Iscream
Welcome to the People’s Republic of IScreamistan, our attempt to drive a Mr Whippy van from London to Mongolia.
This is a place built on a crazy idea, with a double scoop of humour, sprinkled with madness and a a cherry on top.
Our mission: To hand out soft serve from London to Mongolia as part of this year’s infamous Mongol Rally.
Our transport: a 1973 Bedford CF Mr Whippy van.
That’s right, we’re rocking a Mr Whippy van 16,000kms from London, England to Ulaanbaatar the capital of Mongolia, as part of this year’s Mongol Rally. The whole idea is to drive a ridiculous distance through countries most people haven’t even heard off, (and no one can pronounce) in the most unsuitable cars possible. As well as being one hell of an adventure, it’s most importantly the chance for teams to raise several thousand pounds for 5 official charities.
Watch us get our blog on. Stay up to date with our total lack of preparation as we focus on pimping our ride, perfecting our soft serve technique, deciding on soft serve flavours and sorting out our play list, all while completely ignoring the important stuff that we need to survive.
Once the rally starts you can keep up with all the mayhem we get ourselves into while we drive (or push) our van all the way to Mongolia. You could also take bets with your mates on how far we’ll get.
Peace, Love & Ice Cream.
IScream.
Day 5 - Wednesday 4th August - Erzurum, Turkey
With a terrible hangover feeling somewhat like an ape had swapped its saliva glands with me, I jumped behind the wheel and took us into Erzurum where we managed to find the internet, look up our dwindling supplies of cash and change some money into the almighty US dollar, something that is not uncommon to Bank Clerks in this part of the world. So with 400 dollars each, it was off to Iran. Relatively uninteresting day except for my little struggle with a bit of Gastro.
Me: Im feeling sick bro
Trav: What like really exhausted and run down?
Me: Nah:
Trav: Gastro?
Me: I just poo’d on the wall.
Our highlights today were overtaking a Turkish tank in Turkey (it is the same day that there was an assassination attempt on the Iranian president in Iran – unfortunately for us, it was just over the border at a town that is marked on our itinerary. Trav narrowly missed a wolf walking down the road whilst driving, but I wouldn’t know I was too busy closing my eyes with my butt cheeks clenched together thinking of happier times.
Just before we entered Iran we pulled into a servo to change our hairstyles to Iranian Government approved styles. So we know both have side parts from the 1970s and the border is looming like McDonalds golden arches at 5am on a Sunday morning. Something tells me I won’t be getting a happy meal at the border though.
Got through the Border pretty easily, the guard took our passports for 10 minutes while we sat down and waited, then we went back out to the car while another guard searched it for alcohol (he didn’t find it) and anything else allowed in Iran. The guy took a bit of a liking to Wam and invited him back to his house to practice his English. We drove through the border just in time to see someone jump the fence into Turkey, then got stopped by some officials and were told we needed to go back to some random building vaguely in the distance to get our car insurance endorsed. Needless to say we couldn’t find the building so after asking a few people and getting nowhere, we went back to the same guy and he drove with Wam to the mythical building to get the paperwork. After asking for the obligatory bribe for “assistance” and being refused, we drove into Iran. We spent that night camping in a large playground surrounded by a heap of other travellers / nomads / gypsies and felt right at home.
Day 3 & 4 Ankara, Turkey
Day 3 – Monday 2nd August - Ankara Turkey.
Afrer the madness of the previous day we decided that a day in Ankara was called for aswell as a million doners and kebabs. We had our first experience of getting geographically challenged w2hen looking for the Australian consulate to pick up our Carnets (official document that we need to drive through Iran and Mongolia. We eventually found the Australian consulate after about 3 hours of driving in circles and swearing about how the city planner’s parents are probably brother and sister. We’d arrived and it was time to put up our feet and relax and start enjoying our adventure, so we did what any normal tourist would do: grab a doner kebab and wash it down with Sangria and BEER, OBVIOUSLY THIS SUCCESSION OF EVENTS GOES ON TO HOW WE FOUND A HOTEL, HOW WE FOUND A BAR WITH 16 YOUNG BEAUTIFUL GIRLS DANCING IN IT AND A MAN OFFERING US PROSTITUES LATE AT NIGHT, ALL FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER BEER. We hit the bed pretty hard and slept for many hours in clean beds that were not yet sweat soaked.
