TravelPapa is Rolling on the Rally...

â–º August 18, 2009
The Siberian Express

Things came together rather nicely for the remainder of the trip, sans-truck as it was. After a second fantastic meal at our favorite Georgian restaurant, we caught a 4:20 am flight from Dushanbe, Tajikistan to Irkutsk, Russia. For some reason, every flight into or out of Dushanbe passes through between midnight and 6 am – we were at the airport at noon a few days earlier to try to book the flight and people were around, but no one was getting on or off a flight. Sadly, one of the two bottles of Jammy Jam cognac got crushed and leaked all over Andrew’s clothes.

We made it through security and customs just fine and waited around the terminal for an hour, eating some godawful chocolate-style soap-tasting candy before loading onto a transport bus and being driven across the tarmac to the plane. There were about 25 people in the transporter, so I was expecting an appropriately sized plane, only to be shocked as we rolled up to a full-sized AirBus A320, with 150 or so seats. Ah yes, subsidized airlines. Thank you, Tajik government. Everyone could have their own row if they wanted. Some people did fully stretch out on three seats, but most clustered near the front of the plane. The flight attendants blocked off the first 10 rows for themselves. We all immediately fell asleep and missed both the beverage and meal service. A few times I would sort of half wake up and be reminded of “Flight of the Langoliers.”

From the Irkutsk airport we caught a cab over to the train station. Up to Unit 3 in the “Beginner’s Russian” book, Andrew and I were throwing out “My name is…” “Pleased to meet you,” and “I am a tractorist,” left and right. We got our tickets and hung around in the train station for the afternoon. In case you ever happen to buy a Russian train ticket, all trains and stations are scheduled by Moscow time, so our 4:50 pm train didn’t actually leave until after dark.

For fans of economical design, the second-class Russian sleeper cabin is a work of art. A room features four bunks, with two on each side of the cabin, with room for ten or so bags below the bunks and in a storage space in the ceiling, a small table, little fold out ladders to climb to the higher bunks, and a drop-down flat-screen television. No, no television, this is Russia my friend. However, at the end of each car there is a water boiler from which you can dispense very hot water for tea. This kept us stimulated, but we had to find our own entertainment. Which brings us to the toilets. You press a lever, a flap opens, and the contents then dump directly onto the track. Not like there’s anyone around those parts to notice I guess.

The trip took about 36 hours. On the second night we got to know four Irish guys staying a few bunks down from us. “Got to know” being used here in the Irish sense of “drank ourselves silly with.” Bert donated a bottle of Medoff vodka (he got approving looks from the Russians when he purchased it and a thumbs up as he was walking down the street). The Irish lads had their own bottle and a box of cheap wine (“Here, try tees French whine me friend”). We shared stories and were repeatedly asked to keep it down by the stewardess (trainstress?) who at one exasperated point began with “My very dear friends…” She was very pretty and the Irish boys gave her a terrible time. After the wine was finished they broke out this dirty red plastic jug with paint splatters on it, at which point all the Americans in the cabin except myself left. They claimed they’d picked it up for 50 roubles, or a bit less than $2. I watched them drink from it first, and confident I wouldn’t go blind, took a swig of what I expected to be some really hellacious grain-alcohol. Fortunately for me, it was just some surprisingly watered-down wine. Can’t judge a book by its cover I suppose. Actually in this case, I could tell that it was going to be a terrible book, I just didn’t know what kind of terrible. The next morning we awoke at the Mongolian border, only slightly hung over, and shortly after we arrived at Ulaanbaatar, the long-sought terminus of the Mongol Rally.


Latest News in Brief
with all typos and mistakes as we are receiving it from the Rolling Cones via SMS

â–º August 15, 2009 / 9:00 PM
...what to do in Ulaanbaatar....

â–º August 15, 2009 / 8:47 AM
caught the flight out of Dushanbe... AND caught the train out of Irkutsk. We've now reached Ulaanbaatar and are meeting with other teams.


â–º August 14, 2009
In the Middle of a Circle of Jackhammers, Working on Bags of Glass and Silverware

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan has come much further than Georgia, but at some expense to their environment. They’ve just finished a pipeline from the Caspian to Turkey and money is flowing into the country. Similar to Turkey, there’s a feeling of advancement, marching progress. However, the country is still for the most part empty, with only scattered communities and then the oil metropolis of Baku on the eastern coast. For those proponents of offshore drilling in the US, Baku has embraced it wholeheartedly, with giant oilrigs 50 meters offshore from public parks. The landscape around the highway into the city is covered with garbage and no one gives littering a second thought.

