Rum, Raisin and Rotten Roads

Summer, circa 2007. My god it’s boring.

Another day is passing inexorably by in the office and I once more find myself distracted from the amazingly interesting world of fixed income software that funds such frivolities as my mortgage and instead I’m browsing the little known computer based wonder, the World Wide Web for some cerebral stimulation. Mainly as we can’t look at porn here.

Having already exhausted my small self-rationed supply of links that help pass the time on days such as this, I find myself falling back to the last bastion for banishment of boredom. The BBC website. Here, if you’re prepared to waste enough of your employers time, you can usually find the odd amusing snippet to bring a small ray of metaphorical sunshine to your day. And today, Auntie Beeb has once more delivered the goods.

This link here labelled ‘Rum, Raisin and Rotten roads’ for instance. A title like that is always going to snag my attention on a day like today.

Click.

Our inspirations, in Uzbekistan.

The story I find myself reading and subsequently entertained by, is that of a bunch of lads from Yorkshire who are attempting to drive from London to the Mongolian capital of Ulanbataar. In an Ice Cream Van. Complete with fully stocked freezer full of Ice Lollies. Which all sounds incredibly stupid if you ask me and if I’m honest, it’s the sort of stupidity that will keep my attention away from fixed income 100 times out of 100, so I read on.

It turns out the guys are taking part in an event called ‘The Mongol Rally’, where a not too small group of some 200 teams set out from Hyde Park in London and try to reach Mongolia via whatever route they choose. The piece itself comes ‘mid-event’ with the team somewhere in Turkey, resting up before heading off into lots of places ending in ‘stan’. Of course, this all sounds most brilliant and in my book, such brilliance requires further investigation. Sadly for my employers, this means yet more time away from the enthralling world of banking software. Sorry bosses, hello Google!

The internet search for ‘Mongol Rally’ returns a few hits, including what looks like some team websites, but those will have to wait. I want to know a bit more about the event itself, glean some more utterly pointless information to squash into my brain and hopefully leave less room for less cool stuff. Like work for instance.

Investigations reveal that the Rally is organised by some bunch called ‘The Adventurists’ and has run yearly since 2004, when six groups of friends tried to complete a journey originally attempted in 2001 by what appears to have been 2 bored students in a Fiat 126. The rules? Well, there’s a couple. Rule 1: All entrants have to raise £1000 for one of the organisers chosen charities and Rule 2: You can’t use a car that has an engine larger than 1 litre. That’s a whopping 1000cc’s. Any 100cc over this, and you’ll find yourself coughing a £100 ‘fine’ directly to the charity. However, there is a loophole for rule 2 and that is by choosing a vehicle that the organisers deem has sufficient ‘comedy value’.

Which I suppose would explain the entry of a fully stocked Ice Cream van from Yorkshire that I’ve just read about.

Amused by my little discovery, I decide to share it with the outside world, or at least a couple of mates by email. So I copy the BBC link and the one for the Rally site into a message and fire it off to Gareth & Russ, 2 fellow boredomeers who like me can be a bit partial to sacking it off on the internet when they really should be working.

Dave's Bar in UB and the 2007 finish line.

Gareth I’ve known for a good few years now. We met through our mutal love of our little known local football team, Sutton United. That and getting a bit pissed up whilst following said team. He’s also a jammy bastard, working as he does for a toy distributor. Which means he gets to play with toys a lot, while I stare at lots of long long numbers. Russ I’ve known not quite as long, but as he too enjoys the same two pastimes as Gareth and I, despite his footballing affections lying with his own little known local football club Welling, means we get on just dandy. Plus, for further interest, there’s a bit of a topical link here as Russ has just jacked in his job and before looking for another one, has decided to take a trip on the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing, which just co-incidentally happens to stop off for a day or so in Ulanbataar.

As expected, the response to my mail is positive. Gareth declares the event ‘Brillant’ and that “I have to do that!”. Whilst Russ is similarly amused and seems pleased that the rally should still be underway when he hits the more & more mystical sounding UB. I ensure that he promises solemnly to make sure he takes a photo of the ice cream van if he sees it.