Day 4 – Tuesday 3rd August – Ankara Turkey.
The next morning came with the promise of free breakfast including a hot beverage that resembled something from the Tea species. So after repacking Big Red, and avoiding a blind man selling pens, we headed up to the Australian Embassy where to our delight, our package was waiting for us. A BIG THANKS TO THE AUSSIE CONSULATE FOR ACTING ON OUR BEHALF AS A Post Office Box in Turkey. After an amusing encounter with a diplomatic person, who asked us whether we knew where we were going, the political climates of these countries and we were told in the sae breath to register with the department of foreign affairs. Trav and I quickly exchanged glances and mentioned that it was nice that she was thinking of us, but in all honesty there’s no way either of us where going to do that. Besides we have 4 different types of insurance that would all pay out massively when things eventually go downhill. With raised eyebrows, a look of shock and an Iscream business card we left the embassy to head to the Black Sea for some relaxation. Seeing as though I drove all day yesterday it was only fair that Trav drive all day today, so he did, I just sat back and was the annoying passenger asking to take beer and toilets breaks every 50km. I can categorically say that the blood on my foot is a result of this, seeing as though when I last exited the car I fell over. When told by a doctor on the same day that my foot was bleeding, I responded: I know. We were really looking forward to a dip in the black sea, however it kind of smelled of the zoo after it’s been raining on a hot day. And the monkeys had morphed into humans selling cheap inflatable devices with warnings that read: This is not intended to be a life saving device. So we thundered on whilst behaving like 2 idiots driving a car to Mongolia. We picked up some Spray Paint for our custom made paint job and set of towards the mountains again.
Day 2 - Sunday 1st August
We woke up and jumped back in the car aiming to get into Istanbul by the end of the day. That would put us only two days behind our original schedule. Crossing the border out of Serbia into Bulgaria, the Serbian border guard joked with us asking, “Have you got anything to declare?” “Narcotics, marijuana...........guns? “No, but we’ve got a mannequin!”
Highlights of Bulgaria were stopping for playtime on an ex-soviet fighter jet , then Wam running through warm horse shit on the way back to the car.
As we were leaving Bulgaria we saw a sign that Greece was only 3kms away, so we decided to head into Greece for a Souvlaki, another stamp in our passport and some mosquito bites. .
Another Border crossing highlight was heading back into Bulgaria when the Border Guard asked us for the third passport, “No mate, that’s a mannequin, he doesn’t need a passport!”
Once we got back into Bulgaria we headed for Turkey and the most confusing border crossing ever. We drove up to the windows expecting to obtain our visas when they checked our passports. But the guy told us to go to counter 92 to get our visas then come back. When we‘d done that we went to another window and control checkpoint and they told us we needed a green card to verify our car insurance and that we had to go to control point 90 to do that. We didn’t know that and didn’t have enough Euro to pay it, so we had to gather the Turkish money my parents had left over from their trip there as well as some US dollars that Warm had, will all the euro we had left and piece it all together to cover the car insurance. Once we’d done that we went back to the last booths to try and get through and this time got told that we needed to get our visas stamped by the police in the booths at the front of the lines. Once we’d done that we had to go to another booth and they finally let us into Turkey. Warm got one more stamp and got to sign his passport for the extra insurance. We still did not have any Turkish money and were denied at the ATMs, so we decided to run the tollways without paying. This is how we did it.
