Pictures to follow when we find a some speedier internet.

When we did get to Volgograd, we made our way towards a large statue park overlooking the river Volga:

where we are sure we were beinge watched!

After seeing 8 mongol ralliers, and even talking to a few, we made our way to Astrakhan where we arrived with enough daylight to find a hotel. A few dodgey directions later and we had our soviet style rooms and beds for the night. The hotel was a romantic setting next to the river with a cafe on a boat playing jazz and onlooking four russian battleships, lovely!

One ’speeding’ fine later and a mongolia rally t-shirt lighter,

we headed towards the border to Kazakhstan. At least we weren’t the only ones!

And we got our first taste of propper off-roading:

Now onwards to kazakhstan!

&

The main methods of transportation are

&

There are also a few police cars about. But we found that they were all quite nice. We were only strip searched for narcotics once, and all went well, after the initial supicion over some OXO cubes.

and camped in a lovely field/campsite:

Then Chris C didn’t want to go to Poland so we decided  head south instead. We drove to Slovakia:

And just wen we start thinking we’re in a Soviet Bloc country

Something will come along to remind us we’re not that far from home:

What’s this beast?

We had lunch in Bratislava near a castle:

…and camped in the moutainside outside of Budapest for two nights.  It was raining too much to get the EOS out, but ook some pics of the aswesome campsite. Steps lead up the montainside to plateaus made for tent pitching:

And now we’re off to Ukraine!

We drove around the ringroad until I spotted a camping sign. 2 hours later we found the place by foot, and paid a small fee for staying 2 days, plus an extortionate amount in tax.

Internet cafes here seem non-existant but we eventually found wifi in a mcdonalds, which justifies me carying this brick all day, kinda!

Next we’re heading to Nuremburg for the night, about 420 miles or 6 hours continous driving, it won’t be long before we’ll be doing less than half of that on a good day!

Pictures and updates from the road soon!

Gemin-i specializes in developing innovative web based solutions to improve education in the developing and developed worlds. It works at bridging cultural, religious and digital divides between disparate peoples around the world and lends a voice to young people, raising their concerns with policy makers. All the money we raise for them will go to helping school children in remote areas of Mongolia. To do this, they are supplying schools with OLPC (One Laptop per Child) laptops.

The laptop gives learners opportunities they have not had before. Tools such as a Web browser, rich media player, and e-book reader bring into reach domains of knowledge that are otherwise difficult-or impossible-for children to access.

They are also getting schools connected with their Rafi.ki and Reflect online networking communities. Rafi.ki supplies the children with instant messaging, video/audio conferencing, email, forums and blogs. Here you can find lesson plans on important topics like Slavery, Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Recycling, Modern Foreign Languages, Creative Writing and much more. School-children from all over the world can talk to each other and provide help and support. Currently it is being used in over 80 countries, including the UK. Reflect is an online community for teachers, where they can share lesson plans, ideas and projects, and improve their own teaching.

I strongly believe that the most important thing you can give a child is education, and Gemin-i is doing a fantastic job in bringing top class resources to underprivileged children.

The laptop not only delivers the world to children, but also brings the best practices of children and their teachers to the world. Each school represents a learning hub; a node in a globally shared resource for learning.

If you share this view, and want to help this cause, please visit our Justgiving site.

As time goes on and we have less and less time to work on the car, the state in which we would need to find a Triumph gets better and better, and more expensive. I asked Karl Dandridge - the guy who so kindly offered to give us workshop space and help in his Triumph workshop, whether he thinks we could find another one at such short notice? I said it needn’t be perfect, or even a herald, just solid; he replied that they weren’t best known for that! And they were getting harder to find. Usually they’ll look much better than they are - something we had already found out the hard way with Tallulah. And we had already spent out what we had for a car - that money has gone, and the only way we can afford to still go is to use the money set aside for fixing up Tallulah.

We know it’s been less than a week since she was stolen, and we would love to find her, but even if we find her in exactly the condition she was in, which is unlikely, we have lost the time we had allocated to work on her - we spent the week visiting scrap heaps and cars and talking to neighbours. We have degrees to finish and full-time jobs, so both time and money are becoming a real issue. The theft could not have come at a more critical time, and the irony is that she would have been safe at Karl’s workshop by now for us to start work on her next week.

So the final contingency plan comes into play now - we had always been offered my brother’s car now he is getting a new one, just in case we couldn’t finish Tallulah in time (the faith our families have in us!). The major advantage to us now is that we could pretty much drive it there tomorrow without any modifications; it’s a ‘93 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.7TD. We’ve had it in the family since new and it’s done (to my recollection) less than 90,000 miles. This model has the Isuzu diesel engine, good for at least 300k miles and even though it’s from the 90’s is still a relatively simple set-up. More space, reclining seats with head-rests and 4 doors all make this a much more attractive option with our sensible hats on. It will have more value in Mongolia too, as the spares for a very common Japanese engine will be no doubt easier and far cheaper to find than a Triumph, and it only has no value in this country because so many of them are sill around and it’s not the newest model.

All-in-all a tough decision, but we decided on the challenge before the car, and as much as we want to drive a Triumph on this once-in-a-lifetime journey, there will be other opportunities to prove the reliability and worth of older cars.