Erdene Zuu Monastery, Mongolia. Photos by Will Parson

Mongolia is far away.  It still felt close for a few days, after I got back.  But it’s been just over a month since I washed the last bits of Mongolian soil out of my pores with a long, hot shower in a hotel near the airport in Beijing (our connection was delayed).  The absolutely official end to my journey came with a bite into my double cheeseburger from In N’ Out on the 60th night since leaving home.

There is another end to be celebrated: the end of my vigorous editing sessions in which I whittled 10,000 rough exposures down to three polished galleries. The gallery “Saga” follows the adventures of Team Great Job! from Dusseldorf to Ulaanbaatar and can be seen as a nice addendum to the Mongol Saga series on this blog. Meanwhile, the “Mongolia” and “Europe” galleries on my site are pretty self explanatory. I hope you like diptychs.

Our expedition can be considered a resounding success considering the perils that befell other rally teams – plenty of cars never made it, and one acquaintance of ours is currently in England recuperating from a broken back sustained in a head-on collision with a jeep in the middle of Mongolia.  Somehow, despite an incredibly unsure start, our car made it in one piece, and was in such good shape that it’s appraised value actually increased, so much so that the charity officials gladly took it off our hands.  From snowy Western Mongolia to the Gobi desert to Erdene Zuu Monastery to Ulaanbaatar, there are just too many anecdotes I could tell that I am just going to let the photos tell the story.

The one thing I’ll mention is that fording a snowy river in Western Mongolia made me feel pretty damn manly.  I mention that because with two hands gripped firmly to the steering wheel I couldn’t take any photos as proof.  The photo at the bottom is of another car crossing the same river to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

In other news, look for a guest post soon by my friend Bolek, a photographer whom I met when we stayed with him in Poland (thank you Couchsurfing).

That’s it.  The end.  Though, I can’t wait to go back.

Crossing a frigid river in Olgii Province in Western Mongolia.

The Republic of Užupis is a neighborhood in Vilnius, Lithuania dominated by artists and their work.

Team Great Job! ran into some car trouble on the outskirts of Vilnius.

When our car broke down on the outskirts of Vilnius and the Nissan mechanic fixed our car for free, we knew we were going to like this city. I’m proud to say my great-grandfather was from Vilnius, and that I’m a quarter Lithuanian.

From my journal on July 24:

The hostel was gloriously comfortable. Free internet, laundry (15 Litas a load) and a kitchen where Bones cooked pasta for us. Settling into our six-person room replete with bunk beds, we hit the streets and were soon past the 18th century Arch-Cathedral Basilica of Vilnius and walking up a steep cobblestone path to the remnants of Upper Castle, Gediminas Tower, and overlooking two halves of the city. It was beautiful and we agreed that it would be worth it to return to Vilnius someday.

Cathedral Square in Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius is Europe's official 2009 Culture Capital.

Actually, we were back less than a week and a half later, because the Russians wouldn’t let us into their country. Here are more photos of Vilnius the second time around.

The Republic of Užupis is a neighborhood in Vilnius, Lithuania dominated by artists and their work.

Team Great Job! relaxes at a bar in Vilnius

Surfing the Eisbach is technically illegal, but tolerated by local authorities. Photos by Will Parson

With the Mongol Rally a week and a half behind me and already feeling so far away, it’s time to fill in the gaps of the story I wasn’t able to fill in on the road, due to the limitations of being on said road.

On day three of the rally, we hit Munich on foot. After craning our necks upward at the turn of six o’clock just to watch the famous Glockenspiel tick silently away (the figurines danced at five), we walked the pathways through the vast grass of Englischer Garten. Meandering until we hit the Eisbach, a frigid man-made tributary of the Isar River, we eagerly laid eyes on the standing wave that has beckoned German surfers since the 70s. Basically, a fluke of engineering has seeded in Munich a unique landlocked surf scene.

Crowds of pedestrians press against the railing to watch the surfers hop onto the wave, one after another pinging from edge to edge of the small channel on the churning water for about a minute until the current overcomes them. They climb out of the freezing shallow water and trot back to get in line for another go.

