Day #19: Ufa to Samara

15JUN13:

“A hot day crossing rolling green pastures of the Russian Steppes brings us to Samara – a day off tomorrow, and we are in a particularly comfortable hotel. Today was all about a blend of gravel tracks and main roads with several stops at road-side cafes for stamps from the time-keeping team…Tomorrow is a rest day and Samara should brace itself for an onslaught of broken cars and dirty laundry. Valeting services have been offered in the car park… so by days end we expect them to have restored the entire rally to concurs condition.

Our clocks have gone back two hours at Samara putting us 4 hours ahead of GMT and giving us the excuse for an extra lie-in tomorrow morning.”

Peking to Paris Rally Report

Jesse & Jacks car -  Looks like we are having soup in the morning

Len's now a volunteer Fire Fighter

The Volga River

Video of the Beach

Day #18: Yekaterinburg to Ufa

14JUN13:

“On an event as tough as this luxuries and creature comforts are things you really value. Clean sheets, good food and a fast reliable Internet service are things you want to hang on to for as long as possible.

So it was with some regret that the rally left the Hyatt Regency at Yekaterinburg this morning, en route for Ufa some 500 kilometres away. The breakfast was every bit as good as last night’s meal, with fresh fruit, pastries, cheese and coffee featuring on many of the plates coming from the buffet, along with various toasts, eggs, bacon and mushrooms - not a breakfast to hurry away from.  Over such a plate we learned of yet another act of Russian kindness and ingenuity.

Breakfast finished and car loaded we were back on the road ourselves, driving excellent rural roads through a forest to a rather important landmark: The border between Asia and Europe. As important as this is for the Rally the actual monument was a little disappointing - a tall obolisk definitely in need of some loving care.

The landscapes however still impressed us but now in a different way as we made our way along the road, through villages of leaning and creaky-looking log-cabins. Instead of epic, vast and sometimes featureless farmland we are now taking in rolling hills, smaller fields and more evidence of habitation, more power lines and steadily bigger villages. Things were indeed looking more European after the wastes of Mongolia and Siberia. We couldn't decide if we were in the Scottish borders, or Colorado.

We called in on another cafe control, run by Andy Actman. Loud Russian music made conversation impossible, so your correspondent followed a long wire across the grass to a socket in a wall, pulled hard, and suddenly, all now fell silent. After we left Andy to his duties, he sent a text message to say the music was rapidly restored, as no less than three weddings were held on the lawn while he sat under a parasol stamping time-cards.... wedding guests celebrated with rally drivers mixed in, looking to collect a stamped card. Bizarre? Kim Bannister will tell you it was all part of his detailed route-planning...

We arrived dusty, hungry and thirsty into our hotel to find various salads, beef stroganoff, chicken escalope, salmon, three kinds of soups, plus Borsch, with fruit to follow... Just what's need after a day when you leave Asia and enter Europe.”

Peking to Paris Rally Report

Tha Happy Couple.We have been interviewed for television lots, people are recognizing us!

Hyatt. Now this was a high end place, could have spent a week.

This marks the boundary between Asia & Europe, we are now half way!

We see so many abandoned buildings in the country

Day#17: Tyumen to Yekaterinburg

13JUN13:

"Our travels are filled with laughter, stories and amazement. We are virtually a travelling road show for all to see and enjoy. Monday was a day off in Novosibrisk that was as if we were a spectacle to behold. we were all parked in front of our hotel cleaning and fixing our cars right in the middle of town, a beautiful sunny day, the whole city came out to mingle amongst us. TV interviews, people clicking pictures, children laughing and smiling and the greatest display of legs and shoes you've ever seen, it was truly breathtaking. We left for Omsk, travelled an entire day, 650 kms. In a straight line with no scenery or anything, quite boring until the almost end when Kim and I missed a turnoff and tried to get back on track by traversing through the outskirts of Omsk Mongolian style. We found ourselves travelling along a goat trail adjacent a the railroad tracks, through some Russian ghetto and onward through the edge of town and in no time there we were in front of hotel just as it started to pour. The evening and Omsk were pretty uneventful, so we started on another long day to Tyumen approx. another 650 kms.. Again very boring ride until the worst thing possible that could happen occurred. One of  our new found friends, dear Emma met with fate, a head on collision of catastrophic proportions ended her life, shocking the life out of all. We are overcome with grief and emotion, trying to come to grips with it all. Last nights dinner was a gathering of our new gang at a fabulous restaurant to reflect and celebrate life and how fragile it really is. Copious amounts of red wine some good stories and the party continues. Today we are going to a motorcycle museum and then onto Ekaterinburg to celebrate Florins birthday. We will keep you posted love you all. PS. Kim is learning German."

- Len & Kim

Ready to leave our Accommodations .. 

A lunch stop - It was HOT outside! And the bugs were out of control.

The smile says it ALL .. We are on Day 17 -right?

 The Birthday Boy .. Florian!

Our New Friends .. Absolutely NO fun at all .. 

When is the last time you seen a '68 Mustang pulling a 1913 Lafrance. Good thing was it broke down in front of a garage.

Lead Car .. at the motorcycle museum

 "An easy day, no timing, just roll down the road for 300 km with the arrow of the Garmin pointing West as you take in the back-roads of the route-plan, avoiding the main highway. You drive past tiny villages of creaking old log-cabins, rusty relics dragged in from fields of a Soviet past, a road-side café or two, and the Bikers Museum...Tonight’s meal in the sumptuous surroundings of the Hyatt Regency is likely to go down as one of the best meals so far – silver service, with a range of 10 items to choose from."

- Peking Rally Report

Day #16: Many Sympathies

It comes with very sad news that is has been reported that there was a terrible accident and fatality with Car #92 near Tyumen. Many sympathies for the family and boyfriend, Peter Davies for the loss of Emma Wilkinson. Kim (Lorna) & Len (Laurie) had met the delightful couple in Beijing, and also had many laughs with them at the Start of the Rally at the Great Wall. They would like to send out deep condolences for the loss to fellow rally racers – Vintage Car #4 - brothers Robert & Mark Wilkinson.

This will be a very sad day, for all the participants, and organizers.

"That we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us."

    - Helen Keller

Day #15:Novosibirsk to Omsk

11JUN13:

“When Prince Borghese drove into this town back in 1907, he was greeted with wild crowds, with most never having seen a motor-car before. The idea of racing across the greatest land-mass between two Capital Cities made him an overnight celebrity – it was as if the first astronaut to walk on the Moon had just landed.

Tonight, big crowds again lined the river of Omsk to watch the arrival of the Peking to Paris. Hundreds of excited children and locals mingled with several TV crews and reporters all eager to catch sight of the first driver – cheers went up all down the river as each car turned into the car-park and pushed gently passed vulnerable feet. Omsk has turned out the biggest crowd so far.

It has been a long day down the bumpy, lumpy rippled tarmac that goes on and on, between forests of silver-birch trees. The camera-team took time out to turn off the main highway and visit villages of old wooden shacks, that look very much like the kind of road-side homes Prince Borghese would have passed by – painted window frames looking chipped and faded, shy faces peering behind net curtains.

Omsk is different – run down from its Soviet past, we drove down busy streets between concrete blocks of decaying indifferent design, as if dropped from the central planning department of a previous age, now looking much the worse for wear.

The rally has been divided into two neighbouring hotels for the night and tonight’s meal has seen a decent spread with an excellent salad, spaghetti, vegetable stew, as well as fish and meat courses on offer.”

-          Peking to Paris Rally Report

Photo by: Gerard Brown

Hotel .. Bad Hotel .. 

A Typical Village Home 

Day #14: Novosibirsk - Rest Day

10JUN13:

"The rest-day has been far from restful for most, although it has been a useful day for some of the chores such as catching up on the laundry – a free service at this hotel – and cleaning out buckets full of dust from the rally car.

The local motor-club, the Automobile Federation of Automobile Sport, have been our guiding hand in Russia, and helped organise the three time-trials yesterday with more to come. Today they organised a press conference – it was standing room only. Extra chairs were brought in as two TV teams jostled with over 40 reporters for a question-and-answer session. The interest generated by the cars, the people, the route and the organisation is overwhelming at times.

