UB to Altay and Back... Just

Well, we're back in Beijing again and have mamanged to join up with the rest of the crew. We all collected our cars from customs this morning; 140 cars, and every one started. A miracle. If I turn round now I can see all of them parked 15 floors below me.

The recci in Mongolia was well worth it. Apart from being really enjoyable, we got a good feel of what the conditions will be like next week. The roads are bloody awful, when they are not closed for repair that is. The tracks just fan out like streams in a river delta. All of them are usually ok except the most used one, that's normally a cross between a nomad ger and the recycling bin of a vodka shop. They do like a drop; but then it looks like a pretty tough life for a sober man to handle.

Despite all of the assurances, our local flight from Altay in the west to UB was cancelled without notice on the day. This left us with very few options; we could sit it out in the hope that the plane turned up the following day the 23rd; or Amran our driver/super-hero said he could get us back over 1000km in the 30 hrs we had before the flight from UB to Beijing.

After all of these months of effort the thought of missing the start of the rally was looming large. So we went for the super-hero 1000k in a Russian mini bus with a top speed of 85-90kph and the charicteristics of a series two land rover. All of that on 150k of good B road and the rest broken tarmac or dirt track. We made it in 23 hrs with one driver who had no sleep.