[Top-Gear]

You guys have got GUTS! I must say I am mighty impressed - you are the type of folks who will follow your heart and plunge into something and figure out how/what on the way. Salut!

One heck of a thread. By the way, have you sold the movie rights already?
If not, hang on, by the time you finish, you'll have a director wanting to make a 'road' movie knocking on your door!

Keep it coming man!!

The variety of travelogues we are getting on T-BHP is AWESOME.

Rock on!!!

[getsurya]

Super TL! What a start and pushing heavy.

Daring and loaded with adventure. Good crisp write ups and pictures.

Will be following this thread for the full journey

Good Luck!

[rejoycjohn]

Originally Posted by Roomy

The guy I am referring to is Sijohn, my guess is that he is the elder brother of 'Sibynho'.

That is quite interesting there!! His own hand you say!!!

Yes we are on the same page :-).Sijohn is Inho's brother. Thank you for noticing us and mentioning the same.
Haha He was using his hands to click some nice pics :P

Originally Posted by Gokrish

Hi Rejoy!

I have been keenly following your thread. A typical cross-country story with all necessary ingredients of a masala movie. You blokes got a very long travelogue to write about and hence please speed up the installments. By the way, you guys seem to be professional in wearing lungis and kudos for upholding OUR CULTURE! Please try to upload videos, if any, of places visited.

Gokirsh , Thank you so much for those words. I promise I will not delay the installments.

Originally Posted by ku69rd

Fantastic is an understatement for the TL you are about to pen. For sure this will be like a holy grail for people aspiring to do the silk route.
Do not be surprised if you are invited for lunch/dinner to go through with your preparations. Keep it rolling dude.

Originally Posted by Top-Gear

You guys have got GUTS! I must say I am mighty impressed - you are the type of folks who will follow your heart and plunge into something and figure out how/what on the way. Salut!

One heck of a thread. By the way, have you sold the movie rights already?
If not, hang on, by the time you finish, you'll have a director wanting to make a 'road' movie knocking on your door!
Rock on!!!

Thank you , those are really kind words. I really hope our journey inspires people to travel around.

Originally Posted by getsurya

Super TL! What a start and pushing heavy.

Daring and loaded with adventure. Good crisp write ups and pictures.
Will be following this thread for the full journey
Good Luck!

Thank you gentlemen. I hope to explain our experience on the road in the best possible way . Be with us till the end of our journey .
Cheers

[callvvijay]

Woowww!! 16 countries/16K Kms. What an experience it could have been for you people. Admire your attitude. How I wish I do at least half (that will be too much of an ask for me!) of what you guys did.

I'm totally hooked into this travelogue now and have rated 5stars already. Please keep them coming and quickly too.

Btw, if I read it right, all the expenses were from your pockets? How big/deep is your pocket then :P ? That should have costed a bomb.

[anujatwork]

Originally Posted by rejoycjohn

I was in the driving seat and well the moment of truth was in front of me. I had to drive a RHD car on the right side of the road. The round abouts, the traffic signals, the lanes everything was on the wrong side of the road. I was really trying to concentrate on the road and the signals so hard that I make no mistakes. (Once when I was driving in Sweden, I had taken a wrong turn and was almost heading to a motorway against the direction of traffic.)Attachment 1127065

I am speechless really. What an amazing decision to undertake this journey. It must a phenomenal experience. Though I might sound funny but I feel compelled to ask how did you manage a Driver's License that every country honours while driving thru their territory?

[rejoycjohn]

Well before I take you to the next day, I should mention something else. We came back to the camping site below the castle and was searching for our tent. Guess what, our tent had fallen down – well almost. Ours was the biggest tent among the whole lot – we had two sections , one for sleeping with extra insulation and the other where we had kept our air sofa. Both sections were only half in shape now. Kent and TV who left early found space enough for them to squeeze into the sleeping area. Me and Siby were left with the only option of lying down in the section which did not have much insulation. We somehow had to find some part in the tent which was not wet and hold on to the tent so that the wind doesn’t come inside. Even though it was summer, the rain and the wind had made the weather very chilly. We squeezed ourselves into the sleeping bag and then tried to get some sleep.

