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The Afghan Files

You know it’s going to be a good story when it starts with “so we accidentally drove into Taliban controlled regions of Afghanistan. Twice. Then another two times intentionally.”

We should probably back up and tell this one from the beginning.

A few weeks ago we were in Dushanbe, Tajikistan about to start the Pamir Highway. It is part of the original silk road, has incredible scenery, is highly remote and known to be more than a little punishing on anything less than a LandCruiser. It is the second highest road in the world peaking at 4655m and it was one of the parts of the rally we were most excited for.

By this stage our original convoy had broken up and we had started afresh with The Ladateers, Jonas and Torjus from Norway in a 1976 Lada. Hilarious blokes with a brilliant car; Lada’s are known to be extremely tough and it’s been said you can fix anything on it with a hammer. Shame that’s the only thing they forgot to pack.

The Lada needed some work done so although we needed to move on due to Jeremy’s ever looming flight we waited a day there because the boys are funny and we hooked up in the first place to convoy on the Pamir. That night something splendid happened. Josh and Caroline from the Sightseers and our original convoy rock up to the same hostel after being 3 days behind and somehow catching up!

There was a literal double take moment when they tapped Mitch on the shoulder who turned around, said hi, then turned back, then realised what just happened and much screaming and hugging ensued.

Anyway back to our little detour. We were initially planning to head east from Dushanbe straight onto the M41 (the Pamir) but word on the street was the view isn’t as good as looping south then re-joining it. Additionally, even though it’s far longer to go south, the roads east are so bad it will likely kill the car and take longer anyway. So south we went.

Our convoy: Genghis Carn, Sightseers and The Ladateers

We stopped for lunch at a place called Qurgonteppa to decide if from there we continue south or start moving east. Now we have been using a combination of Maps.Me, an offline map/GPS app and physical maps we bought in Sydney.

Let’s not beat around the bush here, Maps.Me is absolute shit. If it doesn’t put you on a road that is actually for trams only (we went tram dodging with the Micra in Istanbul) or is one way or not yet built or just doesn’t actually exist (all of which have happened to us) it uses the shortest possible route which last year resulted in a team stranded in the desert for 36 hours drinking their own piss.

It also estimates your ETA as if you average 100 km/h no matter the road so it’s a running joke amongst ralliers to just double the time estimate.

As you can imagine, we take Maps.Me advice with a pinch of salt and as it said go east and the paper map didn’t even have a road going east whilst both said going all the way down south to a place called Panj then looping back up was a main road we went south. Big mistake.

There were many moments we could have listened to intuition and turned back. For instance, we overtook a 50 truck convoy of Russian soldiers going for the Afghani border. There was a lot of police checks. The view was rubbish and was said to be spectacular.

Eventually we get to a police check with a gate and stop (most checks we drive straight through as we’ve learnt unless there is a gate stopping us they don’t chase us and it’s a waste of time). There seems to be some mild confusion and they ask for permits and we show our GBAO permit as the Pamir is part of an independent region of Tajikistan and you need a special visa. Everything seems fine but one of the police wants to get in the car with us, so the Norwegians make some space; maybe he is knocking off and wants a lift home.

So he leads us to the local police station and says we need to do “registration”. By now it’s getting late and we need to have made more ground so we are anxious to leave. The car owners go inside and show paperwork whilst the other teammates waited with the cars. Mitch was quite wary not to hand over his passport but to show it to him it in his hands. There was just something about this cop that seemed dodgy and Mitch didn’t trust him. Unfortunately he got hold of Jonas’ passport and demanded everyone else’s but said once the other police from upstairs see it in 5 minutes we could go (I assume, there was a lot of mime involved but that was the gist).

Meanwhile people are crowding around our cars outside and before the non-owners come in with their passports we move the cars in front of the station where we can see them. Everything seemed a bit off.

We wait for an hour and two guys show up in business clothes and Mitch starts to get frustrated at their general lack of doing anything and get more and more assertive about needing our papers so we can continue on our way back north before dark (so much for 5 minutes). Eventually the secretary calls their neighbour, an English teacher, who explains we have broken the law coming into town without a permit and the police point to the corresponding offence in their remarkably small law book. Apparently we have to go to court in the morning and a judge will decide our fine or penalty. What a shambles.

