everything can happen.
Broken wheels, Romeo and Juillet - unfortunately dried out - and stonishing views...
These interesting tidbits are from the first year of the Mongol Rally, 2005.
Yes, they are all true...
- 43 cars left London
- 27 cars reached Mongolia
- 14 cars reached the finish in Ulan Bator
- 2 teams were robbed at knife point
- 1 car snapped in half
- 3 engines fell completely out of the cars
- 1 team was held for five days in no-mans land
- 1 team cycled almost 100 miles to get to the finish when their car gave in
- 100’s of tires were blown
- 1 team got engaged
- 1 team found a 10 foot deep pot hole
- 1 team found a 25 ton crane rolled by a pot hole
- 3 teams attended weddings
- 1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all but one forward gear
- 1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with five crimes against the state
- 1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad, who then shot at him with a gun (and missed)
- 1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons
- 1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital
- 3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year
- As a result of an incident with a cow one person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf
- 2 cars flipped over in Mongolia
- 3 teams were chased by armed bandits
- 0 team members died.