Day 4.

We woke up quite late. Most of the teams had packed and were about to leave. We realized that the whole tent was on us now. The half fallen tent has completely fallen now. To be honest we were trying not to get out of the tent until most of the teams leave as it would be terribly embarrassing for 4 of us to crawl out of a fallen tent. But then we couldn’t stay longer in the tent and hence we decided to come out and face the other teams who were having their breakfasts and packing their luggage to leave.

As expected we were greeted by some polite comments by some British lads and quite loud ones by some others. We couldn’t do anything but agree to them. It was just terrible. We agreed that we still have to polish our skills in terms of getting a tent up in the correct way!
The previous day our team-work of setting a camp did catch a bit of attention. In-spite of having an expert camping person among us , we were really taking a lot of time to get the whole thing right.
( He was still the best among us )
To be fair on our side, the tent was not really what someone would call simple.
The lesson that we learned was that one should only buy a simple tent which is easy to set up and dismantle, unless you are expert at it or you are going for a long vacation at one camp site.

We made tea and maggie and started packing our luggage. Honestly, the whole packing exercise was just inches close to get into our nerves! Sigh !

Once done, we headed east to Prague. But before we left, we want to ensure to that we will be reminded that we should drive on the wrong side of the road. So guess what we did – we wrote these words on the steering wheel “Drive on the right side of the road “. Even though this would sound a bit juvenile to many, it indeed helped us to be on the safe side of the road whenever we started driving in the morning after a bad sleep or after a lunch break.






We thought of meeting our friend who was living in Prague and may be stay at hers and save another camping struggle!!

We reached Prague and picked her up from work and freshened up at her house and came back to the city. By then it was night and we thought we should have some nice dinner. We went to a restaurant and had a Czech dish ( I forgot the name of it ) . It was a simple dish, but then very famous among Czechs or with Slovakians. I cant remember. Anyway the dish was a combination of toasted bread and rare minced beef. They also provide fresh garlic, we need to rub the garlic against the bread and spread the minced meat over it and then eat it.
Anyway the combination was good actually, infact it was better than what I thought it would be. I quite liked it.


Attachment 1127871


Our friend was a Slovakian and even though Czech and Slovakia are one nation now, they still have the nationalist feeling when it comes to sports. The hockey matches between the countries are taken quite seriously. While we were in the restaurant we started socializing with a group of guys and girls sitting next to our table. We soon became friends with them and they started ordering food and drinks for us. A variety of special drinks were ordered for us and we were given explanation of them. They were laughing their heads off when we said we are going to Mongolia , that too in a Micra. One of them used to live in Mongolia for some work years ago and the only emotion that came to his face when we described our plan was pity!

In between our friend started having some heated discussion with them over a recent hockey match between the two countries. It was fun even though we understood no word of what they spoke.
We spend quite sometime there and left the restaurant bidding good bye to those whom we met at the restaurant.

Attachment 1127874


Attachment 1127875

We walked around the city, though we were not really fancying the idea of walking. For one we were a bit lazy by birth to do things like walking or running or any physical activity for that matter. The only exception is may be foot ball or cricket. We considered it to be a bit old fashioned to walk around when we have the luxury called taxis . However our friend didn’t seem to agree very much to that philosophy of ours even though she knew us for long. She was also persuasive enough to make us moving and see the city as much as we could in that night. She was really sweet to take us to many churches and old buildings around which still bore the bruises of second world war.



After roaming around for quite a bit, we went back to her house and continued our chat till late.

Day 5

Our friend had to leave early to office and hence she left while we were getting ready. We left after making breakfast at her house and drove towards Munich.

Another friend of ours was living in Munich and it was her birthday the next day. So we thought we will go meet her and be part of her birthday celebration and stay a day or two in Munich. For me the idea was really interesting – well we all know why. The 3 letters ; BMW – it says it all.

