 |
Mongol Saga
Mongol Saga Episode XII – The End
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.
Mongol Saga Episode XI – Looking back on Vilnius, Lithuania
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.
Mongol Saga Episode X – Surfing the river wave in Munich, Germany
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.
Mongol Saga Episode VIII – Meeting the Mongolians.
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.
Mongol Saga Episode VII – Entering the Motherland
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.
Mongol Saga Episode VI – The Russian Border
The hardest part of travelling across Europe before and during the Mongol Rally has been the clinging feeling of uncertainty – we don’t know whether our journey will be cut short in a matter of days or stretch for another month. We all still crave the latter, to roll into Ulaan Bataar in late August is still a magnificent dream to us. But as the days have turned into weeks and after a month of seeing the insides of many of Europe’s ancient cathedrals as well as its DMV-equivalents, and watching the rolling countryside through the window of our cramped yellow car, it is harder and harder to say we haven’t accomplished enough. I’m not sure we don’t already have enough stories to tell and that, given some of the difficulties we’ve experienced, we must push ourselves even further to reach some sort of catharsis, to feel like we’ve gone far enough.
Mongol Saga Episode V: Car Work in Poland
The concocted story was so direct it was almost cute to us since we would have gladly paid $100 from the start for what amounted to three men working for four hours on a custom sump guard to protect the front undercarriage of our Nissan Micra. The final step was to spray paint the whole thing black, and after waving goodbye to the mechanics now stained with the grime from our car we were back on the road north across more of Eastern Europe.
Mongol Saga Episode IV – The Beginning of the 2009 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.
Mongol Saga Episode III – Dusseldorf, Cologne and Amsterdam
OK, so no photos from Cologne or Amsterdam yet, but once I get to a reliable outlet I should be able to edit some more photos. That doesn’t doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy a few more from Dusseldorf though!
Mongol Saga Episode II – The Arrival
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a repost of content I produced on the road in Europe, Russia and Mongolia for the Meridian Collective blog. I will repost one entry a day this week, leading up to new entries in my “Mongol Saga” series coming soon! Here’s an abridged version of the journal I’ve been writing out [...]