We’d approach each tollway warily and see if there was any blatant police presence on the other side, when there was nothing too much, essentially all the time as the Polis were normally too busy smoking or looking up porn on their computers, we would then back up and get our run up. We decided to go through the tollways that needed an electronic device fitted into your car, which is all good and well if you have one. We did not. So approaching these checkpoints we would then select 3rd gear and with the revs high on Big Red, we’d fly through the checkpoints with the sirens blaring and a vanquishing tollbooth in our rearvision mirrors. At the time of writing, we have run roughly 8 checkpoints and accumulated something like 600 euros of fines that will never be paid.
Day 1 - Saturday 31st July
Finally got on the road today. So good to get on there finally. Walked over to Stan to turn him onto show Chris (one of Wam’s house mates) but unfortunately he wouldn’t even start, one whole day after picking him up from the mechanics). We’ve definitely made the right decision in taking big red. Jammed all our stuff into the back of the car, we duct taped Real Trav to the roof of the car in front of the tyres but took him down when we realised that he’d probably get airborne as soon as we go onto the Autobahn.
Soon after entering Austria, we saw signs warning us that there was a 10km Stau (traffic jam)ahead of us. The Austrians have done some terrible things in the past; think Hitler, Fritzl & Red Bull, but stopping us only after 200 kms was gut wrenching. Never fear, we had a sound-system to install. Originally intended for Stan, we have outdoor 30 watt speakers, and an amplifier that is going to flush Osama out of his cave in Afghanistan. So we setup our electrical college on the Autobahn and started to strip speaker cables much to our fellow travellers amusement. However the traffic jam started to move, so we packed up, jumped in Rusty Trumbone (Big Reds’ name when he is being naughty) and hit the road, until another driver started yelling at us that we had left a speaker on the roof... luckily we managed to figure that out and we recovered our lonesome speaker on the roof. All installed and ready to go, our sound-system rocks.
What can we tell you about Slovenia? Not much really as our intention was to get through Slovenia without spending any money and the fact that Trav drove basically the entire length of the country at 140km/hr. We did however see a lot of signs to the Aerodrome, which we can only assume is the airport. Unfortunately the airport was closed due to repairs being done to the runway following an earthquake in 1985.
Big Red was running beautifully, we could crank along the autobahns or Slovenia at 140km/h to make up a lot of the time we lost waiting for Stan to get fixed.
Put in a massive days driving and managed to get all the way through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and through most of Serbia. Wam put in a massive night shift behind the wheel not stopping until 4 45am, at a servo in Nis, a town where you turn off the tollway and head towards Sofia in Bulgaria.
We were both stuffed so we threw out our tent on some grass by the car park and went to bed. We’d been sleeping for about 30 mins when we were woken by a freight train’s horn, driving past on a hill about ten metres from our tent. Wam and I both woke up: “What the fuck was that?” Then decided neither of us could be bothered moving the tent.
Rally Start
Wedneday 28th July
Went out to the mechanics yard today, to get another update on the state of the repairs and to put the branding stickers I hooked up in London on Stan. They look amazing, and Ill get photos of them in the gallery as soon as I can, but here’s a brief run down on what I got. There are three Iscream stickers to go on the front and side of the roof where the Mr Whippy branding would normally go, three IScream Stickers, saying who we are and what were doing, for all the bland looks we’ll get from randoms along the way. They’re going on the back and the sides of Stan. Some rally stickers with our names and Australian flags. Then my personal favourites the Don’t skid on a Kid sticker and the Hello my name is Pleasedon’tbreakdownistan sticker.
Thursday 29th July
Rang the mechanics this morning for an update on Stan’s repairs, and the found out that the owner that usually repairs him (Henke) was not working today, despite confirming that the repaired starter would arrive at midday and he would finish the repairs as soon as that was done. So I called back and cracked it with the other owner who speaks English that they had continually let us down, and that we shouldn’t have to ring them everyday to make sure that they’re working on our van or check that they haven’t stopped because they need parts. When I asked them, when the guy fixing the starter expected to be finished they couldn’t tell me, and then refused to give me the number of the person fixing it so I could call and check.
