...... can be found at www.myspace.com/the_son_of_rod

We've finally managed to cut down 8 hours of video footage from our trip into just 8 minutes for your viewing pleasure! Enjoy!

See the video by clicking here!

 

 

For your amusement we have finally managed to upload a LOT of the photos from our trip! ENJOY!

PHOTOS

A & Team

So, after 41 days in the Micra, team Stella Performa has made it to Ulaan Batar!!! I don't think any of us can actually believe we managed to drive all the way here as expected...

We arrived yesterday, after the last day of off-roading and managing to successfully get Stella stuck head-first in a sand-pit! Luckily we were still convoying with Milaan2Ulaan and so were helped out one more time by the trusty Italians.

Stella cruised into the Mongolian capital (through the chaotic traffic) around 4pm only to find there was no longer any form of 'finish line' for us! But we celebrated as expected with the Italian & Spanish teams until the early hours this morning.

We now have the mamouth task of trying to get all of our photos online for your amusement before heading our separate directions (Ed & Adam to Beijing, Sanson to Tokyo).

(Also, the link to the Italian site, which has a photo of our car swimming: Milaan2Ulaan )



A & Team :-)

We're almost there!!! Bang on our 6 week target... to get to Ulaan Batar by this weekend!

The last few days have been great, although still a lot colder than anticipated. Right now it feels like we're in the French Alps around March.

We've been convoying with Italian team 'Milaan2Ulaan' and 2 Spanish teams who have been great company through the fantastic terrain.

As for Stella, Ed managed to burst our first tyre today- which is fantastic as we haven't had much else go wrong with the car yet, and it gave us the chance to use one of our spares! She's also lost functionality of the driver's window, but that hasn't proved to be a problem so far.

Looking forward to that hot shower in Ulaan B!... we stink a lot!

A & Team

 

Well we've accomplished the key step of getting into Mongolia... now just a few thousand miles to go and we'll be there! Its been great fun so far, except for the ridiculous border crossings... our penultimate border crossing into Russia from Kazakhstan  took a mind-numbing 9 hours due to the absence of an 'inspector'... luckily the Mongol crossing wasn't too bad- the amusing payment we had to make there was $10 for 'road tax' despite the fact there aren't any roads!

A & Team...

 

After bumping into a group of Kazakh accountants (from KPMG no less) in the streets of Aturau, we were convinced they would be able to provide us with a wealth of knowledge for our onward route... they said don't bother going straight to Aktobe, but instead double-up the route via Oral. They were adament that this would save us time so we believed them.

At first the given route appeared to do the trick- very very flat roads meaning we could reach 115km/h! These continued as far as Oral (about half-way), then it was back to the bumps... and the bumps got worse as we had about 200km of Kazakh roadworks ahead of us- not good.

We are now in Aktobe after some serious off-roading. We are trying our best not to scrape the underside of Stella while tackling these crazy roads... but its getting harder! She's getting a serious battering!

We'll be heading towards Quizilorda as soon as possible, with the aim of getting to Kyrgistan some time this year!

Greetings from Volgograd/Stalingrad (Russia)!

The arrogant presumption that you can go anywhere in the world and get by with English has been well & truly banished. Our tools of communication have been reduced to an amalgamation of mispronounced greetings in Russian and eccentric gesticulations, fueled by the delusion that both parties are in agreement over the storyline of the theatre taking place in front of fast-gathering audiences and amateur interlocuters.

So far, using this method of madness, we have managed to bribe officials to let us pass through borders; avoid being locked up for 5 days in a Transnistrian prison cell; get our car battery changed; and buy tickets for a Dynamo Kiev match... and the list goes on.

After naive chirpings about how wonderful everybody is, it is a fact that the average Russian/Ukrainian is a tough nut to crack!

We are heading over to the land of Borat tomorrow (Kazakhstan), but lets hope no-one mentions his name as that would most probably deprive us of entry into the country...

 

Ok, so we made it to (the) Ukraine from Chisnau... but it wasn't the easiest trip in the world. The key annoyance was the borders. To get from Moldova to here we had to pass through 2 borders because there was an unmapped/unrecognised country called Transnitria in-between the two... this came as a shock to all of us as none of our guidebooks had warned us of this.

The extra border meant more border guards, more general annoyance due to incessant bribery/special taxes which had to be paid.

Firstly we were told we weren't allowed our walkie-talkies into Transnitria so had to pay 20 Euros fine; then about 50 Dollars tax; then about 50 Dollars as we hadn't filled in our customs forms correctly. Driving through Transnitria we had to pay a further 75 Dollars as we changed lanes going around 20 km/hour- they threatened to take Adam's driving license if this was not paid. (Sanson managed to somehow barter this one down from 100 Euros with some arty calculations).

Once we reached the Ukrainian border an hour or so later there was a further 50 Dollars or so to get through... plus a small bottle of gin.

This was the most exhausting journey of the trip both physically and mentally (and financially)... we headed down to Odessa-by-sea, and chilled for a day. During our relaxation we managed to have a couple of policemen tell us that we had to buy them cigarettes due to an 'administration problem'... Sanson managed to tell them that this was not necessary and gave them our website address instead!

We're off to watch a Dynamo Kiev football match tonight, then its off towards Russia tomorrow. Who knows what the Russian border will be like!!

 

A & Team

 

Well, its been a while since we've had a chance to get any news onto here, that's for sure... and because of the fact that we have seen so much, and gone through so many places its getting hard to track where we've actually been!

The last few days we have been winding our way around the horse-and-cart filled roads of Romania trying to find some sign of a road with no gaping pot-holes in! We certainly didn't think we would be in Romania for that long.

The original plan for the border crossing (Romania to Moldova) was terminated after some friendly policemen told us the Moldovan floods were too bad to be able to drive through, so we had to make a detour further through Romania to the next possible border crossing... When we made it to that border crossing it took us about 3-4 hours of waiting around before we made it over into Moldova.

We are now in Chisnau, the Moldovan capital- we didn't realise how Russian this place was! Quite a cultural difference. Through a friend of Adam's sister we were advised to stay at an interesting hotel where everything was quite retro to say the least.