Staying a day in Munich will give me an opportunity to visit their head quarters and the Museum.
Munich is also famous for the English garden. The river Isar is a famous destination for those who want to do wave surfing but don’t have the time to visit Hawaii or any Pacific islands.

The story on the Autobahn was no different even this time. We were humiliated on the German highways by the passing motorists with their speed. The luggage on top of the car was not helping either. The view of BMW headquarters at a distance greeted us as we approached Munich.



We reached her house and then went to the English Garden which was a couple a kms away, but again walking! We had some nice roasted pork along with her and some other friends of her. The next day we went to meet her mom and a bit of sight seeing in the city. There is this square in Munich where Hitler used to address his supporters. Even now after so many years since the WW 2 if anyone is found to gather in this square and do the notorious salute, he / she would be taken into custody by the German police. Later I went to see the BMW museum and after that we attended our friend’s birthday party.

The square in question




Bavarian breakfast by our friend.



One of our other friend from Munich


Day 7
We headed south towards Austria and Italy. That Evening we stopped for camping a bit early when we found a camping ground in the Alps. We were determined to our camping skills right after two failed attempts of putting the tent up. And voila this time it was just perfect. So finally we did our first perfect camping in the best place to do it – in the Alps.







Our first perfect camping ( Taken the next day morning :-) , just to be clear to the readers )






Day 8.

The weather was still not what one would call summer. The rain looked as if it was following us. We drove through the winding roads of Alps taking occasional breaks to stretch ourselves. The sight was well not really that breathtaking, but a very welcoming change from the boring highways.





We entered Italy soon and the change in the quality of road became evident. The once well paved Alpian road now gave way to those which were similar in quality to that of our Ghat sections.





Soon enough we were done with the Alps and were towards the Mediterranean town of Grado.
The change in weather was profound. The cloudy sky gave way to bright sun and there was no rain or even drizzle. The temperature started climbing up – it all looked very promising.
We reached Grado and after the first successful camping we knew what to look for to spend the night – camping site. We went to the seaside and relaxed in the sun.
The thing that one like about Italy is its atmosphere. The whole atmosphere is relaxed. No-one is in a hurry to catch a train or bus. There was no hurry, no one was eager to change their life or the world in a day or two. Definitely we were going away from the busy western Europe.





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[ku69rd]

Originally Posted by rejoycjohn

Thank you , those are really kind words. I really hope our journey inspires people to travel around.

To be brutally honest you guys did beat us to the post. Jealous/Envy is not the right word here

Enjoying your ride, do not make it like one of those Ekta Kapoor's mega serials. Please try to post daily, this just ensured that I skip the newspaper in my office to read this.

Apologies if am sounding rude mate.

[rrsteer]

Originally Posted by rejoycjohn

Our friend was a Slovakian and even though Czech and Slovakia are one nation now, they still have the nationalist feeling when it comes to sports. T

Are you sure that Czech & Slovakia are united now? I think they are separate nations.


This is a great great log.
Look forward to the fresh installment each day. And the clicks are good too!
I have a question: as Indian citizens, how could you buy a car in London? I have really limited foreign travel experience, so am just curious if foreigners even on vacation can buy a car?

[rejoycjohn]

Originally Posted by callvvijay

Woowww!! 16 countries/16K Kms. What an experience it could have been for you people. Admire your attitude. How I wish I do at least half (that will be too much of an ask for me!) of what you guys did.

I'm totally hooked into this travelogue now and have rated 5stars already. Please keep them coming and quickly too.

Btw, if I read it right, all the expenses were from your pockets? How big/deep is your pocket then :P ? That should have costed a bomb.