After that conversation with no idea when the van would be fixed and knowing that we still had to get someone to install the seats as well as get spare tyres and rims, get a German technical Inspection (Road Worthy) done lets be honest, it would take 3 months and another 25 thousand dollars to get that done and then get it registered. It was pretty obvious that we still had a weeks work before the Bedford would be anywhere near ready to go to Mongolia and we couldn’t wait any longer.
So we realised the only way we were doing the rally was in another car.
We went into three car yards, to try and find a small car with low miles that was as cheap as possible
Friday 30th July
Well we pick up big Red today, IScream’s new chariot and our one way ticket to Mongolia. After withdrawing the daily maximums from both our bank accounts, we were still 480 euro short. Thanks to Susann for lending us everything except the last 60Euro. I only had about 3.40 Euro in my pocket or some pounds. So Wam used another card and managed to get the rest together so we could pay for Big Red. As soon as we’d bought the car Wam had to race to the Registration office as we had to get the car registered and get the stickers put on the number plates so we could leave Saturday.
Wam came back with the plates and the car, unfortunately we couldn’t fill up the jerry cans or go and get any parts as we’d cleared our accounts that day so all that will have to wait until tomorrow, another day and another chance for us both to spend 600 Euro apiece.
We had a massive bombshell shell that morning, the mechanics called to say that Stan was now running. But we’d already decided to take another car and put down a 1000 euro deposit. We jumped on the train to get out to the mechanics to pick him up. We got there and stan was parked out the front with the keys in the ignition so I jumped in and started him up. After a while the mechanic came over and gave us a run down on all the other things that were still cactus, He spoke German so all I heard was kaputt, kaputt, kaputt...as he pointed at the gear lever (you can still pull it right out of the floor as they don’t have the pin needed to secure it and can’t weld it as you wouldn’t be able to change gears.
Points at one part of the car (something in German....KAPUTT, (too my year 7 English teacher I know Kaput is still a German word but I understood it so I’ve left it out of the rackets). Pointed at something else in the van ....More German.....KAPUTT.
The electrical wiring still needed to be replaced along with a few other things, but the most important thing was that we could finally drive Stan. I got first drive out of the mechanics so after waiting so long we could take him for our first ride around Munich. Susann came with us and we cruised around Munich then went to a castle in Munich for some family happy snaps. As we were leaving the castle we picked up a random Austrian chick and took her for a spin. On the way back to Wam’s we spotted the cops up ahead pulling someone over, and as there were four of us in a car with only one seat we quickly turned down a back street to avoid them. Unfortunately they saw us and turned down the same street. So we pulled into a random drive way to hide. Thankfully the cops kept going and we got away with it.
After getting Stan back to Wam’s place, we took a few more photos of him then the girls cracked out the champagne to celebrate the fact that he was finally working.
Although Stan was ready it didn’t change the fact that he still needed a heap of work to get him even close to ready to drive to Mongolia and we were 6 days behind schedule at this stage. So we decided that we would still take Big Red. We had to keep him somewhere while we completed the rally so moved the back fence and Wam cut a few laps on the lawn in the back yard to get him off public property and away from Munich’s friendly neighbourhood watch. We came to the conclusion that it was going to take a long time to get Mongolia going at 4 km/hr and there’s a lot of other things I’d like to do by the time we are 50.
We quickly packed, then got stuck into the beers with everyone at Willibaldstrasse to celebrate the fact we now had two cars and were going to Mongolia the next day.
| Willibald WG W. | 19th August 2010 at 11:28 |
| Lost in Tajikistan??? | |
Czech-Out Party
What more can I say than: We rode a tandem bicycle to a party at a castle in the Czech Republic.