After sunset, at a nearby beer garden, I pondered the one-of-a-kind surf spot over a giant liter mug of somerbier. When we made the long walk back to our friend’s apartment we passed the Eisbach again, and even past 10 o’clock at night there were a few surfers taking turns.

The next day Ryan, who had so dutifully held onto the surfboard he had brought as a novelty item from San Diego, decided he had to put it to good use. He borrowed our friend’s wetsuit, and I jumped at the chance to document his first attempt at riding the river wave. With a video camera in my left hand and my 5d to my eye I was trained on Ryan as he waited in line, approached the concrete at the edge of the water, hopped on his board, and promptly swept out of my viewfinder and down the Eisbach with the swift current.

A handful of tries later, Ryan had still not gotten control of his board. Not ready to give up, he tried and finally succeeded in riding the wave…for two seconds. It was then that his board snapped in half underneath his feet and he was swept away yet again.

Ryan snapped his board on the Eisbach after riding for approximately two seconds.

Duct tape fixed a variety of things on our trip, eventually adorning the inside and outside of our vehicle, but it just wasn’t meant to solidify a surfboard that had been ripped almost into two pieces. Nevertheless, Ryan was heartened by several layers of the trusty tape and gave the wave yet another go. This time his board actually did snap into two pieces. Downstream his head breached the surface as he lifted half his board in the air like a starched white flag of surrender. He found the other half still tumbling in the wave where he had fallen.

Surfer Gerry Schlegel is an Eisbach regular.

Waiting for Ryan to change back into his clothes, I watched the locals, including Gerry Schlegel, whom our friend pointed out has gained renown outside the Munich scene. Not without an expensive water housing would I get to document surfing from such a close vantage, and coming from San Diego where I can watch the surfers any time I want, I still felt extremely lucky. And when Ryan emerged, carrying his folded board like a giant club sandwich, I could tell that even he had no regrets.

Surfers are active at Eisbach even late at night, with the only light from the nearby street.

Teammate Ryan enjoys some food hot off the grill at the Mongol Rally launch in Goodwood, England. Photo by Will Parson.

The good news is, we made it. I hate to leave it at that for now, but here we are, Team Great Job! is in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia!

The (not-so-bad-considering) news is, all four members of Team Great Job! suffered simultaneous symptoms of food poisoning several days after arriving in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, leaving us writhing in bed with waking dreams of coming home to delicious American barbeques on Labor Day.

Our two-month adventure has been a trial of endurance or a feat of patience and determination.  However, a three-day bout with traveller’s diarrhea I conquered just a day ago has nonetheless destroyed my eagerness to compile my notes, transfer files, edit photos and whip up some spiffy media from the far side of the world.  There is a massive gap in this travel saga, but I will continue to blog about my time in Mongolia when I return to the States!

But still, here I am and here are some notable numbers to give some cold, hard scale to my and Team Great Job’s adventures over the last two months. 

• Distance traveled: 9,238 miles (14,781 kilometers)
• Gasoline consumed: 259 gallons (979 liters)
• Days traveling: 60
• Nights sleeping in a hotel or hostel: 14
• Countries visited: 11
• Photos taken: ~11,000
• Failed attempts to enter Russia: 2
• New car registrations: 3
• Hours spent at a Russian border: 40+
• Days traveling on nothing but dirt roads in Mongolia: 6
• Flat tires: 2
• Rivers forded: 2
• Value of car on outset (Dusseldorf, Germany): $1400
• Value of car on completion (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia): $3,000
• Mongolian import tax for a 1.0 liter vehicle older than 10 years: $2,000 (LAME, but at least there’s enough value left over for Mercy Corps)
• Price of large bowl of buuz (goat or sheep dumpling) soup in Ulaanbaatar: 2200 tugrik ($1.57)
• Price of two tickets to see G.I. Joe at the Tengis Theater in Ulaanbaatar, the only multi-screen cinema in Mongolia: 5,000 tugrik ($3.57)
• Days spent vomiting or diarrhea-ing or waiting to vomit or diarrhea: 3
• Trips to the bathroom over those three days:  Infinity x4
• Weight I think I lost: 10 pounds

I had some more buuz earlier and am feeling fine.  Some interesting hand gestures were used to describe our symptoms but it got us the right meds at the Mongolian pharmacy.  I’ll see you all in sunny San Diego 48 hours from now!

