Georgia map with a lot of help from our new mates! This map however was rediculous it was more of treasure map than a road map. This was our only option so we had to deal with it.
We stopped to get some food near to some train tracks, ollie seemed to want to pet every single stray dog we saw!
Had some pretty awful food from the restaurant, not sure what type of meat it was but managed it!
Almost got arrested by the Georgian police for taking a photo! Luckily I just gestured to delete it off the camera but this was taken on film so it was very much kept. We then got on the road towards Azerbajan not knowing what the outcome was going to be.
Getting to the Georgia border we were faced with a “GOOD LUCK” sign as we left! Not the most encouraging of signs. We managed to get out of Georgia quite easily as they seemed to let us out but then called us back and then let us out again, but we then went over a bridge to the Azerbajan border. They turned us away saying that we needed a visa from Tblisi, the capital of Georgia which was roughly about 2 days drive in the opposite direction. So we then had to get let back into Georgia again, subsequently we all now have about 5 stamps for Georgia in our passports!
We felt pretty gutted so we had a chat and decided to continue on towards southern Russia. We had spoken to many people in Georgia, Turkey and at the Azerbajan border about crossing into Russia. They ALL said that it was a military border and you would be very lucky to pass through it, many of them said it was closed completely. This was not what we wanted to hear, but this was our only option other than going all the way back to Tblisi to get visas into Azerbajan and then onward into Russia. So we went with it!
As we traveled further west we came across some bad roads. We were beginning to get into the foothills of Caucasus Mountains. The roads began to deteriorate very quickly.
We found some really remote and rural communities along this route however it was very slow going, driving at roughly 8mph for about 3 days.
After driving on some of these roads for a while we decided the vans engine was getting very hot and sounded like it needed a bit of a break, so 4 of us got out to lighten the load and we walked up these steep hills. I stepped in some really thick deep mud which was really annoying as my sandal was then lost in the mud, I managed to get it back but it took quite a while until I was able to clean it to be able to wear it again.
After a long day we then stopped at the top of a clearing on the roadside. It got very wet and the lighter blue tent above, with Rory Josh and Dan in it leaked a lot and so they didn’t have a good night at all. We were also woken up by a random car driving past, they got out and we all were still awake and we think they came over quite near to us. All we could hear was the engine of there tired Russian designed car and some quiet talking. We got pretty nervous and thought about jumping out on them but we decided between us whilst we were in our tents that it probably wasn’t the best idea. We stayed quiet and they left after what felt like ages.
We got under way the next morning for the military border between Georgia and Russia. We we weren’t too sure what was going to happen at this point, as we had heard mixed reviews from different people on the way and even spoke to the British embassy in Tablisi. The Caucus mountains were really quite amazing. After a very interesting border crossing where we were given a range of Russian delicacies including sun flower heads (with seeds), vodka and money. We went on our way into the Southern region of Russia. This was mainly through Cechnya.
We drove into the nearest city we could find. We couldnt find anywhere to stay so were looking round town, I was driving, did a U turn and managed to get stopped by the police. They then started drawing pictures of what I thought was 0’s and X’s this was prison bars, he then was drawing dollar symbols and I was starting to get a bit worried in the back of his police car! Luckily I managed to convince him to let me out of the car to go and get some money. We then as a group only gave them 6 packs of Marlboro cigarettes and they seemed happy with that!
Earlier in the evening we had driven to what we thought was a small hotel, it turned out to be a brothel so we decided not to stay there. However when the police asked where we were staying all we knew was the brothel. They wanted to accompany us to the brothel, so we didnt look too good when we arrived with a police car having just seen inside the brothel!
Managed to find a place to camp on the side of a river bed quite far from the town, nearer to the border. We then set off driving, the roads were really good and seem to be really straight. However we lost the map for Russia somewhere in Greece, it wouldnt of been very useful as it was in our alphabet and not in cyrallic. As we were filing up in this city a lady helped us to find a map by dragging me round quite a few of the towns corner shops and libraries. We emerged with a map which looked quite old but seemed to do the trick.
Driving through Southern Russia proved an interesting place. The locals thought we were either mad or lost, they all wanted photos with us. Guns and some pretty unusual poses were the theme here!
We were often stopped at military check points, some of these were friendly others not so much. We got to know one military borders staff quite well and they invited us into there barracks for some food and a chat! We spoke about very basic international things like football and London, they then showed us there weapons and we left. As we were leaving we gave one of them some whisky and thanked him for a good meal. Shortly after this we had a very low fly over by a military helicopter! Real loud but pretty cool.
Driving through Southern Russia the roads were flat straight and long. This was our first experience of open and limitless areas. We started sleeping just off the side of some of these roads.
Floating road! We were on the way to the border of Kazhakstan now, stayed in a good hostel had a shower, this was the last one for a good couple of weeks! Astra Khan was our next stop in Kazhakstan.
We sorted some stuff out in the border town of Astra Khan and set off to cross the border hoping that it would be as smooth as our Georgia Russia experiences! Got over the border fine, they are always weird places. We drove off as it was starting to get late, on the other side of the border there was a speed trap with a police man waiting on the other side. I got done with the fine and we bribed the guy with $50 which was a lot less than the figure they were trying to do us with!
The roads started getting quite a lot worse now and we really felt we getting into the desert areas, where there werent many towns, people or cars.