Now everyone gets very angry because if the police had done their job and stopped us instead of guiding us into town we could have turned back hours ago. We continue to demand our passports and argue our point that they should never have let us in but the dodgy cop just seemed to enjoy himself and smirk the whole time. Mitch asked for him to point out where in the book it says he gets to keep our passports and the smirk goes, the book goes away and he tells us we can stay here overnight (in a cell), at the English teachers house or a hotel (which we couldn’t check into without our passports). We also learn that this area is apparently very dangerous with the Taliban nearby and the road north is just as dangerous.

We started to try a different tack and say ok, we’ll turn back cause now we think hours of back tracking is better than a run in with the Taliban and ask if there is any way we could pay the police the fine directly (read: bribe) and skip the whole court thing in the morning. Mr Dodgy says if he was the police chief he would, but the chief told him to send us to court. Mitch asked to speak to the chief but this was out of the question.

Now we want to leave even more, we are getting anxious about our lack of passports and Caroline suggests getting our embassies involved. Josh calls the Brits but didn’t realise we weren’t getting passports back and they just suggested getting a lawyer. Not ideal. Mitch tried the Australian embassy (in Russia) who initially didn’t want to help because he was traveling on an Italian passport but came around when they spoke to Jeremy and Jeremy conveyed that Mitch was a dual citizen.

They said they’d make a call and get back to us. By now the cops seem to be sweating over the embassy calls and the chief of police has shown up. The Australian embassy calls Mitch back and says there was nothing they could do; they are holding the passports for security but could Mitch put on the chief. He refused several times and looked very alarmed but Mitch eventually thrust the phone upon him. Now I don’t know what the embassy said but there was much was yelling and further sweating and then the chief disappeared after the call.

We felt like we were making progress so decided to play nice. We started to offer everyone cigarettes and tried to be as chatty as possible. Their first words were “Marlboro? Marlboro?”; finally proof that Marlboro Reds are still a currency in certain parts of the world.

The English teacher continued to translate our chat and it turned out the guys in business clothes were the Tajiki FBI/Secret Police and they were concerned we were trying to jump the border to join the Taliban.

The penny dropped for all of us. To a suspicious mind this looks very dodgy. Jeremy and Josh had already had trouble in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan because of their beards (they are illegal due to their association with extremists) and there were 5 different passport nationalities between the 6 of us. It looked like we had met on an online forum, been turned, and were going to fight the good fight.

The FBI asked why we had taken this route and we pulled out our maps and explained everyone said go south and this road looked the most major on the maps.

They said, “your map is wrong”.

“What do you mean?”, we asked.

“This road, it is not in Tajikistan, it is in Afghanistan. Over that bridge and through this section of road”, he motioned to the map, “you were in Afghanistan”.

Right. Suddenly we were all very keen to go back.

They also explained that overnight in Panj, you hear gunfights and that 4 police had been kidnapped by the Taliban recently. Makes sense why they wanted us to stay the night.

Meanwhile the English teacher tells us that from what he has overheard, if we wait long enough, he thinks we will get out of town with our passports tonight. The FBI tell us the same; apparently they determined we weren’t terrorists. Yay.

By now, 4 hours has passed and Mitch gets called in for a mono-e-mono with Mr Dodgy and the assistance of the translator. He was told that no-one else can come inside and the English teacher explained that none of this was ever to be told to anyone, ever. So keep it quiet yeah?

Apparently if I offer the police money, they will let us go with our passports. They took down our names and Mitch “assisted” by holding out the passports on the photo page but he really did it so he could then stash them next to him and not give them back. Several times again it was stressed that Mitch doesn’t tell anyone, even his friends outside and Mitch was even asked if he knew how to use computers or the internet. Not at all my friends.

