Tea

Best Intentions Tea and Travel: Mongol Rally 2008
Best Intentions Tea and Travel is comprised of three individuals with a common goal. Raise as much money as possible, while having the adventure of a lifetime. Survive to talk about it. They've set out to complete the Mongol Rally 2008, a loose-form charity rally that covers one-third of the globe, starting in London, England and ending in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. With luck, determination and your help and support, they will succeed. What's the latest Update?

• Arrival and a Week in UB
  Sorry for no updates.
  
  With our car on it's way to Ulan Bator, we have managed to spend almost a week in the capital, waiting for our flights. Every day new ralliers came into town, both with and without their cars.
  
  It's interesting to see the same level of attachment towards their vehicles, in other teams. We felt like we had a third teammember the last week of the trip, that of our car, and he never let us down once. Even when the belt slipped, the car was impeccable, and if we could have had our engine lifted, or the radiator removed, we could have gone on with no troubles.
  
  The good news, in that regard, is that the car will net quite a great bit of charity money in sales. It's without question the best car that isn't a commercial vehicle, in the rally (i.e. non-bus, ambulance, truck). That's not my love for Teeg, that's just fact. I will fight you if you disagree.
  
  
  As far as getting to UB, I'll write about that in length once we get photos, but I can safely say that it was the worst two days of my life. I wouldn't wish that travel experience on anyone, ever. Never. We hitched on a bus and paid a pretty penny to get us to the finish line somehow, in a car, along the route we'd have done in the Micra, and ended up getting more and more Mongolians packed on top of us as the trip went on. We had a driver, who we called Coach...a mom and her two year old, two other ralliers who gave up, with a perfectly working car, a second driver, a kazahk geo-engineer, and a wholesaler guy who wore a towel around his neck, who we called "The Champ."
  
  It was awful. The roads, for lack of a better term, were navigable in the Russian van, but still less than comfortable. We drove basically non-stop for 45 hours in the car to get to the capital as quickly as possible. There are stories that will come from those two days, but I'd rather put some distance between then and now, before writing about it. Unpleasant.
  
  The night before flying, we had the best night possible. Nick, Edward and Mark from Team Do you Do Airports? showed up and we proceeded to share many beers and stories, and in the middle of Dave's Bar we regaled our cars and toasted their maginficence.
  
  Then the entire country exploded with joy as the Mongolian Olympiad, their Judo champ won the gold medal. There were fireworks, ecstatic and joyful celebration in the squares, and thousands of people screaming, cheering, high-fiving and waving flags.
  
  It was a great end-cap to the trip and a wonderful exclamation mark on the rally.
  
  I am sure there will be tons of stories to sort out....but I'll be waiting until I can integrate the photos Steven and I took, and hopefully some of the video taken before Bryan headed home.
  
  Patience!
  
  (i'm flying now, to Orlando)
• off to UB
  We're hitching a ride to the capital, the finish line, determined to finish in some capacity...if not with the car!
  
  We will be dropping our car off with the help of some Mongolians we met near our lake-break-down spot, at Mercy Corps in Khovd....where I'm msging from now.
  
  The ride will take 2-3 days, unfortunately, but it is what it is, and we'll be where we set out to get to. Thanks for the words of encouragement, I can't wait to chronolog this trip.
• fin
  so.....we're 150 miles into Mongolia, and riding TG up a mountain of rocks, which is not a road, just so we're all on the same page here, but a mountain of rocks, at a huge 50 degree angle, we pushed hard enough to bust our belt.
  
  Steven and I being non-mechanical cracked open the book, and set up camp. we had it all sorted out, when the realization that the crushed radiator would make the replacement impossible, hit us. The belt can't be put on without adjusting the alternator to give it slack, which we can't do since it was wedged against the radiator.
  
  No problem, we'll just get a tow to town, 70 miles southeast and get them to work on it....except we find out he's gone for 5 days. without five days slack in our trip schedule, we're pretty much done.
  
  we're trying to fly into ulan bator, to see the capital, shake some hands, have a beer or two, and make our way back to the states.
  
