Welcome from Glorius Nation Kazakhstan, home of Borat and cheap vodka. I’ve had enough of heat and sunshine, give me some English cloud and drizzle! I can now accurately predict the weather also. Today will be a cloudless sunny day with highs of 45degrees, the same as tomorrow and probably all week, with a fine layer of dust which will be covering my body.

This update comes from the second worst road on the rally so far, we’ve hit our sump guard and nearly got overtaken by our hubcap, but lets reflect on the last weeks antics in the ‘stans!

Our exit from Iran, the world’s friendliest country, was slowed somewhat by getting stuck in no man’s land… the area between the Iranian exit gates and the Turkmenistan entry gates. The Iranians rushed to get us out before 5pm, but at 5.01pm the gates were closed literally as we pulled up to them. So after a night ‘in limbo’ camping with the ‘Trekkers with tekkers’ boys (who had been waiting at the border for 3 days!) we crossed another country off and headed to Ashgabat.

Have a go at trying to picture Ashgabat. The capital of Turkmenistan. The reality is probably the polar opposite. Every building is made out of marble, Gold statues, water fountains and parks everywhere. You wouldnt beleive… it was ridiculous. Check out the photos attached to this post! Many many teams decided to camp up and enjoy themselves in this mad city, with a British pub (it was our first stop), a cerfew of 11pm, but many ways to get round it. At this stage in the journey sleeping in a tent at any point after sunrise leads to instant death by oven-tent.

Turkmenistan also saw our first proper shocking road from Ashgabat to Mary. Not just pot holes, but huge holes, random bumps, ruts and a combination of all the above. We were frequently browning the underwear, im quite surprised we havent killed Lucy already despite doing the whole 300km at 40mph.

Turkmen down, we crossed off another border into Uzbekistan. Every border now is getting slower and more dodgy, with guards starting to rub fingers together to signal for money – its a good thing for the purposes of this rally i dont know what that means, and they dont speak english

Uzbekistan wasnt that noteworthy if we’re honest. We spent a couple of nights camping in the proper desert and making cool light-writing photos. Uzbekistan does however have an extreme lack of fuel. In fact there was NO fuel ANYWHERE but in the Capital Tashkent. We had to find hijack a small Uzbek child to take us to some woman selling 5litre bottles of ‘petrol’ otherwise we wouldnt have made it.

Tashkent, the last stop before Kazakhstan (Yag Shmersh) saw us staying at ‘Ali-tour’. The owner, Ali’s second word to us after ‘Hello’ was ‘Vodka?’, and the crazy old man sat us down with a bottle (self-service and free) and regailed us with tales of how he’s being fucked by the KGB, before telling us he has an ‘Australian channel’ and switching the TV over to Hustler. Surreal. He also thinks we have some sort of ‘Spy Camera’ after showing him the light writing photos.

At the Uzbek/Kazakh border the guards have started to get a bit less shy to ask for the odd bribe. When i say ask, i mean ask in the most polite way possible. As i was the driver of the car i spent 15 minutes in the customs office filling in forms. After the stamping and signing i went to leave. He sat me down, wrote on a piece of paper ‘$10′ and as a child would ask for an ice cream on a hot day, just hoping i’d say yes, looked at me and pointed to the paper with a cheeky smile. I said no, so with another smile we shook my hand and said goodbye. I’ll never forget how funny that moment was.

By pure chance, the ‘Hard cat to follow’ boys we’d been convoying through europe with happened to be 200km away in the next town, so it was happy days when we were reunited (although not happy days for them after a night which included an attempted mugging), swiftly followed by the strangest trip to the market. We came away with a fishing net, 2 novelty horns, a dress, a shovel and 2 mobile phones.

Until next time! Its off to the pub

Were a little bit behind here due to the fact there was no internet in turkmenistan but now we’re in uzbekistan, so heres our iran update!

Firstly, i’d like to point out that neither of us has piles. When changing a relatively small amount of US dollars to Rials you find yourself with a pile of 20 000 notes (worth $2 each).