Mitch is told this will be much quicker, easier and cheaper than going to court which would result in a fine of over $1000 US dollars. Mitch had a private conversation with the interpreter to find out exactly how little we could get away with paying and decided to offer $100 US ($16 each). The police officer accepted and Mitch said he had to go and get the money from the car. Mitch actually had cash on him but did it so he could take the passports out and lock them in the glovebox. The convoy saw Mitch walk out with the passports and tried to talk to him but, not wanting to risk the deal, he threw his hand up to silence them and just walked on without looking at anyone.

He stashed the passports, went back inside, and literally like in the movies, shook the cop’s hand with cash in his palm and it was done. The English teacher said the policeman wanted me to apologise to our group on his behalf because he wished we could have gone without a fine. The translator also said that the police officer said in private that they were having a feast on our cash tonight. The policeman also offered his house to stay tonight if we didn’t want to drive. What a scumbag. Mitch also gave the translator some money for his time, although he initially refused saying he was a friend and wasn’t helping for the money.

So we scrammed. We drove as far as we could until we were exhausted (turning east at Qurgonteppa like we should have in the first place) and stopped at this great looking hotel with lights, food still going at 11pm and live music.

Things got weird when we checked the rooms. There were used cigarettes in the ashtrays and bathtub, the beds weren’t made and there was a used condom sitting on top of the bin. Mitch was propositioned by a prostitute downstairs. Another penny dropped. We had checked into a brothel. We were tired. We stayed. It was a bad day.

 

 

 

 

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Dear Mum

Dear Mum,

We are sorry we haven’t written, mums worldwide are on the edge of their seat waiting to hear of how many times ralliers have had a nice meal, in a nice safe hotel, somewhere similar to home. “Actually just come home”, mum says.

“No.”

So fans (read: mums, we know it’s just you), what are we up to? We are pretty tired, we’ve been meaning to write for the last 10 days about the road so far but aside from one or two days we’ve generally been on the road for 10-12 hours a day and if you aren’t driving, navigating, DJ-ing or hanging out the window at speed to get a good shot (see below) you are catching up on the sleep you aren’t getting at night as you sleep at 1am and can’t sleep past 7am due to the heat.

Photography is all about the set up

We’ve been convoying with two teams, Brothers Be Trippin’ and SightSeers which is huge fun and helps keep the road interesting, although the scenery has been so incredible it really just takes it up a notch.

In short, it’s amazing, everyone should do it. We are now in our 11th country and on our way to the 12th. We have pulled over 3 500 miles (stupid English car with it’s “miles”) which is over 5600kms in modern speak (miles x 1.6 = kms for the kids reading).

At the moment we are on our way to what is reported to be the world’s most dangerous road (sorry mum) and if this goes up I suppose we made it. The car is holding up well although we fitted a sump guard (metal plate under the engine to protect it from rocks) in a back-alley metalwork shop in Cappadocia after showing him another Micra with one. So now the car makes many funny noises and we are just hoping our modification doesn’t break something we actually need to drive on roads to require the sump guard protection in the first place.  Update: We just found out a team went there for a sump after us and they drilled it into their radiator. Oops. 

We promise to write soon with events from the first weeks and our run in with some Turkish guns last night…

Love,

The key source of stress in your life.

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The penultimate weeks

Given that we are now on the road you correctly assume that I did end up purchasing a car. After seeing so many terrible cars (yes, all of those “walk away” moments actually happened) I finally hit gold when I went to TCC Car Company in Enfield, north London. The owner, Peter, was a champ and gave us a 250 pound discount and weathered my suspicion of him with grace. I’d 100% recommend to any future purchasers.

After buying the car I took it to a friend’s usual mechanic for an independent review at Lordship Lane Tyres. The Geoff and the guys there gave it a full bill of health (minus needing a service and brakes) and didn’t charge us a cent but instead asked we made a donation on their behalf. We later went back to them to get four new mud/snow tyres for the off-road component of the rally and an extra rim so we could carry two spares. They also helped us drill through our bonnet so we can attach Adventurists logo “diplomatic flags”. They didn’t charge us labour for any of it.

In summary, people have been incredibly helpful and lovely.

The only issues with the car after I drove it around for a few weeks included the radio cutting out every 30 seconds for a second, a broken AUX input and a bit of a wobble at 140km/h… Obviously as an essential, the stereo got replaced, can’t say the same about fixing the wobble.

