Welcome to the Mongol Rally: the greatest motoring adventure on the planet.
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The Mongol Rally thunders 10,000 miles across the mountains, desert and steppe of Europe and Asia each summer. There’s no backup, no support and no set route; just you, your fellow adventurists and a tiny 1000cc car you bought from a scrapyard for £11.50.
(actually my guest Irishman Cian Hulm spent €400 on his little Daihatsu Diane)
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If nothing goes wrong, everything has gone wrong.
Bollocks to tarmac, ABS and gadgets that help you find your navel. The Mongol Rally is about getting lost, using your long neglected wits, raising shedloads of cash for charity and scraping into the finish line with your vehicle in tatters and a wild grin smeared across your grubby face.
Neither your car, nor your life, will ever be the same again.
(When Cian was asked by his lifetime friend Luke Reilly last year if he would take part – it took Cian about, oh, nearly, say 30 seconds to say yes)
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The rules are simple…
- You can only take a farcically small vehicle of 1 litre or less.
- You’re completely on your own.
- You've got to raise £1000 for charity.
(Actually, Cian and Luke have already raised in excess of €5000 for two charities – Cystic Fibrosis and Pieta House – and are hoping to raise more – so do help please – here's website)
In their words:
Two lads will be driving from Dublin to Mongolia in aid of Cystic Fibrosis and Pieta House as it is a cause close to all our hearts. We must raise a minimum of 5,000 but we want to raise thousands more than this target.
We will be setting off on the 12th of July in an old, small and banged up car, as per the rules the car engine must be under 1 litre. Once we leave Dublin we are on our own with no support, back up vehicles or organised routes and accommodation. If we find ourselves broken down in the middle of a dessert between Turkmenistan and Mongolia we are very much on our own. We will be “thundering” 10,000 miles through Southern Europe, moving down towards Turkey and then navigating our way through Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan into Mongolia and then hopefully finishing up in the friendly Siberian town of Ulan-Ude, 400miles due north of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital….. But of course you knew that!
We are prepared to at some point get lost and have our bribe money at the ready for various border crossings but hope to safely arrive at our finish point 4-6 weeks after we set off. We feel we have also appropriately called our team “The Rocky Road to Mongolia”.
To listen to this enthusiastic young man – click here to my show on DublinCityFM – it’s a great 30 mins (listen here)
And do please support them – the link is here again
DublinCityFM (community radio) listen in here
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