Secondly – Any and all preconceptions about Iran (apart from perhaps the heat) must be forgotten before reading on. In all the countries i’ve ever visited (this includes Pete) Iran has left the best impression. In a country ruled by an unpopular dictator lies a heart of people whos first two english phrases learnt are ‘hello’ and ‘can i help you?’. And they really mean it. Everybody wanted to stop and talk to us, even if we couldnt understand a word. There was an overwhelming sense that people as a whole resented the government and the international reputation it gave BUT were proud of their country and would go out of their way to make sure tourists leave with the same impression i have.
A few examples:
- In Tabriz, a couple of young lads left their family to drive us 15 minutes round trip to change some money
- A couple & young daughter offered to show us round Tehran, then came with us to a restaurant just to translate the menu
- A young lad saw we were lost, pulled up next to us, and took us to the right road, after we were invited back to his house as guests for lunch
- After stopping to take a few photos we were invited to spend the night at a young couple’s holiday villa on the caspian coast!

…there seemed to be no end to it, we even had people trying to shout between cars at 70mph. Seriously, these guys wrote the book on hospitality.

Unfortunately, the other bestseller in Iran seems to be ‘how to drive like a lunatic’. The blurb reads something like this…

Tired of dull, safe driving? Feel like a drive to the shops just isnt worth it without a near death experience? ‘How to drive like a lunatic’ will make sure your journey will keep the adrenaline pumping, underwear stained, and heart rate never below 160, whilst fully disregarding the safety of yourself and other road users, with full money back guarantee. Lessons include:
- Overtaking on blind corners
- Overtaking an overtaker
- No parking spaces? Use the middle lane!
- Minimising indicator use
- How never to give way
- How never to use headlights
Bonus pedestrian chapters including:
- pushing your cart the wrong way round a roundabout -the ultimate thrill-

As i write this post we’re soon due to cross over the border to turkmenistan. Our iranian journey began with our first bribe ($30 for a ‘service charge’ for getting through the border) and for a short while in another convoy with 3 ambulances from the rally, one of which had a minor crash in Tabriz, the roundabouts were chaos!

Its a good thing fuel here is so cheap (50p per litre ish) so we were happily diverting off course to experience iranian hospitality! It was a real shame to have to say goodbye to Eshan and Khorshid (with the villa on the coast). It was great to be able to fully converse with them, we had a great night making homemade cocktails with black market alcohol, and would have stayed another day if we werent on such a tight schedule.

So from there we’ve followed the coastline to a couple of hundred kilometres from the border, armed with our ‘we’ve had a wallets stolen’ story to try and avoid any more bribes in Turkmenistan. Fingers crossed!

It wouldnt have seemed a bad idea (Going cold turkey) if you’d asked us after our night with the 2 moped teams on a rooftop terrace bar in istanbul – heat and hangovers dont mix. The clever little blog title (Pete came up with it) marks our quick journey through Turkey and our impending few days in alcohol-free Iran, we should be crossing over in the morning.

We picked a fantastic time to visit the city in the middle of Ramadan, at night the city really comes alive as hungry locals look to feast. We drove straight to the heart of the city in Sultanamet and braved parking lucy on the side of the road. We were a stones throw away from the Blue Mosque and the Archaeological museum and spent half a day browsing through on our limited time itinerary.

Our one night we had planned to experience istanbul we happened to be eating at the same hostel as two rally teams braving it to Mongolia on C90 mopeds, or not much bigger equivalents. Thats when we realised that perhaps we need to get driving…

Before heading out of the scariest city yet in terms of driving (both in and out) we witnessed the exchanging if large, unpractical but lightweight gifts from the 4 moped boys, of which they had to carry to the finish line no matter what. Gifts included a ridiculously large turkish flag, a large plush goat, a guitar and a fully dressed mannequin.

Since then we’ve been flying through the centre of Turkey - thanks the the Turk’s love of building amazing roads completely unneccesarily, we had dual carriageways all to ourselves, even had time to check out the lunar-like landscape of Cappadochia (see the posey pictures), and the underground cities. 7 levels of underground caves inhabited 4000 years ago, housing (alledgedly!) 10000 people and used right up until the Byzantian era.

So – off we trot to Iran, there may not be many blog or map updates for a while as the internet is heavily restricted but we’ll catch you on the other side… (Uzbekistan)

Leon & Pete

Lucy liu is now going solo, and has been since we last updated – destined to meet again somewhere in distant kazakhstan.

With brasov in the rear view mirror we got a proper taste of romanian traffic jams – and these guys are pros. Incidently, we found the way to resurface a road in romania is just plonk a new one on top of the old, easy! This didnt bode well for the rest of romania… And sure enough we’re now playing dodge the pothole.