Knowing that Stan would not be ready, we had to find another mode of transport to get to Czechout. So we decided to catch the train to the closest major town then ride Wam’s tandem bike to the party. First we had to get our costumes sorted so we went to a second hand store in Munich and I bought the most outrageous old-school suit combo I could put together, Wam decided to rock his lederhosen. Riding the tandem through Munich in full costume was hilarious, especially speakers fixed to bike so we could listen to our I-pods and the Jerry cans we’d duct taped to the side of the tandem for extra comedy value. We even got a few smiles out of the German s while we were pedalling to the train station that makes exactly 3 smiles I have seen come from a German. Eventually we rocked up at the Czech Border, which could also be a time machine, judging by the difference between the German train we arrived on and the Czech train we left on. Now everyone knows that beer in the Czech Republic is cheaper than water, so Wam went off to get beers while I killed time cruising round the platform on the tandem. The highlight of the trip was definitely getting onto the Czech train. The instant we rode the tandem over the train conductor opened the door and began yelling at us in Czech. We had no idea what he was saying so we motioned that we needed to take the tandem on the train with all our stuff. He then disappeared and opened a large door so we could haul the bike onto the train. Then just as soon as we’d got the bike on with some help from some local kids, he came back and started yelling at us again, he kept that up for about 5 minutes, by which stage Wam and I had started laughing at how ridiculous the situation had become. Another female inspector soon joined us and told us they needed to check our tickets. Then old mate started up again, getting absolutely nowhere again, he went and got a little machine and showed us we had to pay 90 Krones for the tandem. Unfortunately we only had Euro, off he went again.
The ride to Klenova was great, we bumped into a whole lot of teams in a car park outside a Tescos, and one Irish team offered to drop their mates at the castle then come back and pick us up. We stocked up on a few more beers and got on our way. The ride was amazing heaps of rally teams kept passing us and asking what the hell we were doing on a tandem bike. The teams loved it though and we were laughing the whole way to the castle, when else would you get the chance to ride a tandem bike to a castle, but on the Mongol Rally?
The party itself was great, all the teams were super exited there was a lot of banter about what vehicles teams were taking as well as what route they were taking. The proper one (Southern, Iran Tajik etc) or the soft option (Northern, Russia, Kazakh, Russia), and a few disparaging remarks about two guys in a fully decked out, 2006 Land Rover. Still everyone had a really good night tearing it up, smoking sheesha and drinking too much gin and local beer. The highlights were me buying an extra round of beers for us as the bar had run out of change, then buying our last beers using the last of our krones, then the last of our Euro and finally making up the difference with some spare pounds.
We talked a whole lot of rubbish during an interview for the adventurists’ website so keep an eye out for that.
Festival of Slow
As I was already in London after sorting out last visas and getting the new parts for Stan, I decided to go along to check it out.
Bumped into Buddy from the DVD and John from the adventurists on the train to Chichester, they were good for a laugh on the way up, while i was filling them
The cars looked amazing, I couldn’t believe there were so many ambulances doing it this year. The Mongolians won’t know what has hit them. There were also a few fire engines, an old Rolls Royce and heaps of vans that were way too small for the 15 team members they had in them.
The mood at Goodwood was very relaxed, even on the part of those teams undertaking last minute, and I mean really last minute repairs. It good to see that the adventurist spirit is alive and well and most teams aren’t taking this at all seriously. One of the best parts of the rally is turning up at Goodwood speaking to other teams and realising how hopelessly underprepared you are by comparison. In our case we didn’t even have a functioning car.
It was so disappointing that we didn’t make it to the start line and couldn’t take part as you could see that everyone doing the rally was massively pumped up. Unfortunately when I collected our carnets from the adventurists there was a little girl helping out at the desk where you collected the. When I told her I was from Iscream she yelled “IScream I know IScream, I’ve been on your website!” I really like your ice cream van. Then Paul, the guy sorting out all the Carnets asked if he could come and see our van as he’d like to show his daughter. I was shattered that I didn’t have a van to take them for a spin.