Thank you Vijay. Yes you read it completely correct. The expense was from our pocket. Neither we nor our familys have huge pockets to be honest. We were living with our credit cards and a bit of saving that we had over the years working in this industry.
Not really a bomb if you compare to the amount spend by many on their honeymoon. For us we were sure that any debt or credit card bills can be repayed once we come back and start working. Insha allah , we can make much more money in our life in the years to come. But not necessarily that we would be having a similar opportunity where all of us can go on a road trip like this.
Responsibilities of life will come soon and the number of people that you need to convince before we embark on such a journey will increase and when there are more people involved, its not at all easy.

Originally Posted by anujatwork

I am speechless really. What an amazing decision to undertake this journey. It must a phenomenal experience. Though I might sound funny but I feel compelled to ask how did you manage a Driver's License that every country honours while driving thru their territory?

Legally in most of the countries ( read UK / EU ) Indian license issued in English language is valid upto 6 months or 1 year.
Countries like Russia or others normally demand one which has a local translation. We managed to procure one international license to be on the safe side. If you search online " international drivers license " you get a lot of websites that offer the same.

Originally Posted by ku69rd

To be brutally honest you guys did beat us to the post. Jealous/Envy is not the right word here

Enjoying your ride, do not make it like one of those Ekta Kapoor's mega serials. Please try to post daily, this just ensured that I skip the newspaper in my office to read this.

Apologies if am sounding rude mate.

Hehe , I bet it wont be as delayed as Ekta Kapoor's serial. Every day midnight there will be a post made to the travelogue to ensure continuity.

Of course you dont sound rude, I too wished to complete the log as soon as possible and may be in continuous posts. But writing the events of 40 days that too when none of us really had made any notes of each day is bit of a challenge.

Bear with us and hope to see you reading and be part of our journey till the end.

Originally Posted by rrsteer

Are you sure that Czech & Slovakia are united now? I think they are separate nations.


have a question: as Indian citizens, how could you buy a car in London? I have really limited foreign travel experience, so am just curious if foreigners even on vacation can buy a car?

Sorry about that goof up. I was referring to Czechoslovakia which existed together and later divided to the present Czech republic and Slovakia. May be something similar to India and Pakistan.

About buying a car, the rule states that one should have a local address. We dint have one though I lived in UK for more than a year during one of my assignments. There are agents who can help you buy and register the car in your name. Trust me the government over there is not as fussy as ours. I am not glorifying the west nor am I disrespecting our system. But then I have seen many people facing lots of issues with registration, driving other state registered cars in another state etc.
I shall explain more about buying the car in UK once I complete the travelogue

[alokgunhal]

Hooked to this Epic Travelogue in the making since yesterday. The description and photos are complementing each other and allowing us less mortals live through what you guys have lived through. Looking forward to more updates.

[trtraj]

I feel great for reading itself. OMG, you guys really rock !! Thanks for sharing , eagerly waiting for more details.

[rejoycjohn]

22nd August 2013, exactly a year before, all 4 of us who participated in the rally was in a completely different state of mind. It was on that day we reached the finish line of Mongol Rally. I had almost forgotten it until Tv called and reminded me about the same. Even though I don’t want to go into more details of how we felt on that day, I should at least mention that we were both happy and sad that we reached the finishing point of the rally. We were happy for obvious reasons that we completed something we never thought we would complete when we started it. At the same time we were sad that its over. 40 days of our life which were filled with unforgettable events had come to an end.

No – nothing more, let me get back to where I left yesterday.

Day 9.

Grado is a coastal city and the place where we camped was next to the beach. So we thought we should have a bath in the sea before we set off for the day’s drive. We went to the beach we had a decent bath. We were not sure if it was because of low tide, but the sea looked as if it was drawn away from the shore. The beach was not really a sandy one. There were tourists and locals who were enjoying the sun on the shores.

We came back to the camp and started our journey again. We were getting hungry and we wanted to have some nice Italian food. So we started searching for a nice restaurant and finally reached another sea city, but then this was much more posh. It was this typical Mediterranean city with cliffs on one side and sea on the other. The city was concentrated on the lower side of the cliff and we had to get there to find some restaurants.The road that we took to climb down the cliff was not the main road – we were almost driving though someone’s driveway. The descent was quite steep and at a point I had doubt if that was the right road and if it was not, then there was no place to turn the car around and even if we turned it around, I was not really sure if the car would climb up. My friend who was driving didn’t seem to share this thought despite me constantly reminding him about it.