As Jeremy has mentioned, in my personal style I’ve procrastinated and am now far behind on blog updates so instead I’ve summarised what I remember of the last few weeks in London before the second coming of Jesus-eremy

Other notable events included:

  • I tried to design a logo for the team. I got this far:
I’m very skilled in graphic design
  • Glastonbury with a group of work friends. What a huge privilege and massive bucket list item. Big thanks to Jamie for sorting us out and setting up camp. The Foos headlining was mindblowing, the sheer mass of people, size and lineup they pull is incredible, enough said.
  • SMACC: had a work conference the next day in Berlin. Whilst educational, social and great fun, I’ve now realised that I am too old to pull an all nighter at Glastonbury, get straight on the coach to London, clean everything till midnight, then leave at 3:30am to catch a plane to a conference starting that day, then virtually do the same thing on the way home.
  • Much stress over getting visas, managed to get Mongolia, Uzbekistan and for bonus prizes, Iran in London after belatedly realising I did need a visa to enter Iran…
  • Met a lovely trio at the Uzbekistan Embassy who gave me cash to donate to Cool Earth.
  • Ordered stickers and flags for our car
  • Mass purchase of items off Amazon including
  • New stereo
  • Cigarette lighter to 240 volt inverter
  • USB car chargers
  • Recovery tracks for mud
  • Cheap guitar
  • GoPro accessories to fit to car
  • Selfie stick
  • First aid kit
  • Petrol powered camping stove
  • Camping pots and pans

 

As Jeremy boarded the plane it became a general feeling of why did we leave this so late?

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The Road to London

And so it has finally begun.

30 minutes until I board the second of my two flights to London. The 31.5 hour journey has given me a little time to reflect on the preparation we’ve done.

The transit is usually the worst part about any trip but, truth be told, I was sort of looking forward to it. People constantly asked me if I’m ready, and I think with something like this, you can never over-prepare. There is always the weight of having something to do, but once you’re on the plane, you are powerless to do any more preparation. All you can do is sit there for the duration of the flight. There’s a sort of freedom in that. It releases you from some of the stresses of preparation.

Sydney departure sign
Ready to go?

And there has been an awful lot of both. In the approximately six months since the trip was confirmed, we have booked flights, organised visas for 8 countries (5 of which were costly, difficult and time consuming), organised a charity trivia event, researched and bought a car, learnt (not enough) about cars, set up a facebook page and blog, picked a route, purchased a satellite phone/emergency beacon, created packing lists, music playlists, updated travel vaccinations, purchased the odd bits and pieces required (maps, medications, equipment etc), and done all the admin to get the car registered and allow us to legally drive it across half the planet.

This was all happening whilst temporarily living out of home, starting a new job and maintaining a busy social schedule. Oh and for most of this time, Mitch was on the other side of the world, making communication a bit of an issue too.

We haven’t even started, and I’ve already learnt something about myself. I like to be prepared, and prepared early. I leave room for roadblocks, hurdles and slippages in timelines. Mitch, on the other hand, is a bit more relaxed with the planning side of things. Don’t get me wrong, he’ll always come through and get it done, he just leaves things a bit later than I would.

However, through all this planning we have worked pretty well as a team. We haven’t wanted to kill each other yet (but don’t worry, there’s still time!). Despite the communication complexities, having Mitch in England for most of the planning phase has actually been a great convenience. He has done a fantastic job purchasing the car, which took a fair effort (refer to blog post 2).

Although there was a lot to do, the planning process went relatively smoothly. Up until a couple days ago, when I double checked the dates on my visas. Mongolian visas are valid from three months from the date of issue. There was a bit of confusion with the dates, and the visa machine applied too early, so my visa expires about five days before we realistically think we’ll get there.

I can just get a visa from the embassy in London, right? Well, yeah, but not this week. It’s closed for a public holiday all week. And as the rally starts in a week, we’ll have to somehow get it en route. Apparently there’s an embassy in Prague that I can get it from…

We’ll call that challenge #1.  Oh well, it’s all part of the rally

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Purchasing a car

When buying a second hand car, one must remember the shady Brit who is unlikely to care if the car he sells you may save your life on multiple occasions over the next few months. For the record he also doesn’t care if it’s dodgy brakes kill you on the Pamir Highway (see below).