In three or four years, Azerbaijan will have a dependable, smooth set of 4-lane highways from border to border. Presently, half of the country is eroded dirt roads and construction zones. Andrew compared it to driving on the moon. Remember, we have a big box truck with a stiff suspension. It’s meant to haul hundreds of pounds and we’ve filled it with some backpacks full of clothes. Ever rented a U-Haul van? Driven it empty on a gravel road at 30 mph? For 6 hours? I compared the sound to the title of this post. It was truly deafening, and really the first adversity we’ve faced so far. By the time we stopped on Thursday at 4 am I was sick and threw up the remains of my Georgian lunch, then after a sleepless night I hurled up water the next morning. We hadn’t showered in 5 days and were filthy. I was really worried I’d caught something. Fortunately the nausea receded Thursday morning and I felt better by the time we pulled into Baku.

Regardless of any hardship mentioned in this blog, we are fully aware that we’re Americans and lead privileged lives, so please don’t think we feel heroic or sorry for ourselves. If anything, doing something like driving on Azeri roads makes one realize how easy it is to be an American. Also, if the Mongol Rally’s going to be just another road trip in a few years, how nice it is to have some excitement by taking it on this year.

Anyway, to finish the story, we just made it; we were the last car to get onto the ferry. Once across the Caspian, we should be three days ahead of schedule. Updates will remain spotty because of limited Internet, but we’ll have some time to really explore as we head through the more remote parts of Asia.


â–º August 14, 2009
Crossing the Caspian

After leaving Istanbul we rushed across Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan to catch the ferry from Baku to Turkmenistan. We covered around 1200 miles, one third of it through construction zones, and one-third on dirt. For sequential timing and to avoid spoiling any surprises, read them in reverse order.

The ferry across the Caspian is a former Baltic Sea cruiser – the hold has railroad tracks and two train cars were in there when we drove on. The cabins are minimally appointed with four bunks and stained mattresses – Joe heard rumors of bedbugs. Most passengers just slept in the seating area. There’s a kitchen that served up a great breakfast of coffee, eggs and bread for 1 Manat each ($1.25). The sea itself is scenic, from the color-changing space needle like tower over the skyline of Baku, to the oilrigs twinkling on the horizon. Andrew and I have been working on our Russian to be prepared for more former-Soviet republics, Bert’s been sorting through photos, and we’ve all bonded with the twenty or so other ralliers on board and the Azeri crew. This one crewmember has the Black Eyed Peas song, "Boom Boom Pow" on his phone and is really into playing it for everyone else.


â–º August 14, 2009
Cheese Pies

While Turkey was the most welcoming country I’ve ever traveled in, Georgia gets mixed reviews. In Georgia, we parked and slept in the truck, realizing only too late that we were next to a set of railroad tracks. A fellow truck-driver was hanging out when we woke up, and mistaking us for the English ("Manchester! Leeds!") gave Bert and Andrew two cokes and a bag of peaches.

The driving was worse, as the road got bumpier and Georgians don’t mind making blind passes or letting cows roam free on their two lane highways. Bert took it personally, liberally employing the air-horn and an American gesture that’s probably meaningless to Georgians. In contrast to folks in the countryside, the gas station attendants were rather process-oriented and the waiters very formal. We’ve heard it’s a former-Soviet thing. The architecture also reflects this, with ugly big block style apartment buildings and office complexes in Tblisi. In contrast to Turkey, Georgia does not seem to be thriving, with demolished buildings and giant rusting factories along the highway. There was a collapsed bridge outside Gori, a casualty of last year’s conflict with Russia, but we didn’t stop to drive through Stalin’s hometown.

We had a great 3-course meal in Tblisi, with Kachapuri (cheese-pies) and Sheshlik (skewered pork). Andrew and I got sort of drunk after sharing a bottle of wine (a very sweet Cabernet Sauvignon), although we only intended to order 100 ml each.

East of Tblisi, things were smoother and we made it to the Azerbaijan border at about 5 pm, where the crossing then took 4.5 hours, our longest yet. We weren’t pressured for any bribes; the border crossing is just accessed by one lane in either direction, and rather inefficient in itself. It was manned by a mix of 15-year-olds in military camouflage and older men in light police shirts, although it wasn’t clear that anyone was really doing anything. One guard really liked our compass, which Andrew happened to be wearing around his neck, and motioned to hand it over. Fortunately, Andrew enacted the proven bribe avoidance technique of just looking confused.