Eventually though the interminably long day draws to it’s inevitable end and like many other amusing little asides found in similar circumstances on similar days gone by, the Mongol Rally slips quietly from the consciousness as the real world once more seeps back in.

Fast forward 3 weeks. Yet another non-work email drops into my inbox. It’s from Russ and he’s back from his trip. Another time killing exchange ensues as Gareth and I catch up with the goings on from his epic choo-choo journey and other important information, such as the quality of the vodka, the cost of the vodka et cetera, the quality of the beer and so on. Then, out of the blue, our returning friend guides our little minds back to that funny distraction 3 weeks before.

“Found the finishing line for that Mongol Rally thing we spoke about. You should have seen the state of some of the motors!”

"That'll buff out!" - A 2007 finisher

Oh yes, the Mongol Rally! And Russ has pictures. Which is nice, because we like pictures. A little later that day, another email arrives, this time with several photos attached, all showing a place called “Dave’ Bar” which apparently serves at the official finishing line for the event in UB. And lined up outside the aforementioned Dave’s are several very dirty, very battered looking cars, including one eye-catchingly fucked up maroon coloured Ford Fiesta that looks suspiciously like it’s been rolled. Mainly due to one side of the roof line being lower than the other, the lack of a windscreen and a spare tyre positioned on the bonnet, for seemingly no other reason than to hold down the very battered looking engine compartment covering.

The pictures aren’t professionally shot, nor was a great camera used but each one shows a vehicle that has endured god-only-knows what to reach it’s destination and leaves me wanting to know all about what only god knows. Gareth is a little more certain.

“I’ve got to do this. We are SO doing this next summer!”

It seems the Rally has slipped from my friends mind a little less than it had from mine in the intervening weeks since we first stumbled upon this ridiculous event. In fact, it turns out he’s been obsessively looking at team sites and following their adventures wherever possible. And the good news is, the date for entries for next year is coming up.

Oh alright then, I suppose we could have a go at getting a place. After all, you can’t let people like Gareth go wandering off on such trips on his own. Stuff will get broken. Like him. Or a country.

The event is growing once more and there are apparently 300 team spaces available for 2008. But, despite registering a couple of email addresses each, come the day of each of the 2 ballots we remain firmly unchosen for the task of driving a dreadful car a third of the way round the world. This however fails to deter Gareth and he admits that he has already mailed the organisers, asking if they can be bribed, which unsurprisingly as it turns out, they can’t. The reason for this being they’ve apparently had some 60,000 applications for those 300 spaces. And no doubt just as many offers of bribery.

However, all is not lost and we’re apparently on the waiting list and if someone drops out, they’ll let us know. Which presumably won’t be any time soon with the small matter of anywhere up to 59,700 other people ahead of us in the queue.

Whilst we wait fruitlessly for the mail to tell us we’ve miraculously moved up the list and got a spot to never arrive, another visit to our mate Google reveals that there are a couple of other similar sorts of rallies that head to Mongolia, which all appear to be cheaper to enter and a little easier to obtain a place for. But like small children being promised ‘a burger’ and expecting a trip to McDonalds before actually going to the local kebab shop, neither of us seems to be able to muster the same enthusiasm for these alternatives.

The view from 'Daves Bar', Ulan Bataar.

This is annoying, as having decided that unlike most other stupid ideas we tend to come up with that we simply have to do and then don’t, we will actually endeavour to do the Rally should we be fortunate enough to blag a place. So we rather worryingly, for us, start pre-preparing. Just in case.

What car? What sort of route? Will we get sacked if we suddenly tell our bosses we want a month off to go dicking around in a crap car? You know, small things, but important nonetheless. This approach serves 2 very good purposes though, as firstly it means we’ll be sort of ready to go in the unlikely event we get a slot for 2008 and it also keeps us interested in the project, preventing our heads from being turned by some other stupid idea that may surface in the mean time, like being asked if we fancy popping down the pub on Saturday.

What we need most though it seems, is patience. Which sadly, is almost as fucking boring as summer time.

Bugger.


**Thanks to Russ for the majority of the pics in this section!