Finally we reached a main road and I was happy that we didn’t have to test the car’s capacity of climbing steep slopes! The view was really good, can call it breath taking if you really push your imagination a bit. But for me it was just a good view. The only problem was that there was no food available in any of the restaurants that we saw there. We took some photos, had a coffee , did some chit chat and then started driving towards Slovenia.

Actually we were in a bit of a doubt; we wanted to go to Croatia as well. But then we were unsure about the validity of Schengen visa in Croatia for Indian passport holders. Didn’t want to take a risk at that point regarding visa and hence we headed towards Slovenia.

On the way we took one of the exits from the highway and went to a restaurant. We were really hungry by then and hence we had really nice pizza and pasta from there. This restaurant was close to the border of Hungary. The restaurant guy was really amused to see us and was trying to have some conversation with us and we were trying to reply him in half English and half sign language. Somehow we managed to make him understand that we were driving from London and will complete our journey in Mongolia.

He was really happy and offered some beverages on the house. The driver was offered only the non-alcoholic one.

We drove further and soon we pulled into a fuel station to fill petrol. We were again chatting around and to our surprise a couple of young guys and girls who were in their twenties ran towards us and started talking to us. They were not really fluent in their English, but what they were trying to tell was that they have heard of Mongol rally and saw a couple of teams passing by when they were on the road. They wanted to take pic with one of the teams and they got lucky when they saw us in the fuel station.

Well to be honest I was really excited to hear this, for the first time in all our life some very pretty gals and young boys were near us wanting to take photos with us!! We enjoyed every bit of those moments. Did a long lecture about Mongol rally and who we were and where we from and all that. Soon we had to leave as it was getting dark and we had no clue where we will be staying that night.

While at the back seat

The roads became narrow as we moved forward. It was also getting dark. After a couple of hours , we thought we should call it a day and started looking for some cheap hotels to stay. If you have noticed, in European countries, people don’t roam around once its dark especially in the villages. So it was a bit of a trouble to find someone to ask about a hotel. The language barrier was getting stronger; we had to depend on our enacting skills to get our message through.

After all that “drama” we finally got one place to stay. It was almost midnight by then.

Day 10.

We did not have any idea of the place where we stayed that night. We had to ask the man in the hotel in the morning and he told us that the name of the place was Pecs. We left that place after our breakfast.

The roads and the general atmosphere in that part of Hungary did not look very developed.

The general look and feel of the area was similar to an Indian village.

We stopped on the way in a restaurant for lunch. They did not have lunch at that time and hence the person at the hotel called another friend of his who had a restaurant and mentioned about us. I remember the guy calling a couple of his friends to find food for us. I am sure that they would not have met any other Indians in their life before. Anyway we were enjoying this hospitality that these strangers were offering us. Finally he found a place and drew the route to that place on a piece of paper and gave it to us. He offered us Hungarian Goulash and some local alcoholic & non alcoholic beverages to drink along with it.

We left after having our lunch towards Romanian border.

We had read that Indian passport holders with a valid Schengen visa can enter Romania without any special tourist visa. But if for some reason they did not allow us, we were thinking of driving as fast as possible to Russia before our Schengen visa gets expired and then follow the northern route to Mongolia. We did not want that to happen though.

So after 8 days we were about to do our 2nd border crossing and also another time zone change. We were trying to get presentable in preparation of the same. We reached the border and gave our passports and the vehicle documentation to the guards. We were asked to park the car aside and wait until they check and come back. The border guards and officers were really friendly. They did not make any fuss like the officials in our country do.

We were watching the buses and the cars passing by and trying to relax by having some interesting conversations. We were debating ourselves on the chances of getting an entry and not.