After playing among the travelers entering their country, several boys scale a fence with practiced ease to avoid the attention of officials at the Tsagaannuur border crossing in western Mongolia. Photo by Will Parson.

We arrived at the Mongolian border after driving all night, passing through frigid Russian mountains just before dawn. At around six in the morning, just as the first light was making a jagged outline of hills visible around us, we found a circle of Mongol Rally cars parked in a circle like Conestoga wagons, protecting a handful of tents.

We slept farther along, right next to the border gate, and though there were only a few cars besides the dozen rally teams, the border crossing was an all day affair. We passed the time during the day by wandering around no-man’s land and heading into town to patronize the local dirt-floor shops. Dinner was goat meat, potatoes, and tea in a traditional Mongolian ger (yurt).

The afternoon hours ticked away as our vehicles got processed. Eventually some local children started sneaking into the border crossing to play with us, to peer into our car windows, and to ask for candy and other trinkets. Every child, even a girl who was maybe three years old, could say ‘hello’ very well. Ask them anything else and a confused look or a thumbs-up would be perfectly acceptable replies.

The tallest of the group of boys, none of whom were older than 10, started making trouble by trying to pick fights with the fully grown ralliers and otherwise try to monopolize their attention and generousity. But almost all of the children were timid and would just smile bashfully if you talked to them.

I let the kids play with my camera while I held firmly to the strap to keep them from running off with it. They got a real kick out of taking pictures of themselves jumping and giving thumbs-up or flipping the bird.

The kids would whistle to each other or to us to get our attention – a couple hoarse notes seems to be the standard “hey.” Every time the border guards would emerge from their office to inspect a vehicle, quiet whistles would send the kids flipping back over the fence and into the safety of a nearby ditch. Eventually, an adult voice from the village sent the boys scrambling over the fence one last time, and we didn’t see them again until we were on the dusty road to Olgii, the first city on the way to Ulaanbaatar.

The road began as a rocky washboard, dotted with villagers coming to wave and say hello while we coated their gers with dust from our tires. Through one particularly thick cloud of dust came a man on horseback, loping up to our cars just to smile and shout “Hello!” before cantering back to his goats. For over an hour we bounced up and down the mountainside, dodging lethal rocks and occasional scraping the protective metal sheet under our car. Suddenly, a paved road sprang underneath us, heralding our arrival on the outskirts of Olgii. Last night’s stay in a dodgy ‘luxury’ hotel with no hot water might be our last bit of comfort over the next week, on the long, windy and unpaved road to the capital of Mongolia, over 1000km away.

Greetings Comrades from Moscow,

I’ve taken thousands of photos thus far on our journey, but I can only edit a handful every several days, so here’s just a few to get the ball rolling.

We finally escaped Latvian purgatory by making minor repairs to the Team Great Job! car and getting it reinspected, thus obtaining a crucial holographic sticker that some guard looked at for about two seconds at the Russian border.  The delay since our first failed border-crossing attempt had been two weeks.

After taking all night to cross the border and then driving all day without a good night’s sleep, we arrived in Moscow with our little yellow Nissan Micra.  Think of the most hectic freeway junctions in Los Angeles, stick them in the middle of one of the world’s largest city centers and then subtract eight hours of sleep before trying to imagine me at the wheel on Sunday afternoon, trying to find our hostel.  Russians don’t feel obligated to obey lane markers, which is too bad because in the heart of Moscow there can be eight lanes in one direction at a time.

Our hostel is called Godzillas and is run by a man who appears to be American, and who runs around micromanaging his green-shirted staff as they replace screws that are the wrong color and clean up the laminated board of registration FAQ by the reception desk.  Moscow is an expensive city, the most expensive in the world actually, and so even though the hostel isn’t the cheapest we’ve seen, it is quite popular.

