Mongol Rally - any advice?

ilovetea

Hi,

Myself and three friends are planning to do the Mongol Rally in July this year. We are starting to plan now for our trip and am just looking for advice from anyone that has done the trip before.
For those who aren't familiar, it is a month long trip, in which we drive from London to Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia.
We hope to travel across Europe, through Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and then to Mongolia.

Am just looking for general advice from anyone who has travelled through these countries, what to expect? Anything we should be on the lookout for? Places to visit, etc...
Any advice would be much appreciated!
Thanks!

zuutroy

I'd imagine your starting point should be to watch Long Way Round and also this website http://www.dublintosydney.com/NewWebSite/menu.htm. There's a huge amount of preparation involved and you'll be crossing borders where they will have never seen anything other than a local car before and won't know what the hell to do. You'll be doing extremely well to get this sorted by July

ilovetea

We have applied for our visas already and we are currently looking for a car to buy. In total there will be over 200 cars doing the rally, and a lot of them will be taking the same route as us.
Look up www.mongolrally.com for more details on it. We should be fairly organised for the trip, or as organised as we can be...
I'm just looking for general information on these countries from people who have travelled through them, or from people who have done the Mongol Rally before.
Most people we have spoken to haven't ever been to these countries, as you said, they are off the beaten track, and it would be nice to hear from someone who has experience of travelling through them. I've read the Long way Round - it's a great book, thanks for the website info also...

Notch000

what sort of cars are you looking at ??????
I'd imagine the choice s fair narrow, chiccaentos, lupos, polos, Suzuki warriors etc ?

ilovetea

You can go for anything really..
The last few years the engine limit on cars was 1ltr or under but the rules have changed this year. Cars have to be under ten years old to get into Mongolia so they are not as strict on engine size.
We were thinking of a 1.3 Accent, we're only starting to look for one now. We don't want to spend too much buying the car because we've to spend a bit doing it up for off road driving. Some people go in the weirdest cars, ice cream vans and the like. What ever gets us there!

RATM

head through Iran, some of the world's cheapest petrol and some very friendly locals. The drive to the eastern border with Pakistan is known as heroin smuggling country so the Iranian army usually give tourists an armed escort through the region. They're well used to the Mongol Rally passing through at this stage, its been going a few years by now.

floydmoon1

Just got our place in the 2010 rally.
Any other Irish teams on this please Pm me.

Claasman

Do a Search on octane.ie forums. I think someone on that forum did it last year, and blogged it...might be of help to ya

Lauder

Howya,

we finished the rally there last month. Trip of a lifetime.

All the details of our progress and lack of are on the website

www.vagabonds09.com