To the puss!!!
We got a bit bored of some of these roads so Josh and I had a bit of a fight with the coal. All friendly but I won.
Luckily we found a lake underneath the road so we could have a bit of a wash otherwsie it would of been a long time until we would of been able to wash.
These kids were messing around in the pool and we had a good laugh with them.
This camp had a LOT of mosquitos. We were getting closer to getting into Mongolia now although we have to pass into Southern Russia shortly, we did this to make up some time as we knew the roads would be a lot better and luckily we had a double entry visa pass as we had planned to enter twice earlier in the trip but we werent able to. We crossed over the Kazhak Russia border relatively smoothly although they thought my passport was fake and this took a bit longer than we would of hoped but we managed ok in the end.
Just a few running repairs to the woon box (roof box).
We drove through a very densely wooded area and set up camp. Had a big fire as there was a lot of good wood around and we confiscated Joshs shoes and then bought him some interesting shoes later on! We are about 600km from the Mongolia border now
Sandals we bought Josh as his werent doing the job properly ie. broken!
Getting through this part of Russia was really good as we had been driving for about a month and started to really feel like we were making headway.
I dont quite know why we are celebrating or something here as we havent started maybe the most difficult part of the trip, Mongolia. This was at the bottom of a day long ascent where we were made very slow headway as it was at quite a high altitude and the van I dont think really liked it.
Getting to the top of this mountain pass was a
We drove on the M52 road towards the border into Mongolia, this was a really amazing road that took us across some amazing scenery with mountains the back ground and mountain streams.
We had arrived at the Mongolia border late the evening before, we thought we wouldnt be seeing any other teams really. We woke up in the morning and went to have a look over the brow of a hill to see that there were many Rally teams waiting to cross of the border and they had just parked up later than us and then slept in their cars. So we drove over and had a good catch up with some of the teams that we had met a month earlier in Goodwood. Crossing over the border was ok and we managed to get it sorted smoothly. Apart from me cutting my foot open on an upturned piece of steel wire coming out of the ground! Pretty painful.
We got some beers almost immediately after crossing over the border and then drove for a short while and set up camp in a valley next to a lake. This was near to some of the yerts (gers) of some of the local people. We woke up early after a very cold night where there was a layer of freezing fog surrounding our tents in the bottom of the valley. Some people didnt have the best night sleep because of thin sleeping bags and a cold tent!
Walking up to one of the tops of the hills really put it into perspective how remote we were and we were on one of the main roads going to the capital of Mongolia Ulaanbaatar.
We drove a little while and stopped off in a small village where we sat and ate some food in a yert and had a go on his motorbike. Swapped our axe for their axe, and drank some alcoholic milk!
We left and met up with some other cars and joined up in a small convoy and drove for a while with them.
We sometimes got a bit bored and drew on the underside of the roof.
A pretty normal meal, cooked on the BBQ we would boil water and then have pasta or something like that!
We continued driving on some pretty open roads and started to get the compass out a little just to double check we were going in the right direction. The adventurists put up a few check points along the way for teams to meet and there were a few mechanics on hand if you wanted a bit of a helping hand but we didnt need any of that! The first point was called Tolbo 
We met some other teams , got drunk and went into town and walked around a bit there wasnt really much going on here but we managed to find another team trying to fix there ambulance and so Josh tried to help them out couldnt quite fix the problem though :(.
Good joke, but im not.
The roads were starting to get pretty bad now and there werent any sign posts or directions at all, I felt we could quite easily get lost here
They have these mounds of stones that are dedicated to the sky gods and you are meant to walk round them three times every time you see one of them, however there were quite a few of them and so we started as we meant to go on but we didnt quite keep up with every one of them, it would of taken quite a while! We are trying to do approx 100 miles a day but some days we dont even make that, we are driving slowly though as our van isnt the best at off road and we dont want to get into any trouble breaking down!
Any chance for a wash?
We were getting some good experience in how to drive across rivers and the occasional bridge. Often we managed to wait and get help from other cars that were driving through and some of the bridges were exactly in the best condition. 
Often we would try and find someone to camp with as there were quite a few teams traveling on the same roads as us but they were just a lot quicker than us.
Good view to wake up to.
Its feeling like its coming to the end at this point in the rally, not really sure what to put under these photos so just have a look through them!
Who took this photo?
A standard meal
Getting closer to UB the roads started to make a bit more sense and they had a few areas that looked like they were going to tar mac the road pretty soon.
This was the ceremonious burning of the tent evening as we were really quite close to the capital and that tent needed to be incinerated for the safety of Mongolia.
We spent a lot of time waving at someone who was looking at us weirdly!
Driving down the newly laid black tar we decided to get some beers out, the second we went to cheers them we hit a pot hole and messed up our suspension quite badly, although it was already quite badly broken this was the final straw, lucikly it was a straight forward journey from here on in.
We arrived in the Capital after quite a shirt days drive, nearly all of us were quite drunk as we were celebrating arriving before we had even got to our final destination.
We arrived at the hotel/hostel at the finish line and were met by lots of other teams. The Adventurists put on different things and there were some finishing parties and lots of alcohol.
It was a great trip and I am sure that I will be doing something like this at some point again. I will also post some slightly more recent stuff where I took a GoPro on a trip around Europe inter railing.
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