In less than 30 minutes, the officer came back and gave the passport to us. He dint say anything and hence we were not sure if we got the entry or not. We verified the passport and it was an entry stamped next to our schengen visa.

We drove further to the country and later that day stayed at a place known as Sibiu again in a cheap hotel.

Day 11.

Even though the main agenda of the rally was to reach Mongolia, we had some destinations in our mind which we definitely did not want to miss. One such destination was Transfăgărășan highway in Romania. Voted as the best driving road in the world by Top gear, there was no question among us of missing it. But we dint know where it was other than that it was in Romania. We asked the guy in the hotel about the same and the best route to reach there.

So after keeping his route and places in our minds we started driving towards the worlds best driving road!

We were super excited! I mean never in my life did I think that I will be driving in a road that is rated the best. In fact that was the only time that we were excited about driving in a particular place in the whole rally. To be honest, after driving in the Himalayas during our road trip to Leh, any hill station or roads in any part of the world that we visited just did not excite us.

So Transfagarasan had a job at hand to impress us. And oh boy it did, indeed we all were swept away by the way the road looked and the way the road is maintained. As Jeremy mentioned , it looked like its made by combining all the best corners of the racing circuits in the world.

So behold ladies and gentlemen, let me and GKEIC take the pride in introducing to you all Bhpians here a pic taken with our camera of the Transfagarasan highway.

We tried to do some spirited driving on these roads. We had a go-pro camera with us and so we wanted to capture some nice shots or videos with that. I agree that it’s a bit kiddish and to an extend irresponsible to indulge in such kind of acts in public roads. But to defend ourselves, the road was not really busy. Hardly any cars on the road and we were not sure if we would ever in our life will get a chance to come to this place and play around.

Anyway Sibynho was to attempt first and he did some nice cornering and hairpins. Next was my turn and well I goofed it up. It was a hairpin and I dint break hard into the corner and due to which I had to break hard at the hairpin. All the computers in the car taking care of safety woke up – ABS was in action, all the warning lights in the dashboard started blinking and may be the car expected a crash, the engine got switched off.

TV running towards us worried .

We tried everything to switch the car on. Eventually we disconnected and reconnected the battery and the car came back to life. Though I mentioned the whole thing in a couple of sentences we were really tensed. For some time I thought that was the end of our rally!

After clicking some more pics we started our drive towards Bucharest.




Our stove and multipurpose non stick vessal

Kent had some points left unclaimed with Hilton and we thought we should utilize it in Bucharest. We wanted to have a really good place to stay and relax for atleast one night.

We reached Bucharest, checked into the hotel and got freshened up in a posh way. Went to the restaurant, they had free food and beverages. We decided that we should try out the night life in Bucharest. The only condition that we had was that to keep our spending within a stipulated amount. Each one of us were given an amount and the challenge was to keep the spending within that. And we went into the Romanian night life which was only getting started at 12 in the night!

[nishantdlv]

Originally Posted by rejoycjohn

To be honest, after driving in the Himalayas during our road trip to Leh, any hill station or roads in any part of the world that we visited just did not excite us.

Then I better see the other parts of the world first and keep the best for the last

Great write-up and nice pictures mate!
Hooked to your TLog since day one! Feels as if I'm travelling with you all as a silent soul!

[YanTra Makto]

Amazingo!!,
Rating it as 5 star as that is the max available.
How much did the car cost?, and what did you do of it after Mongolia??!!
Just inquiring, if you did not have any GPS map device on board?
Enjoying a lot and totally hooked on?
Waiting for the Go pro vids!

[Ramanjit]

At the outset let me congratulate the team for their gutsy spirit. Doing the stretch in such a car (the size) itself is commendable. I am sure most of us on this forum at some time or other have thought about doing a European,american or around the world trip. The stumbling block is who to take along with (the biggest worry) of course the logistics and the cost are also a big deterrent.Keenly following the thread,the pictures are good.Keep up the good work.Would also appreciate detailed breakdown of the cost involved after you have finished filling us up with your exotic travel stories.