The lap of honour was gold, all the Fire Engines and Ambulances (50 at least) turned on their sirens and had them wailing the whole way around the race track. It would have been comedy gold to have been able to do the lap in Stan cranking out pumping right besides the ambulances. Every car had at least two guys hanging out of it, there were even guys drinking a beer bong while they did their lap. A while their family and friends watched from the grad stands.
Still Goodwood was still awesome and it will be good to catch up with all the teams at Czech-out.
RIP Stan - Last 3 weeks before Rally
LAST 3 WEEKS BEFORE RALLY.
When we got back from Glastonbury and Roskilde we got right into finalising everything for the rally. I had to sort out the last visas and Wam had to get the van ready.
We had 18 calendar days to get 4 visas. Knowing it was going to be tight I drew up a schedule to see if that was even possible. It was just. If we could get Uzbek or Kazakh on the same day and then every other visa took no more than three working days. I had to collect the Uzbek visas from London as the invitation had been sent there. So the plan was to drive Stan back to London the weekend before the rally started, as being a weekend we couldn’t get any visas at that time anyway. Then get the last two visas, Uzbek and Kazakh in London that week while we sorted all our fiinal parts and equipment. I decided to get Russian first as that visa has been an ordeal from go to woe, they screwed me round. Firstly I had changed my flight out of Australia to give me time to fly to the consulate in Sydney to collect the visas, then I was told that because we had ticked the box “travelling by car” they couldn’t fax the authorisation but had to send it in the post, which wouldn’t arrive in Sydney, till the day before Glastonbury. Missing Glasto wasn’t an option so I had the authorisation sent to a mates house in London. Then when we arrived in London the Russians told us that it would take a week to get the visas, by which time we would already be in Denmark for Roskilde. Then I tried to get the Visas in Copenhagen but they didn’t have appointments till the 24th July (Coincidently the day the rally starts). So I had to wait till we got back to Munich, needless to say the Russians really weren’t doing my visa schedule any favours.
Tuesday 6th July.
The day after we arrived back in Munich I got out the pile of paperwork we were told we needed, double checked that I had filled in the forms exactly the way that the travel agent had told me then pitched up at the Consulate in Munich, hoping they didn’t expect me to speak German or worse, Russian. I took a ticket then sat down and waited,..........and waited and waited. Then the visa window (number 3) closed and the guy next to me told me to come back tomorrow.
Wednesday 7th July.
So I did, early, and I got all the way to window 3 this time. This was the first of many meeting with my old mate at window number 3 at the Russian Consulate. He took all my forms then said something in German or Russian, which I couldn’t understand. Then I said do you speak English? “Nein” “Is there anyone that does?” “Nein”
After a while he said in English. “This is not correct from, this London form, you fill in this form and come back tomorrow” F%#K!
Thursday 8th July.
The next day I turned up with Wam to act as a translator, I gave him the new forms with all the supporting information. Finally, he took them and told us we could pick them up next Thursday, exactly one week after dropping them off. That was going to make getting all our visas very difficult.
Wam had arranged to get the van picked up that afternoon, so I headed back to his place to meet the tow truck driver and get Stan to a mechanic so we could get him fixed. Stan needed a new clutch, potentially a new gearbox and a new starter motor, then I expected the mechanics to find another thousand things wrong with him, which we could decided if we wanted to fix.
The tow truck driver couldn’t believe his eyes. He opened the door and tried to start Stan up, which didn’t work of course, so I said that doesn’t work, then he pulled the back of the seat and that fell out, “That also doesn’t work,” Then he went to out Stan in neutral and pulled the gear lever right up out of the gear box, “Yep, doesn’t work either” He turned around to Johanna one of Wam’s house mates and said something in German, all that I could understand was that he kept pointing at our van and using the word “Scheisse” which I choose to believe means he thought our van was awesome and that we had every chance of getting him 15,000kms to country he’d never heard off. Once Johanna had explained that we were planning on driving the van to Mongolia he started laughing..