We walked to the Kremlin and took in the sites, enjoying the light at dusk as we danced around in front of the Basil taking group photos like any other tourist.  In fact we were set on being tourists just one last time, because for the next two weeks we will be rushing to reach our goal in Ulaanbaatar.

Maybe that was the goal all along – to attain such a state of detachment that we would be equally open to returning home, tired and loose like a stretched out sweater, or heading still eastward through three giant countries that will toss us like rags, this way and that depending on the wind for another grueling month.  Every day I ask myself if we are at the breaking point or just the halfway point.

The last few days have seen our odds of success (reaching the capital of Mongolia) twitch up and down like a seismograph needle during an earthquake.  First our car broke down in Vilnius, Lithuania and we were on the side of the road in a light drizzle imagining the costs of repair overwhelming our travel budgets.  Then the same day our car was miraculously running again, after the friendliest mechanics in Eastern Europe – at the Vilnius Nissan service station in case you are in the area – offered us parts and service free of charge.  They changed both U-joints and two belts that were “too old” before making us leave without giving them more than a very sincere thank you.  We spent that night admiring the bits of Vilnius we could scramble across, and the next day we were in Riga, Latvia doing the same dash through narrow cobblestoned streets.  But, then our smoothly running car ran into the Russian border and we met even higher highs and lower lows than our mechanical troubles had presented us with.

We hit a line of semi-trucks around one in the afternoon, saw that it extended to the right at the intersection for half a kilometer and turned left, expecting to see the border around the bend.  Instead we creeped along the line of trucks for several minutes until we found the end of the line for smaller vehicles, which was hundreds of cars long.

Two British Mongol Rally teams were already in line.  One team, donning self-styled mullets, had already been turned away at the European border with Belarus for not having a visa, and so they were giving eastward a try again at the Russian border.  By sundown, both teams were successfully inside Russia and we had gleaned a sizeable chunk of information from a middle-aged German who found that sharing anecdotes of his travels in Russian and Mongolia was less boring than waiting in his car.  We had been waiting for ten hours and had not even entered the first checkpoint.

It was completely dark when the Latvian officials inspected our car and, twenty minutes later, let us move on to the Russians.  The Russian portion of the border consists of a handful of checkpoints, checking passports, checking cars, checking papers…twice maybe, and for each checkpoint you wait.  First you wait in a small group of cars to enter the checkpoint, then you wait for an official to finish with the car ahead of yours, then you might fill out a small bit of paper you didn’t know you had to have finished for the waiting official, then you wait to show them the bit of paper, and you wait nervously as someone frowns at your improvised scrawl in the Russian alphabet before saying something in their language and pointing toward imaginary Moscow.  Then you drive 100 meters and do it again.  One Russian official in a booth had a slight smile on her face as she checked our faces to our passports, at one in the morning perhaps enjoying the notion of the four of us youngsters taking on the widest country in the world, before stamping our passports and handing them back.

It took just that smooth forehead and up-turned corner of the mouth to tick our hopes into the positive quadrant, and we started finalizing our plan of attack – to spend the night in the car and drive to Moscow in the morning no matter how exhausted we might be.  Ryan and Michael came back from yet another checkpoint, surely a formality at this point, with smiles on their faces after disappearing somewhere for 20 or 30 minutes.  The news they had was perhaps the worst of our trip: no entry.  Our temporary German vehicle registration was not enough to satisfy the Russians.

In those earliest morning hours we were basically halfway through the longest U-turn of any of our lives.  We officially un-entered Russian and re-entered Latvia, meeting the same guards at the same stations we just labored through.  We pulled into the same gas station rest stop we passed about 1 km from the border about 14 hours before, one with a bathroom so foul it deserves no description.  We slept at awkward angles in our car seats, the dirty yellow creme in a Russian and Latvian semi-truck Oreo.

Team Great Job! does Amsterdam about a week and a half before the Mongol Rally.

