Team Stranded - Rally to Mongolia... Brave or Stupid?

[Deleted]

or both?


Me and a few friends who are going to different universities are reuniting in the summer to do something for charity.

We are planning to drive from Oxford, United Kingdom to Mongolia... and back again! The entire trip is 20,000 miles, to put this in perspective the Earth's circumference is under 25,000 miles so essentially we are nearly driving the entire distance of the planet without crossing any major oceans.

To add even more challenge we are doing it in an Austin Maestro. It is over 20 years old (which is as old as us!). When we brought the car off of Ebay for £230 we decided to get it recovered home as it had 'flaws' that we deemed to be too dangerous without a better look at them.

The Charity and our reasons

The team chose the Friends of Frankwise charity as one of the team member’s siblings has Cerebral Palsy and is attending the school. The school is in need of money as it relies partially on volunteering and donations, we took a tour of the school and know that the money raised will be used wisely and effectively by them.

Friends of Frankwise are a charity that fundraises for Frankwise School in Banbury; it is a special school that covers a large range of ages from 3 to post 16 education, there is over 100 students in the school that rely on the services they provide. The money raised will go towards giving those students much needed equipment and opportunities to develop their skills in independence and confidence. The school tries to not label people by disabilities and believes everyone has varied ability levels, regardless of any condition. They do not ‘group by disability’ and have mixed classrooms. The team believes this is a great approach and is a good reason to support the people that run the school and the students there.

The Risks

We are mostly students so money is tight but we are entirely independent, we only have help from those we have sought from. We have organised everything from Visas (£800 each for the trip) to petrol, which will be around £2000 split between the 4 team members. Personally I planned the day to day itinerary of where we will be on what day, plans for worst case scenarios. We have no backup and no way to get home if we utterly break down, there are inherent risks of what we are doing as if you cannot export your car from certain countries you can get huge fines of up to £10,000 or imprisonment, the visas can be extremely unforgiving in duration. All of this for charity and the adventure!

The Route

The amount of countries the team will go through is over 25, including 2 continents - Europe and Asia. The intended route is southern, meaning we are going through Europe towards Turkey and into the Middle East through all of the ‘Stan countries such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan before going north into Russia towards Mongolia. Once we reach Mongolia, the trip back is through the entirety of Russia, and into Northern Europe for the home stretch. The duration the team intends to take is around 6-8 weeks depending on mishaps and eventualities. Some of the places we are going are the Transfargarian Highway in Romania, the Doors to Hell in Turkmenistan (which is a leaking gas pit set on fire for over 20 years), the Pamir Highway that goes from Tajikistan through Kyrgyzstan (incredibly dangerous mountain road, said to be one of, if not the most dangerous road in the world).

The cultural and geographical differences we will encounter upon passing each border will be staggering and frequent. For example the change from a Christian influenced country to Islamic countries, we are also planning on being in the desert ridden middle east around half way through the journey, then a few week later be visiting some of the snowy landscapes of Russia and possibly Finland if we have time.

Links

If you are still reading then I hope you will want to support us!

Here are some of the links that you can follow us on:



Thank you for taking the time to read this, from Team Stranded!

You lot really are kelp

[Deleted]

You lot really are kelp

Kelps are large seaweeds belonging to the brown algae in the order Laminariales
Kelps are large seaweeds belonging to the brown algae
Kelps are large seaweeds
Kelps


?????

[Deleted]

Well, good luck I guess. I was planning on going on a road trip with a friend across scandinavia and russia. Ended up not because russia is crazy.

I really would consider using a military truck as someone else suggested though. Or at least something a bit more tough. I've not been that far east before, though I've been to Bucharest and they have potholes on 3 lane roads as deep as your forearm, and I imagine that just gets worse and worse as you go futher east. I don't know how you will have room to carry a bunch of dudes, several cans of emergency petrol, a full set of replacement tyres (or maybe two?), and probably an entire replacement engine (in componants) along with any food and sleeping stuff you need, in a car that small.


If the impracticality of the car is the point, then well... Why not go futher? In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say: