Day #12: Tashanta to Aya

08JUN13:

"We are trying to leave Mongolia, a truly unbelievable experience. 9 days of the most amazing scenery ever on the absolute worst roads on the planet, camping every night, beside lakes, dust storms, sunshine, heat and to finish off this morning the water bottle in my tent was frozen. We have tried a new diet a little food with our dust, single malt toothpaste, cold beer and Austrian sausage for lunch, great dinners and nine straight evening parties. We have become comfortably numb, along with being recognized as the best prepared party animals in Mongolia. We are the only ones with a beer fridge, a wine cellar, coffee and baileys in the morning and capable of more noise and stories than most. As the evenings progressed the spirit, laughter and consumption was equaled by few, as such we are known an loved by all. Over and out for now, we are just about ready to roll. Talk at you later."

- Len&Kim

All this camping and he doesn't stink..

Len doing his job. Coffee and Baileys

Auto Repairs we have expanded the Kartunes empire 
(Curtis and Tom will love it!)

Lens new holiday home - just waiting to cross the Russian Border

Russian Girls .. 

Our Lodging. Very basic room but after 5 days of camping .. The shower was GREAT, dinner and breakfast .. well .. sucked.

Archie Bunker aka John from The States (his son John the 3 are having a gas)

Modest but NICE accommodations .. 

"Now we are out of Mongolia, it’s a good moment to look back at some of the event’s achievements of the past 12 days. Just what does it take to support over 200 people in a crossing of one of the wildest and most inhospitable wildernesses on earth in a race against the clock? Our Mongolia support team consisted of 90 people – who all provided us with tremendous back-up. Here is the inside story of how it was done, with some ‘factoids’ that may surprise you:

Each morning, 12 chefs cracked 360 eggs, that is 360x7 days, totalling 2,520 eggs… all the eggs were carried on a fleet of 12 Unimog 4x4 trucks over severely rough roads – and not one egg was broken in transit, entirely down to the way they were carefully packed. In all, the truck fleet carried 20 tons of food. Meals had to be prepared each afternoon, and every morning. This consisted of several trucks carrying sacks of fresh vegetables, plus different kinds of meat and pasta. In addition to breakfast and dinners, there were 246 lunch-packs prepared every day for each person on the event, including officials.

Also, there were 10,000 bottles of water carried on the trucks to give away during the seven days to each rallycar, the crates of water weighed five-tons. Beside the food and water, the trucks also carried two sets of dining tents, kitchen tents, including a buffet serving tent, a dish-washing tent, plus a total of eight toilet-tents, and 14 tented shower stalls. Plus bench seats and wooden tables. For Mongolia, the 90-support crew were split into two separate teams, the A-Team and the B-Team, who then leap-frogged each other in a daily truck-race.

When the rally leaves camp each morning, a dedicated team then clean the site, so not a scrap of litter or one plastic bottle remains. Ecology is taken seriously, given this remarkable countryside gives the rally so much. This clean-up team then must drive for 20 hours – through the day and long into the night - to the camp site which has to be set up for the following day.

The trucks suffered two punctures in Mongolia, and each giant Michelin tyre took over an hour to change, using tyre-levers and muscle-power, and two trucks also broke down, but the team still managed to present a seamless service…. in addition, there were two management Jeeps, plus a sweep car, managing the team of 90. This included one specialist welder, who had his own independent generator, to help service rallycars. He was willing to work through the night, for as long as he was needed by a stricken rally crew, for no cost.

Sometimes things don’t always work to plan. There were 2,500 bottles of beer carried in the trucks – but this was just not good enough. The beer tent ran out, drunk dry by Day Four, requiring extra supplies to be bought in."

Excerpt from the official Peking to Paris Rally Report