Mongol Rally - from Hyde Park, London to Ulan Baator, Mongolia

Aim: Raise funds for Mercy Corps amongst other Mongolian charities, and anyone else you want to support.

No rules, except engine size must be less than 1L.



Any route. We chose the Southern Route, going through:

UK-France-Belgium-Luxembourg-Germany-CzechRepublic-Slovakia-Serbia-Bulgaria-Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Mongolia

And here is our story:

On Saturay 26th July 2007 the teams left Hyde Park for the annual Mongol Rally. Although we expected a few hiccups along the way, nothing could have prepared us for the totally amazing, grueling and hilarious few weeks which were in store.

Team "Going Walkabout" consisted of UK-living "ex-pat" Australians Jess Black, 25 and Anna Walker, 26. Anna worked as a volunteer vet for SPANA in Morocco and Mali in 2005, and we felt this was a good chance to raise some money for this wonderful NGO.

The car was a 1988 Vauxhall Nova bought unseen of E-bay. We did nothing to the car except for the external decor, including the big SPANA stickers seen by people for over 9000 miles; and for which we became known as the "donkey car". We only took the spare tyre which came with the car - this was in reality an oversight but not until we got to Mongolia, where we ended up having three flats a day.

The rules of the rally were few and far between. In fact, there were no rules, no check points, all we had to do was have a car of less than 1000cc engine size, and raise a heap of money for the rally charities before we went.

Amazingly, and luckily considering our distinct lack of mechanical knowledge, our car ran the most part without incident. A mysterious battery/starter motor/alternator problem which no-one seemed to be able to explain, least of all the Czech mechanic who shrugged and told us "Old car, big problem", caused us a headache until Serbia. Then some friends magically fixed it there, and all our electrics, since we had driven from Prague without indicators, hoping motorists saw our feeble hands out the windows to indicate a change if direction/lane on the highways.

It was in Mongolia that the applicably nicknamed "SuperNova" started to show signs of strain. This was understandable, since the four weeks before had seen it do a 24 hour speed run across the Turkmenistan desert in 50 degree heat due to visa problems, climb through 6000m Kyrgyz mountain passes and navigate over a week of Mongolian goat tracks including a flash-flood in the Gobi Desert. We were told to "wait two days" until we could cross it but persuaded some locals to drag us across it nevertheless.

We finally hit bitumen 400km from the Mongolian capital after a week of following nomadic directions amounting to "head left past that mountain" and thought we were home free. But tragedy struck 200kms from our destination - heartbreaking since we had made it over 15,000km so far! A "squeak" turned out to be our back wheel bearings completely smashed so the tyre was actually spinning around the hub. In other words, our back wheel didn’t turn at all anymore. We were forced to abandon ship in time to make it to the Black Tie ball staged that night, which we had dressed for in elation at 2am the night before after getting the cars across a river after the bridge had washed out. Needless to say I had changed two spare tyres since then in my ball gown and I was determined to wear it to the party.

We were thrilled with our efforts, considering we were one of the few all-girl teams, and we had taken the notoriously difficult "southern route" through the "Stans" and entered Mongolia via the Western Border which only opened to foreigners a year ago and required a lot more than a 1L engine and one spare tyre to complete unscathed. We powered on, reversing up hills where first gear failed, and made loads of friends and had heaps of laughs along the way. There are numerous crazy stories and accounts that could take up a book, but it was an amazing time and has made the world seem a much smaller and friendlier place.

The final figures are still being calculated in terms of what was raised overall, but it is thought to be well in excess of £200,000. All the cars were auctioned off for charity once/if they arrived, many of which did not.

For any more information, and to see photos from the 2007 rally please go to www.mongolrally.com.

Anna Walker