We eventually got Stan onto the back of the tow truck and dropped it off at the garage of Henke and Leibel to get Stan purring again and ready to conger the deserts and mountains of Central Asia. I gave Leibel a run down on the rally and what we were doing and most importantly that we had to start the rally in London in two weeks, so he would have to fix Stan very Schneller (faster). The biggest issue I knew we would have was getting parts (realistically it would probably take two weeks to get them, and that proved to be an absolute nightmare. Indeed the first thing he said was that he wouldn’t be able to get parts for a Bedford in Deutschland, luckily i had tracked down another Garage in Germany that supplied parts for Bedfords so gave him those details and said that Wam had been tod that Bedfords were compatible with Opel van, the German getaway drivers van of choice. He promised to have a look at him straight way and either call me the next day (Friday) or Monday at the latest.
Monday 12th July
The following Monday I turned up again to see my mate at window number three, I’d brought along a note in German that said “I know I’m not supposed to be here till Thursday, but I really need those visas, are they ready yet?” He read the note, picked up the receipt I’d been given when I dropped off the visas, took out a highlighter and highlighted the date 15/7 being Thursday. Translated that means “No they’re not, come back next Thursday” To enforce his point he pulled the blinds closed on the window and ignored me as he walked off.
Tuesday 13th July
By Tuesday we still hadn’t heard a word from the mechanics and I was getting really stressed. They said they’d call by Monday and that meant they probably hadn’t started yet, or were finding so many issues they were still working through them. We had just over a week to get the van fixed and didn’t even know what parts we needed. By the afternoon I was so angry I went out there in person, the only owner there that day was Henke (the one that didn’t speak English) and he told me that they hadn’t even started looking at the van yet! Well then I really cracked it, not that he could understand what I was saying but he definitely got the impression I was really pissed off. After about ten minutes Wam arrived from work and I got him to tell Henke that we were supposed to be in England in 11 days to start the rally and needed them to fix our van. 11 days away and we still had no idea what needed to be fixed, what parts we needed, if they were available in Germany and exactly how long they would take to get here. I was starting to get really stressed, and frustrated as the fact we bought the van ten months ago and it still wasn’t even running.
Wednesday 14th July
I turned up to the Russian Consulate again on the Wednesday just to pop in and see how old mate at number 3 was doing. The visas still weren’t done yet. On the plus side I think he was finally starting to enjoy my visits.
Thursday 15th July
Finally on Thursday morning I rocked up again and he handed back our passports, with two brand new 12 month business visas in there. Finally I had our Russian Visas. Given our schedule was so tight Wam had arranged a spot for me to car pool to Berlin that night so I could get straight onto our Tajik visas. Luckily it’s an 8 hour drive from Munich, as I’d gone out that night with some of Wams house mates and hadn’t slept at all yet.
I was collected by Hans, who looked every bit like a serial killer rapist, but once he cracked out his driving gloves I knew he meant business. My fellow passenger said we were doing 260km/h down the autobahn, not that I noticed cause I was asleep for almost the whole trip.
Berlin was really cool, stayed with my mate Jess, who came along to the Tajik Embassy the next day to help translate. Tajikistan is my favourite ‘stan, the name sounds a lot like Travistan, they’ve got the Pamir and they gave me our visas in 45 minutes. Once we’d got that done Jess and I went for a bike tour round Berlin, then finished a bottle of absinthe with her flatmates that night.
On Thursday we finally heard back from the mechanics on the status of the van, we needed a new starter motor and clutch, so that they could get Stan running again then they could give him a full run down on exactly what else we needed to do to get him dessert proof, bullet proof, and crap roads proof. The van repairs were still a massive stress as they said that they couldn’t source any of the parts, so we would have to find them ourselves. Wam rang around from his work that afternoon and found the parts in Belgium and arranged them to be sent to his work that day. Apart from that we still needed to get spares tyres and rims all our equipment, as well as a new drivers seat and one for the passenger. That’s is a hell of a lot to do in 9 days, especially when our original plan was to drive to London that weekend to give us a week there, to get the last two visas, the last of our equipment and get all our van branding done.