Bucharest – what a driving nightmare! The tracking map above speaks for itself (zoom right in on bucharest). You cant get on the ring road from the north (and if you can theres no signs). And dont think about following signs to pliotesti because you will go in circles. Eventually we found one promising sign and ignored all others and 2 hours later we were out.

The 1st of a new month saw us on the east coast in mamaia – or as pete said “mamma mia”. This beach resort wasnt afriad to show some flesh. Besides we deserved a break. We even found time to visit the ruins of the oldest town in romania before heading back south.

By the time i’ve finished writing this we’ll be in turkey, spare fuel cans now filled, our whistlestop tour of bulgaria was all of one day, it involved a whole new currency conundrum, a taste of the cryllic alphabet, countless posh tourist resorts, bikini bodies and tempuratures rising so much even our plastic cheese slices have turned to goo.

Oh great! Another currency…

And another little update, as we’ve somehow managed to get to istanbul! The turkish border was a little taste of the beurocracy thats yet to come, after border security checking our papers at two seperate gates, we were told to go to a customs buildings with many different queues. Knowing which order you had to visit them would have really helped – it should have been insurance, visa, police check, customs office, inspector… We went police check, visa, police check, customs office, insurance, customs office, inspector…

And who would of thought turkey would have the best roads?? 3 lanes all to ourselves – 90mph all the way to the city! Now to scope out some other ‘mongers’

Our convoy name changed from the ‘Hungarian job’ to the ‘Romanian job’ losing The Expats, and gaining the Villebillies (and a couple of walky talkies to keep the banter going)… made it across the border into the Romanian wilderness to be welcomed by some local hillbillies in the thriving backwaters of Tahant.
We were shown the way to ‘the best camping spot in Town’ by a tractor that had its own party speaker and managed to do donuts on the side of a rather steep and bumpy hillside. Romanians seem to be a friendly bunch, particularly when we have managed to get most of them that have crossed our path plied with more than a few alcoholic beverages.
Next pitstop was a drive along the Transfăgărășan highway…Top Gears best driving highway in Europe… the little suzuki performed well, and we pulled off on an amazing campsite in Transylvania last night listening to the cow bells jingling as we drifted off…Luckily we didn’t run into any vampires last night, but we managed to visit Dracula’s castle today.
We are going to head south now, and the rest of the guys from the convoy will head north- will be sad to say goodbye, but am sure we will run into a few others in the next day or two, and hopefully run into them again in the back blocks of Khazakastan.
Hopefully Tiger Stripes won’t use any more of its nine lives, Hit The Road Yak keeps their throttle throttling and tail wagging, Hard Cat to Follow finds a home for their shopping trolley, and Villbillies use less then 10L of brake fluid for the rest of the trip…this is Genghis Carnage signing off – over…

Exciting times – the tracking system has worked, and as im sure you’ve noticed, our exact route that we’ve driven so far is shown above via google maps! Have a play with it, you can zoom right in the every street and dirt track we’ve driven, and will continue to update almost every day.

This update comes from somewhere near the hungarian/romanian border, a vast long single lane scenic nothingness.

When czechout checked out we needed to think about our actual route through europe, but as luck would have it, our morning after trip to tescos lead us to another couple of teams heading south east – team ‘hit the road yak’ and the expats. We had ourselves a convoy, which was great as we didnt need to map read.

Last night was spent in austria just outside vienna, camping prices were crazy so we opted for the ‘find your own campsite’ method hoping not to get found. Its amazing where you find other rally teams, one team left camp to get a pizza and came back with 2 more cars, but it all makes the experience much better sharing it with others.

The next day the 6 teams became 4 again as we hit budapest at midday, thanks to the austrian farmer who moved us on at 7am. If i could thank him i would as we battled through the city to get some great shots of the main square, time to check into a hostel and head to the baths. Its a shame water and cameras dont mix because it was truely breathtaking. Just the outdoor baths were worth the ticket but the 10-15 different steam rooms, saunas and pools in an age old beautifully designed building made it pretty special, followed by our only night out in a city yet (and our first shower since before the rally).

Budapest was also home to our first accident (as a group – hit the road yak reversed into a car), and the worlds worst restaurant service:

Order:
4 x 9 beers (36)
9 x meals (1 with starter)

Received:
17 beers
2 x mains wrong table
2 x extra mains not ordered
1 x wrong starter
2 x mains never showed up
6 x correct mains!