â–º August 14, 2009
If You Have Car Trouble in Giresun

On Tuesday, Andrew and Bert noticed a regular clicking noise coming from the front of the truck. We’d been on some really bumpy, twisty roads on our way up to Sile and back, so Andrew suspected suspension issues and proposed replacing the steering arm. After a lot of gesturing and asking around Giresun, closest town, we were directed to a Ford mechanic. It was a big scene when the giant pink truck pulled up and the whole garage gathered around to see what the hell was going on.

Bert’s fluent French came in useful as he explained to a go-between (there’s always a go-between around here, the right guy just knows when to show up) what we needed. We were brought into the waiting area and served tea and cookies. A mechanic removed the steering arm, found nothing wrong and replaced it, but the noise persisted. Finally, he just tightened the lug nuts on that side, told us to go for a drive and yeah, problem fixed. They invited us above the shop to join the employees for a hearty lunch, and we had beans, chicken stew, bread, and cherry juice soup. We made our way to the front office and asked what we owed. The owner’s daughter spoke English. "20 Turkish Lira ($14)." Her father conferred with her for a minute. "Actually, it’s free, don’t worry about it."

We handed out t-shirts to the owner, our translator and the mechanic, hung around to eat some space ice cream (we've started saying "Kosmonaut" and then striking a muscle-man pose when we hand it out) and were on our way!

We're pushing hard this week to get to the ferry in Baku, Azerbaijan to cross the Caspian to Turkmenistan. It’s notoriously unreliable and runs only once every few days with no set schedule. We’ll be sleeping in the truck, eating street food, and using gas-station facilities.


â–º August 14, 2009
On Driving in Northern Turkey

Despite what we’ve come to believe from popular portrayal, Northern Turkey is not a desert country. It’s incredibly mountainous, covered with grass and forest. It’s comparable to Montana, only lusher. The vistas driving in the north part of the country were amazing. On Tuesday evening we stopped in Safranbolu to check out preserved Ottoman houses. We then drove on several hundred kilometers to Samsun and through the day on Wednesday, effectively crossing all of Turkey in 2 days.

Turkey is in the process of converting thousands of miles of highway from 2 to 4 lanes. This makes for some bumpy roads, but the team was able to sleep while I drove to Samsun. More disconcerting is facing of pair of tractor-trailers as one passes the other coming downhill towards you.

The commerce in Turkey and parts onward has been a bit puzzling to Westerners used to niche market positioning in the US. In a two-kilometer stretch of highway you’ll pass 20 fruit vending carts, selling identical fruit with identical stacked pyramids of melons and bananas. Then, no fruit stands for 200 kilometers. If you want fruit you go to that section of highway. Similarly, in a shopping center there will be a dozen convenience stores selling identical wares. One evening in Istanbul, we were waiting for a kebap restaurant to seat us, gave up on waiting and went next door where they handed us the same menu as at the first restaurant. Joe says India and Russia are identical and compares it to the idea of say a spice market. If you want spices, that’s where you go and there will be a bunch of vendors selling similar spice selections. In the West we just do things a bit more self-service – in the grocery store there’s a cereal section, they just don’t have representatives from Post, Kellogg’s and General Mills pitching you their wares.

It gets dark rather late here, around 10 PM, and people take advantage of it. As a result, the typical Turkish day is shifted about 3 hours behind America, with restaurant rushes around 10 PM and the roads being the most empty at 6:30 AM.


â–º August 12, 2009
A Slick Photo

Here's a sweet picture from the rally launch last month. More to come once we find a cafe with an ftp client!


â–º August 12, 2009
What We've Been Eating

My friend Chris asked what we've been eating. In the former Soviet Republics they eat lots and lots of bread, every 'stan having its own traditional variety. Uzbekistan's giant-bagelish style was my favorite, Turkmenistan's hard and thin discs weren't very enjoyable. According to our Turkmen friend Aylar, this is apparently because the Soviet Union fought food shortages by really pushing eveyone to eat lots of bread. There is tea at every meal, constantly refilled, and lots of cucumber and tomato salad, similar to what you get at Mediterranean restaurants, except we don't eat it because we fear the water it was washed in, with the exception of Bert who is some mix of crazy and indestructible. There are lots of melons sold on the streets, both water and winter varieties and they are delicious and fresh and safe to eat.

In the meat department, the most common choice is Shashlik, skewers of mutton or beef roasted over coals. In Georgia we had the pleasure of trying pork Shashlik, which was freaking amazing, but the Muslim countries don't have it, and their mutton and beef cuts are unfortunately very bony and fatty, which strikes our western palates as pretty gross. We've also had Manti (u replacing the i depending on your particular 'stan) which is steamed salty beef dumplings with some yogurt sauce on top, and isn't particularly bad if a little bland. My favorite dish is Samsa, a pastry filled with sauteed meat and onions which is pretty out of this world as long as yours is fully cooked. Bert and I both agree that this food would all be improved with some Cholula hot sauce.