Yesterday I smelled like rancid sour dirt, incubating underneath a hot laptop and a rolled up sleeping bag in a 1.0 liter Nissan Micra with a broken ventilation system, windows rolled up to lower drag, a surf board on top, and a loose cigarette-lighter powering my laptop as I edited as many photos as I could on the long drive from Dunquerque, France to Munich, Germany.

Ryan checking the logistics at Camping Grinbergen outside of Brussels, Belgium.

As of Saturday, I have begun an epic journey from England to Mongolia by car. This being the first official post since the start of the Mongol Rally, let me take the opportunity to get everyone up to speed, so to speak. My team, Team Great Job! (my friends Ryan, Bones, Michael and I), arrived in Europe at the beginning of July. We bought a car in Dusseldorf, Germany – a Nissan Micra – and at some point I will have to dedicate a post to how we got pulled over outside of Amsterdam and the Dutch cop told us tongue-in-cheek, “I believe the technical term is…ah…you’re fucked.” We slowlz made our way west across Europe toward the launch of the Mongol Rally at the Goodwood race track in London on July 18th.

From Dusseldorf to Amsterdam to Brussels to London we’ve been travelling for two weeks already, so the Mongol Rally launch party known as ‘The Festival of Slow’ threatened to be anticlimactic. But after camping the night before the launch with 300 other teams, the mood of the night dominated by
revelry, sharing beers and stories of past journeys with new friends got us fully energized for the first major adventure of our lives.

MONGOL DRAMA. Finding out we hadn't submitted our vehicle deposit and unsure we would even be able to do the Mongol Rally, Ryan calls his father to get in contact with The Adventurists in order to ensure our spot. Not pictured: blissful success!

Of particular spectacle at the launch on Saturday were some of the alternative vehicles that, despite having a larger engine, make up for the size limit imposed by the Mongol Rally organizers, the Adventurists, by having some sort of novelty. One team of about nine people are taking a full-sized red fire engine…covered in fake red fur. Their team name is aptly “Great Balls of Fur.” Another team from America driving a
large pink custom-made ice cream truck goes by the name “The Rolling Cones.” The winner for a side-contest of ‘largest non-functional item’ carried along the route is a team with a 12 foot longboat
mounted on top of their car. Of the three hundred cars, most appeared to be decorated with silly themes in keeping with the spirit of the Mongol Rally, which has no set route, no award for fastest finisher, and despite the acknowledged extreme risk of driving across countries like Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Mongolia, prefers to emphasize taking your time and enjoying the journey more than the destination.

After a celebratory lap around the 2.4 mile Goodwood race track it was off to the ferry for Team Great Job! and most of the other teams. We saw a lot of fellow rally-goers on
the road to the white cliffs of Dover, and we passed a lot of them in our attempt to catch the
earlier ferry at 6:00. We got there in plenty of time, as we
realized, because our timepieces were all set 30 minutes too fast. In fact,we realized that in our entire four days in England our four-person team had not kept up on what time it actually was.

We took the extra time at the ferry landing to chat some more with some friendly ralliers – about a dozen other teams were waiting with us. One team, from England, was a couple middle-aged men, one of which had done all sorts of adventures but in their own words couldn’t work a screwdriver. Another team from America told us about the problems they had importing their car from America – it turns out all the teams
that shipped their cars had trouble. One team had their car rerouted from its destination in England to an alternate one in Germany.

After the ferry we joined a caravan of other Rally cars, which were going to Gent for the night, but we pushed on to Germany before collapsing into a tent at a roadside rest stop somewhere in Germany. It was a rough first night that provoked a heated team discussion about our travelling priorities (comfort versus time-saving). We made it passed golden crops and lush grass to reach Munich yesterday to complete the first stretch of the rally, not counting the race to the ferry, and Team Great Job! is feeling good about ourselves.

Tricking some friendly ducks into eating pulled grass from our hands in Zeeburg in Amsterdam.

Michael sleeps-in at Camping Zeeburg in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Brussels, Belgium land of many statues.

Arriving in Dover, England by ferry from France

Under Millenium Bridge, Team Great Job! escapes the fickle London weather.