Jim and Marina are off on an adventure (or two)
Jim said “Here is a picture of our Healthy steed. Notice the air freshener hanging from the mirror, we are keeping that in place, after 10,000 miles and 30 + days of driving it will be one of our most important assets.”
How can you not love that man to pieces?
And here’s our cute little Panda!! I love this color, she will be very covert in the desert if Kazakhstan…
Oh no! Our little panda was sold while the $ was in transit, sob, heartbroken I am. Now its time to find another, quick!
Surprisingly, or not, yet more visa work this week. Will it ever end? Sigh.
Booked our airline tickets today, YAY! That means our departure date is set at July 8th. That gives us time to arrive in England, get the car, apply decals from our terrific sponsors (hint, hint), buy provisions, and head to the starting point in Southampton.
I am still waking up at 2 and 3 a.m. running lists through my mind, that probably will not go away. We are starting to get more detailed in our route planning – although we really do not want to plan every minute or every stop or even the entire route. It’s mostly making of note of what there is to see so that faced with diminishing time, which will happen, we can make an educated choice and not regret having missed something.
Last night I added a bunch of movies on The Silk Route, Genghis Khan and Marco Polo and bumped them to the top of my Netflix queue. Unbelievably, there is a documentary on netflix about Uzbekistani music, go figure! I have also been looking for some good historical fiction on the silk route.
After some visa drama this week with Russian log-ins and Kazakh hotel bookings it looks like we are done with that part of the arranging… for now. I am starting to wake up in the middle of the night and run through to-do lists in my mind. This is a sign that I have not committed enough to paper – time to create that master excel spreadsheet of all things Mongol Rally 2012! Even though I am feeling fairly overwhelmed by the reams of organizing we have in front of us – the excitment is building day by day. The more I read about the hospitality of central asia the more thankful I am that we are making the time now, when these countries are still intact cultures, to discover these places.
I think I am most excited about the homestay opportunities in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. I never dreamt that I would be traveling the Old Silk Road. Amazing!!
Visas done! Wow. Herculean task for someone who HATES forms and paperwork. Really loving the FB camaraderie of ralliers sharing info. Today read about getting multiple international driving permits so the coppers of Kazakhstan or wherever can’t extort $ out of you for your “real” driving license… brilliant!
Got to read a little bit of our Lonely Planet Central Asia book last night, and are really glad we added on the Tajikistan visa. Stay in a yurt? Hunt with Eagles? We are down!
We have ordered our visas and now starts the task of filling out the actual visa and invitation applications. Wow. Pretty daunting for people who loathe and despise paperwork. However, we have a plan; one application a day and we should be finished by our deadline and then send our passports off to England for The Visa Machine to work their magic in embassies hither and yon.
Jim decided to use a British car buying service and he’s in charge of getting that rolling. I decided I wanted a nice clear table to use as Rally HQ. Aren’t I productive? We’ve ordered our copy of Lonely Planet’s Central Asia and picked up in our local (Bookman in Orange, great shop) used book store guides to Turkey and Eastern Europe.
I am trying to figure out how to work a cocktail angle into the trip. I sent an email to all the US participants asking if anyone is packing an icemaker but I haven’t heard back yet. I am thinking that might be a key thing to have along. Aside from that we really aren’t planning on planning much.
When I am designing my own stuff it’s most often like the shoemaker’s children that have no shoes…
But this was easy and fun and I love the result. The irony of this quasi soviet icon being our companion and symbol for this trip is not lost on me. I wonder what it will provoke from the former Soviet republics we will be going through, in Russia as well? Who knows?