Saturday 17th July
The next day I flew to London to get our last two visas, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan I needed to get at least one of them same business day and hopefully both so I could get back to Munich to get the van ready.
Monday 19th July
Headed out to the Uzbek Embassy first thing in the morning, unfortunately the absolute earliest we could get our visas back was Wednesday. I spent the rest of the day organising the branding stickers for our van. I got them all custom made so Stan looks his best, and spent about two and a half hour in an internet café on the phone, reviewing proofs and busting the balls of Steve from Sign print to make sure that he got them exactly the way I wanted and also making sure he had them done by the following Thursday so they were ready for the rally start.
The van repairs were still going no-where, the parts had arrived in Munich but had not yet cleared customs. In the meantime hopefully we could organise the new seats, as well as find out the process to get our van registered, as that would be the second thing we were asked for every time we cross a border. And it does help if you’re not breaking the law simply by driving your van. Iscreamistan had officially become Stressedouthugelyoverthefactourvandeosn’tevenworkyetistan.
Wednesday 21sth July
I headed out early to collect our Uzbek Visas then went straight to the Kazakhstan embassy to try and get them in so that we could collect them Friday and I’ve have finished all ten visas. Unfortunately the Consular section of the Kazakhstan Embassy is not open one day a week, and that happens to be Wednesday so I couldn’t drop off our passports.
The parts finally cleared customs today, but straight away we got more bad news, the clutch wasn’t a complete clutch but only had the clutch plate, one of the three parts to a clutch. Wam rang me in London and gave me the bad news. As we were getting no where in Germany I said I’d sort it out In England the next day. I asked him for as many photos of the parts as possible and any part numbers or markings on the exiting clutch so that I could email that to the parts suppliers to make sure we got the right ones. That night I trawled the internet for suppliers of Bedford parts all over the UK and prioritised the list on proximity to London and the look of their website. Knowing that it was now impossible for us to get the van ready for Goodwood and we were going to miss the start party, I headed back to my mate Keil’s place for a whole lot of consolatory beers.
Thursday 22nd July – 2 days before the rally started.
Got up insanely early this morning and went out to the Kazakhstan Embassy armed with all my pounds, ready to beg and plead that they process our visas the next day. Well I got absolutely no where with that the absolute earliest I could get was the Monday after the start date. Though things could have been worse, the guy in front of me was supposed to fly out to Kazakhstan that Saturday and even he got donuts from the Consular staff, but he said that he was a public servant and really didn’t seems very concerned about the fact he couldn’t catch his flight.
After that I went back to an internet café to sort out the car parts we need. Starting at the top of my list I rang 16 different companies to try and track down our clutch and Starter, (oh yeah I’d got another call from Wam the night letting me know that the mechanics had rang to say that the starter he got was also incompatible with our engine. After three hours on the phone with the different suppliers, and a whole lot of confusion as the brand of parts we had were not originally installed in Bedfords nor was the information we’d got from the ex-con we bought the van from right.
Anyway I eventually sourced the right complete clutch and a start from a company in East Sussex which they told was near Brighton and a two hour train ride outside of London. So I headed to Victoria and jumped on a train to Brighton, then hiked for about two kms through some random English town, eventually getting to Speedy Spares (who are absolute life savers) on Old Shore Road. I picked up the new clutch and starter (which was a bit dodgy) got some air, oil and fuel filter, negotiated a discount and lugged the 35kgs back to London.
Dogubayazit, Turkey in related news while I was watching the game with the border guards Wam celebrated our time in Turkey by dropping our car keys in ** some text is missing ** ...
| Willibald WG W. | 6th August 2010 at 16:43 |
| Where are you guys? searching the keys? lost in Iran? | |
Doğubeyazıt, Turkey
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