  I think we did about 7600 and busted through Mongolian ranges.
  
  I'll try to write more if i'm stuck in the capital for any length of time....tons to tell and share, hundreds of stories really.
• Mongolia - Today
  We're heading to the Russian border, with a half day's drive to the Mongolian border once we're in... so we should be in country before the night is done. That's pretty cool.
  
  Wish us luck.
  
  P.S. Mrs Cloud, your son did not do Karate on any border guards. He uses beard intimidation tactics, instead.
• Kazakhstan vs Russia : A Comparative Analysis of Bribe Tactics
  During the course of our trip we've been exposed to multiple examples of bribe and police corruption, in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazahkstan, to date.
  
  I feel that Kazahkstan has a long way to go, in terms of tactics and methodology to reach the level of success that Russian police have attained. It's important to note that the Russians have had a stronger infrastructure for much longer and it's really a testament to their engineering efforts to allow their police force to fleece motorists much more efficiently and effectively.
  
  In Russia we were passing a huge monument to Soviet dominance (?) when I drifted into the passing lane to allow for a better shot for Cloud to snap. In their usual manner, the cops had lined both lanes of traffic with wand-wielding officers pulling over potential marks one after another. We almost always got pulled over in Russia when we were spotted, mainly because we look foreign. This time was no different.
  
  The officer quickly pulled me over, waved me out of the car, asked for my papers, my passport, my license, the car insurance, the car this and that, and each request, I would shrug my shoulders as if I didn't understand what he was saying. This is pretty normal. The less you understand, the more frustrated they get, the more time they waste on you the less time they can spend on people who will simply hand over cash.
  
  He took me into the roadside office, and sat me down at his terminal. He asked me if I wanted jail jail jail? I responded with smiles and shoulder pats and showed them my empty wallet. He didn't like that and got a few other guys in the room and they found some wormy little tech to get on the computer.
  
  He smiled smugly and brought up Babelfish, and nodded at me knowingly, pointing at the screen. He typed in 500 euro fine ride center lane no seatbelt bad license.
  
  He pointed and asked me if I understood. I convinced him that I got into the center lane because his partner waved me to the lane. He got instantly frustrated and called that cop in, who from what I could tell, said that it was probably true.
  
  I laughed and said Ok bye? He got pretty upset and sat me back down and took my license and did scissors motion with his hands and put it into a cabinent and locked it. Then he pointed to the screen, as if the 500 euro would make all this go away.
  
  I just shrugged and smiled.
  
  He then got out a pad of tickets and said
  
  "Protocol understand? Protocol!!!"
  
  I said, "Ticket? Ok ticket! protocol! and got my pen out."
  
  He then kept on and got his boss who came in stammering and yelling, I said that I had no money that the 'Soldats at the border took every penny'.
  
  They laughed about that...and showed no sympathy. I then offered cigarettes and american whiskey. They quickly nodded and waved me back to the car, 45 minutes having elapsed.
  
  I grabbed 4 of our bribe packs, Marlboro, American, and a bottle of Hungarian dessert wine, Tokaj. Hardly whiskey and worth 3-4 dollars.
  
  I went back to the station and the chief there invited me for a drink, and I said NO NO expensive, Russian Vodka? They all liked this, and we had a shot each. It was pretty surreal, doing vodka shots with Russian cops in their office mid-day.
  
  I wanted to get out quickly, before they opened teh bottle and realized it wasn't American, wasn't expensive, and certainly wasn't whiskey.
  
  We drove on.
  
  In Kazahstan, police bribery isn't all that common, to be honest...but there are pockets where money has rushed into areas and made corruption a bit more common. The worst area we've found, really the only bad one so far, was in Quislorda (sp?) an oil-rich city in the south central of the country. We got pulled over 5 times total in less than 2 hours on the road.