Yesterday Joe and I met an American girl on the street after she spotted his Virginia Tech shirt. It turns out that I knew her brother in high school and she lives in SF. She's in Tajikistan working on a book about the relationship between Tajik and Farsi (they're very similar, making Tajikistan unique among the 'stans for not having a turkic language). Anyway, she recommended a Georgian restaurant, which is the best food we've had in any of the 'stans (incidentally we also had a fantastic meal in Georgia).

Ice cream is cheap and very popular here, including both vanilla bars coated with chocolate shells and fruit pops (green apple is good and sweet). Bottled water throughout Central Asia is like 20 cents per liter because everyone drinks it, although in Tajikistan there's an odd shortage of still water and you can often only get mineral water, which taste I've had to acquire in the past week. Seriously, you brush your teeth and then rinse with sparkling water. There are the common sodas, although RC Cola has some odd lock in this part of the world. Soda knock-offs are hilariously common and we've tried both "Fanto" which is good if mediciney, and "Coco-Cola" which was the right color and in a correct-looking bottle, but tasted horrible.

Moral of this post: Go try some Georgian food, don't drink name-brand soda immitations. Fascinating!


â–º August 11, 2009
The End of an Era

Just like that, our rally has come to an end, although the journey has not. On Thursday evening we visited the Registan in Samarkand, then made it across the Uzbekistan/Tajikistan border at about 2 am. We slept in the truck just across the border and started on Friday morning with the hope of making it to Dushanbe, the capital, shortly after nightfall. I was in the back, resting, while Andrew drove with Joe in the passenger seat. The suspension and horrible rocking in the back or the truck are such that you don't ever actually sleep, instead just dozing until you get thrown off the bunk by a particularly bad pothole. Around 10 AM, as we cruised on a dirt highway through sunflower fields and cow pastures, I was rousted by a rattling sound (heard through my earplugs). I thought it might just be the exhaust clanking around, but the noise got louder and then the truck lost power and smoke began pouring from under the hood. Andrew pulled over and opened the engine compartment to find that one of the radiator inlets had completely sheared off and steam was pouring from the hole. Workhorse trucks made after the mid-90's have plastic radiator tanks - our J.B. Weld would be of no use in fixing the break, nor could we drill into the crummy quality material to rebuild the inlet.

We were convoying with a team of Brits in a packed 4-seater. They crammed Andrew into the back and drove him two miles back to the nearest village, where he bought some plastic putty stuff, but it melted under heat and the truck only made it 2 miles before we died again in front of an old Soviet Vineyard / police checkpoint. After some broken Russian and hand motions, the local mechanic showed up with somewhat better plastic epoxy, and by noon we could drive up and down the road, albeit with steady dripping from the patch (the radiator's pressurized at 16 psi). Replacing the radiator tank would take a minimum of several days because it's a specialty American part, and my limited Russian transit visa meant I needed to get through Siberia within a week. Plus, the local mechanic couldn't do the job - we'd have to at least make it another 250 km on washed-out gravel mountain roads to get to Dushanbe to begin even talking about replacing the radiator. What to do? The great debate began.

Over the two days I argued for the hopelessly optimistic course of just driving on, very slowly, hoping the patch would hold until Dushanbe or even beyond, bringing a lot of extra water and more plastic epoxy with us. In my opinion, the Mongol Rally is a hopelessly optimistic quest to begin with, and pressing on would be a fitting disastrous/triumphant ending. No compromises; a hopeless romantic's option. Andrew's an experienced mechanic and insisted the patch would break after just a few miles of bumpy mountain road. Bert already hated the truck - there's no suspension, it's really, really loud inside, and the roads had just been getting worse the further we pressed. Joe's a realist and sided with Andrew, but not very strongly. With the help of the brothers who owned the Vineyard we'd broken down in front of (really nice guys, they produce a Cognac called "Jammy Jam," running at about 3% capacity in an enormous old Soviet distillery/fermentation/bottling plant) we met with several potential buyers over the next few days. Most potential purchasers were put off by the fact that Erika had a Chevy engine and wasn't a Daewoo, gets about 12 mpg, and the fact that no one in Asia or Europe's ever even seen a big box truck before. We finally lined up the owner of a tourism service who would buy for $2000, but to complete the deal I had to drive him the 15 miles back to Panjakent, the nearest mid-size town. Short of some post-party driving I did in high school, it was without a doubt the most nervous I've ever been behind the wheel, expecting smoke to come pouring from the hood with every bump (and there were thousands of ugly bumps on that road), having to yell "problem, problem!" at the top of my lungs as I evacuated our potential buyers from the vehicle. The patch held (fueling further later arguing on my part that we should continue on to Mongolia), and the truck sold (for $1000 after duties were imposed, despite that it now runs better than when we bought it in the US for $6.5K).