Tomorrow we are off to Omsk – a long haul over indifferent roads, there is no timing or Time Trials. Getting there in a day is hard enough, as Prince Borghese will no doubt agree, if he is looking down, as he drove this way with his rivals hard on his heels back in 1907."

-          Peking to Paris Rally Report

Photo by: Gerard Brown 

What can we say they love Canadian Boys .. Len "Chick Magnet"

John  & Len having some fun 

A view of the train station from our hotel 

This would of been perfect for Mongolia .. Next time .. 

Spring time around the world .. 

Day #13: Aya to Novosibirsk

09JUN13:

"The suns beating down on what looks like the warmest day so far as the Peking to Paris set out three Time Trials across remote farm-land and through forests on our way to the busy city of Novosibirsk."

- Peking to Paris Rally Report

Video of the group leaving the Hotel on Day #13

Results from Day #13: Overall Total: 136:37:29 Class Position #24

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

Day #11: Uureg Lake to Russian Border

07JUN13:

The last full day in Mongolia.

One of our last nights of camping - Good Thing .. Cause we kinda broke it .. -5 this morning, camped at 6500 ft .. water is all frozen

Yokohama - No Flats yet - Thank God!

Our lunch Buddy!

We have never seen so many goats and sheep

Our new hood ornament! Len picked up a beauty, we put it in the truck but later discovered it was covered in Maggots .. 

Steve and the Kids - Just outside the border

Nadia & Nicky 100 hundred years 1913 to 2013 - 1913 Model T

Changes are coming - First glance of new scenery.. Mining Equipment 

Last Night of Camping What a Party! 

                           Gengis Kham - Steve.. Just a Character

Day #10: Chjargas Lake to Uureg Lake

06JUN13:
Mountain High

"Simply the most stunning day of the event so far – we have driven a truly beautiful route to end up at a tiny bay in a large lake, with snow-capped mountains on either side. The sort of thing you might think you find in Canada, except there are Canadians here who reckon its actually more stunning…. and there are those from New Zealand who say, yes, it’s a bit like home – but nothing quite as good as this.

We ended a shorter, dusty day with a very long run through a gap in between two mountain walls that saw a steep challenging hill climb to the summit – 1:4 steep – and just about everyone struggled. Some ran back, some went up in reverse gear, some decided to take a long zigzag route using grass on either side of the track, dropping time in the process as far as the Time Trial was concerned, and some like the La France stopped to let things cool off and take on more water.

Tomorrow is our last day in Mongolia, and it promises to be the most spectacular route of all, into the snowy Altay Mountains where we finish up beside a river, just short of the Russian border."

- Excerpt from the official Peking to Paris Rally Report

Just about ready for Day #10 - COLD AND WINDY!

 Rugged People .. 

The Bar. The Fat Lady - Our car serves many purposes. 

HAPPY HOUR! Necessity  - the mother of invention

Day #9: Telmen Lake to Chjargas Lake

05JUN13:

"We awoke to bright sunshine. Today has been another warm day, driving to another large lake – Lake Chjargas – and on arrival into tonight’s camp the wind was up well before sunset, and strong enough to blow down the large green marquee that the chefs stake out as their kitchen. Dinner will be at least half an hour late tonight. With the wind came the sand-storm, and for 15 minutes our nylon pop-up tents were pulling up their tent-pegs unaided and blowing down towards the water’s edge, we all looked like refugees after a battlefield, covered in a fine grimy dust, with sleeping bags and belongings blowing all over the site."

-Excerpt from the official Peking to Paris Rally Report

Camping: Keeping a minimum 0.05 Blood Alcohol Content

Uurg Lake: Just as we pulled in so did a dust storm ...

The Breakdown: Spent 2 hrs waiting for a drill - rear track bar broke so we used the jack handle to get back to camp which the welder took over!

Repairs Sanchez working the metal

The bar is OPEN - Lots of New Friends