All a good story to tell though, and to be fair what showed up wasnt that bad.

So today was simply a matter of filming our exit to the underground budpest car park in the style if the italian job (hence the title) and bringing us here (which is now actual romania) – and would you beleive it we just finally managed a wheelspin

Hello from czechout! Little Lucy lui has had no trouble at all getting to the Czech republic, over 1000 miles now through Europe to the second launch event to those that couldnt make the goodwood launch.

Our 2 days on the wrong side of the road has taken us through france, belgium (camping at the back of some belgian’s farm hiding behind the corn), then through to Luxembourg, which was our travel writer hitchhiker friend’s 100th country visited. 

Luxembourg, apart from being ridiculously small for a country, seems to be the multilingual capital of Europe, a passing place for europeans of all nationalitys to stop, take some great photos, pick up some cheap fuel (especially the hordes of caravanning dutch) and carry on to where they are going. Including us. Shame we couldn’t stop for longer, but we had somewhere to be.

We’d discovered that we were about an hours drive away from the nurburgring in Germany, about an hour before it was due to start. That’s was the next destination, until we kind of took the long way round to get back to the car and failing to find the track on our european map

3 hours later and we’re deep in german territory, and as it was dinner time we took the nearest exit to the town of Altdorf to eat a traditional german meal of kraut, schnizel and a large german beer (beating out warm carling cans hands down). Sleeping in Germany wasn’t as much as an affair as in belgium as they had rest stops on the back roads, not meant for camping but hey ho! 

For the last hundred kilometres we opted for the country route, great map reading practice for when things get tricky, and we only got lost twice! A a bonus we had probably the best drive into Czech republic from the south, through the southern german forest valleys. 

So the doors of klonova castle are about to swing open for free food and a whole night of revelry. Bring it on.

To those that doubted us, we’re on our way, 20 miles into the journey after a fantastic ‘festival of slow’ – a chance to show off the cars and say farewell to friends.

The adventure started yesterday however, the drive down to Chichester for the pre-rally camping and merriment. Even the extra hours journey stuck in traffic on the m25 stuck in traffic couldn’t dampen the spirits. We met a handful of teams en route to the campsite, an Irish team with an ambulance, a Danish couple with a Suzuki and a couple of English lads putting last minute tiger stripes on their beast. Last night was a great chance to meet other teams, make sure our tent actually worked, and to realise my airbed still has a leak. And a note to the organisers, bring more BBQ food

In other news, we’ve gained a passenger (believe it or not), Peter, a travel writer for wanderlust magazine has jumped in our little alto for the first leg to Czech republic, team genghis carnage plus one

At the festival of slow launch party at goodwood race circuit the anticipation and excitement was electric, the waiting to get onto the starting grid was the hardest part, followed by waving goodbye to family and the UK!

In other news, we’ve gained a passenger (believe it or not), Peter, a travel writer for wanderlust magazine has jumped in our little alto for the first leg to Czech republic, team genghis carnage plus one

So now were somewhere on the m20 with an hour before the ferry leave to Dunkirk, wish us luck…

Ok, time to smash out a quick blog update (my first!) from the dusty tarmac of Abu Dhabi, en route to London!
What a whirlwind lead up it has been to this big adventure… between work, socialising, and rally preparations, the last few months have flown by, and next thing I find myself on a London bound plane… which seems rather strange to be hoping in a car to back-track East 15,000 in only a few days time.

For a minute or two there, I actually had my doubts about making it in time, it seems the Iranian Embassy in London wanted me to sweat it out, and I only got my passport back from the lovely people at FedEx on Saturday… I’ve got a feeling that might just be the start of the diplomatic maneuvering and close encounters! All good though, got the vodka packed, as there is nothing like a shot or two of Absolute to warm the hearts of border security.

Massive thanks to everyone who has got behind the cause and either donated online, or came along to the pub night and drank to their hearts content! My fundraising has been gaining quickly on my English counterpart Leon, and comes in at a total of just under $2,000 to date! Well-done guys, such a great cause to support, and I really appreciate your generosity.

Ok, the call to pray has just started booming through the airport speakers, and they have just started boarding our plane (is that a sign or what?)… plenty more updates to come, look forward to sharing the adventure!
Pete

Feast your eyes on the Teams Decals, applied just in time for the photographer from the Evening Star, now its beginning to look more like a rally car and less like a GrannyMobile.