We took a taxi to Dushanbe, where I'm writing this post. Tomorrow night we're taking a plane to Irkutsk and then hoping on a Siberian train down to Ulaanbaator (Joe has an uncannily extensive knowledge of transport options in Central Asia). When we finally have a decent internet connection we'll get our videos online, and I'll upload the 6 lost posts from between Turkey and Uzbekistan.

We are sad, but not that sad. We've been reduced to backpackers, which is how we are all used to traveling. Mercy Corps has received over $4000 with our help, and proceeds from the truck sale are still going to Mongolian relief agencies. The Mongol Rally is not supposed to be easy, over 1/3rd of teams fail, and we took a particularly stupid vehicle - a big highway cruiser delivery truck with a rigid suspension and plastic engine parts. There's been talk about taking a pineapple or cheeseburger car in 2010. We also kept a set of keys, so someday, a traveler may just make their way back to Panjakent. They'll keep a low profile, and ask around town about a big pink box truck as the sun is setting. The next morning, the owner will find $1000 and some space ice cream, and we'll already be over the border, back to finish the job. You never know.

-Alex


Latest News in Brief
with all typos and mistakes as we are receiving it from the Rolling Cones via SMS

â–º August 11, 2009
radiator is busted... truck is hosed... sold it in Panjikent and are now in Dushanbe trying to get to UB.

â–º August 8, 2009 / 5:16 AM
our radiator broke... thanks GM and your PLASTIC tanks on a radiator... not sure if it can be fixed. stuck in Panjikent, TJ (Tajikistan) for 2 days now.

â–º August 6, 2009 / 3:29 AM
made it to Samarqand.... Bukhara was absolutely amazing... a little time here and then heading for Dushanbe.


â–º August 6, 2009
Driving a Big Pink Spaceship

 We've spent some time discussing the pros and cons of our big pink ride and come to the conclusion that despite the 12 mpg mileage and extra border and shipping fees because of size and weight, we wouldn't have it any other way.

I've always been particularly sensitive to the idea of being a tourist, one who is contributing to a scene only in an economic sense, buying culture, encouraging others to sell their customs and traditions as a form of entertainment or social currency to show off to one's friends back home. David Foster-Wallace phrased this idea really well in "Consider the Lobster." It's an ugly thing, but I think there's a way out, in the sense of being a traveler, a representative of your culture who is there to interact and share, meaningfully, without patronizing your hosts.

Making yourself a spectacle is one very good way to get yourself into this mode. As Joe pointed out, they don't have box trucks like ours in any of the countries we're visiting, and all of the cars we've seen are red, blue, white or black. We may as well be driving a spaceship. A big pink one with lime-green stripes and a giant map on the side. In a sense, we show up as the entertainment, not asking the locals to do traditional dances while we take photographs, but doing our own silly, stupid dance, inviting them to check out what we're all about. And while we didn't plan any of this, it works, amazingly well (Barack Obama being president also really helps). Policemen at checkpoints invite us to tea with them, border guards sign the truck, kids throw frisbees with us, and people along the highway wave and smile. If you want to travel, you must first disarm yourself, and driving the strangest looking transport possible has proven to be just the thing to do it.

-Alex

â–º August 5, 2009
We Are Still Alive...

 ...But have been incommunicado for 8 days. First there was the non-stop 1200 km from Safranbolu, Turkey to Baku, Azerbaijan so we could catch the ferry across the Caspian. We made it with maybe a half hour to spare, saving ourselves 3 days of waiting in port. Then the ferry took two days, one of travel and one of border paperwork, and then we were in Turkmenistan for three days, where the internet is severely censored and I couldn't access this site. Now we're in Bukara, Uzbekistan, headed to Samarkand tomorrow. I wrote several posts in the last week which I'll try to get up soon. The truck's holding up fine, we got stuck in the sand twice in Turkmenistan and no one is currently sick.

Cheers,
Alex


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Latest News in Brief
with all typos and mistakes as we are receiving it from the Rolling Cones via SMS