Ireland to Mongolia

We made it to Ulaan Baatar!!! After the last post it took another 2 days to reach the capital. No problems with the van along the way and we spent our last night camping in Mongolia under a full moon…ahhhh.

Now we’re in the capital staying in a great hostel [The Golden Gobi for anyone coming this way] while we wait for our train to Beijing which we’re taking tomorrow.  Beds are expensive while the Olympics are still on but we’ll head on after a couple of days to Shanghai. From there around the country, then Seoul to visit our friend, Paul, Japan and then Perth to Larry’s sister Karen and family!!

For now its ’see ya’ from Mairead and Larry on the Mongolia Rally. We made it and raised a fantastic E3,000 for two great charities with all your help.

Thanks everyone and see you soon!!!

Mairead and Larry

We handed over poor old ‘Lighty’ yesterday to the Mongolian Charity ‘CDPF’. We were overcome with emotion, and nearly, yes nearly, got in to drive it back home!. Some pics to follow…

Anyways, Mairead has given me permission to write a post about the van so here goes;

Some quick facts and figures for all you anoraks out there!; 

-  trip distance just under 15,000kms,

- 5 litres of engine oil burned

- two sets of rear leaf springs thrashed

- 1.5 litres of injector/engine cleaner

- 1020 litres of diesel, max price per litre: Turkey @1.70euro, min price per litre: Iran @1.5cent / litre

- 1 puncture (Altai, Russia)

- worrying rattles, squeaks, bangs, rumbles & vibrations – mmm quite a few at the finish line…

Early on in the rally we were aprehensive about driving the van too hard on the motorways and possibly blowing it up prematurely. Fortunately it proved to be well able for the pace and we comfortably notched up 600 – 700kms each day through Europe. Our daily routine checklist consisted of oil, coolant, fan belts, tyres, sump guard, radiator damage and leaf spring condition.  

Apart from the rear suspension breaking about 500kms before the finish line, the van didn’t miss a beat right through the rally. With over 200,000 miles on the clock, thats no mean feat. The horrendous condition of the roads from Turkmenistan onwards eventually took its toll on the rear leaf springs which were already quite corroded from years of driving on salty winter roads in Northern Ireland. The sound and sensation of the van being pounded by endless ‘washboard’ roads and unaviodable potholes(steer around one and you end up directly in another, invariably even bigger one that that which you sought to avoid!) is one which will stay with us for a long time.

When the suspension did eventually give up, Kealan & I managed to repair it enough using some excellent metal banding which Kealans friend Simon had given to him on the rally launch day! This repair enabled us to keep going until we got to a town, and possibly a mechanic…

After a night spent in a families’ ger, we did manage to enlist the services of a local ‘mechanic’ who worked with me all day to replace/repair the rear suspension. Neither of us speaking word of each others language. Nice. One side was completed in a matter of hours, but the other side proved to be a very different proposition. Completely corroded bolts would cause the biggest problem. In the end, after over 10 hours work, we had to compromise and finish the job with a new spring ‘grafted’ to the broken old one on one side. Kealan from CorktoMongolia got stuck in during the final stages, overseeing the work by torchlight. $160 and the aforementioned 10+ hours of work, and we were ready to tackle the last 500kms to Ulaan Baatar. Next morning on the road, I felt that the ‘weak’ side would not withstand the punishment of the roads, and so decided to beef up the existing repair job with the VW Transporter suspension spring which we brought as an emergency spare. I’ll put up some pics to explain how this worked, but basically the Toyota spring is a ‘leaf’ or flat spring, and the VW spring is a coil or round spring - used together provided a setup which allowed us to drive at normal speeds on the terrible roads and not worry about the suspension collapsing again. End result – we made it through the last 500kms using this system!.

All in all for a 15 year old machine which no doubt had a hard life right through, it performed excellently.

Just a quick note to say thanks again to everyone who helped with getting the van ready for the trip – particularly to Mervyn for prepping the van to the highest level - some man! Also thanks to Jamie at Paschal Powers’ Auto Breakers for pulling those spare wheels out of nowhere at the last minute, and to Dave Hayes for donating and modifying the excellent roof rack and sump guard (funnily enough I left that to the last minute too ) Oh and a big thanks to John Brett at Clonmel Tyres for finding and donating the excellent off road tyres.

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Right, that was my post. Over and out. Larry

We’re in Mongolia!! At the moment we’re about 500k outside Ulaan Baatar in Tsetserleg. Whoah. Whoah. What an amazing country but by God we’re working for it.

It took 6 hours to get out of Russia at the border and then about 20 minutes to get into Mongolia. We had tarmac on the Russian side and then on the Mongolian side they just stopped and from there we had dirt roads. So far we’ve travelled 800km from the border, 20km of which has been tarmac. The Liteace of course really comes to the fore on the dirt roads The ‘roads’ are dirt tracks which come in various degrees of silliness - craters, boulder fields, swamps, rivers, mud, sand…and pretty much everything else apart from nice smooth oh so beautiful tarmac. Many a time we’ve had all four wheels off the ground, heads hitting the roof, legs off the floor and back down again for more.

There are also no signs whatsoever in the country for where you want to go. The dirt tracks become so bad that new ones form beside the originals so you just see streams of tracks running out into the distance and you have to pick which one looks the best and go for it. We’ve gotten lost a good few times but seem to find our way. Each time we’ve gotten lost hasnt been wasted time. In our ‘lost time’ we’ve met up with many lovely families who’ve invited us into their gers and offered us local food and tea and in one case Mongolian vodka from a teapot at 10am. Nice.

The countryside is stunning – mountains, lakes, rivers, valleys, spotless. Loads of amazing wildlife and tons of wild horses, camels and the countryside is filled with goats, yaks, cattle and sheep being herded across the land by nomadic herders. There are gers dotted all about the landscape. More so than we thought. And like Iran we’ve gotten a wave and a huge smile wherever we go.

The first two days were the toughest of the journey so far. We went in the Western border of Mongolia and chose to cross the country by the Northern route which is reputed to be the hardest. Of the first 100km we had to pass through boulder-ridden mountain roads, swamps, rivers. We were pulled out of the swamp by a Russian minivan and by the Lada Niva at a river when we cut out in the middle of crossing it. It was all worth it though as it brought us through some amazing countryside and those first few days were the most memorable.

Liteace….mmmm she’s been doing a sterling job but 3 days ago we sadly lost both sets of rear leaf springs. The right side first then like an old couple the left side went soon after. Larry spent one whole day fixing it and bodging it with a local ‘mechanic’ and a whole ger community looking on. End result we’re back on the road with 500km to go, ratchet straps, metal binding and rubber tubing keeping the whole show on the road :-} Liteace dedicated post to follow. Bet you can’t wait.

We got our first shower after 2 weeks last night [we have been washing in rivers and lakes!] and are taking off tomorrow for the final leg to Ulaan Baatar. Will update this post when we get there :-}