I’d been warned about dodgy private sellers and dodgy used car dealers and even dodgier purchases, so much so that a friend had to go to court to get their money back because they were sold something un-driveable. So I didn’t really have high expectations, I also was unsure I could ever make a safe purchase.  Even so, some of my shopping experiences include the following suggestions:

  • If the engine makes a funny noise and the seller sprays some WD40 on it and says “that will fix it”, you should probably walk away.
  • If you are crawling under a car to check for rust in anything that looks like an important joint (remember you don’t know anything about cars) and the guy offers to jack up the car and the car bends where he jacks it, you should probably walk away.
  • If the car makes a funny noise when it turns and the guy says – “ah don’t worry about that, it’s just the drive shaft that needs replacing”, you should probably walk away.
  • If the car has just been serviced and the radiator and radiator reservoir is empty but the car doesn’t overheat, this is not a mark of the excellent durability and the “bulletproof” nature of the car as suggested by the seller. The radiator is leaking. You should probably walk away.

Things I’ve learnt to check:

  • Check the MOT history here it will tell you if it’s ever failed to be registered due to some sort of impending doom. Note: this will drastically lower the number of cars suitable and will break your spirit.
  • Learn from the frequent failures on MOTs, look up what they are and how to look for it when checking your future steed before purchase. Each model tends to fail frequently on the same things.
  • Do a HPI check here. Stolen cars are cool until you get all ready for the rally and it gets repossessed.
  • Check the basics. Oil, coolant, general condition, milage, different coloured panels (suggests replaced). Look for leaky things, crawl under the car and look for anything that looks like it connects the wheels to the car or the car to the car – if it is motheaten with rust, said car will likely bend on jacking.
  • Make sure they haven’t warmed it up before starting it. When they start it, check if it turns over easily, get them to start it and check the exhaust for purple smoke, listen for noises.
  • Test drive it: Check acceleration, heavy braking, turn wheels to full lock and move to test for issues with the driveshaft, listen more for noises.
  • Check out the seller, 90% chance he’s a dodgy bastard, avoid these people. Go with your gut and better judgement.
  • Eventually buy a vehicle knowing you’ve likely missed it’s fatal flaw. It’s meant to be shit anyway.
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We did a stupid thing.

We did a stupid thing.

There is this charity rally run by a group of people called The Adventurists. It’s called the Mongol Rally and it involves the unwise purchase of a barely roadworthy car in the United Kingdom and driving it to Mongolia. For the Trumples out there who have shady geography about anything but the 50 states, that’s around about China.

Our rough route

It’s around 10 000 miles (16 000km) and after Iran it is off-road.

So, we are taking an old banged up 4×4 right? Wrong.

The following are the rules of the rally:

  1. Small and shitty
    1.0L engine, up to 1.2L for the weak.
  2. Raise 1000 pounds for charity
  3. No support. No route. No guidance.

Previous rules included a 10-year rule and a price of under 1000 pounds so we thought; what the hell, let’s add them too.

So we’ve paid a 500 pound entry fee, I quit my job, Jeremy barely managed long service leave and we have 7 weeks to make the trip before Jeremy gets fired. Also; neither of us know how to fix a car.

How did this even happen? Jeremy and I were at Falls Festival 2015/2016 and I’d been wanting to do the Rally for a while but couldn’t quite find someone crazy enough, plus we would have to be great mates and well matched so we wouldn’t kill each other.

An alcohol fueled epiphany struck; Jeremy would be the perfect driving companion. I explained the above and Jeremy thought it sounded like good fun. To be honest I thought Jeremy would come to his senses and bail but he must have thought the same about me being a perfect match and here we are.

Just before I flew out in late May 2017 to start shopping for a car and setting up shop Jeremy’s girlfriend Maree said to me: “you know, Jeremy told me once that he would never ever travel with you…”

Well fuck this is going to be just dandy.