Here we go ready or not, and it' definitely a little bit not !

They say life moves along at a fast pace and you just don’t notice.

Well I’d like to report that I have lost 4 weeks of my life and I’m not sure where it has gone.

Some highlights.

Isle of Wight. A place I think shouldn’t be part of the UK. Lovely climate, lovely scenery and lovely people, whoops I was just thinking that. We were lucky enough to spend 5 days in this idyllic place. Drinking beer at the Bundle, eating crab pasties at Steephill Cove and yes there is a steep hill out of the place. We also had a swim there which was , let me just say it was invigorating. We even coerced a few other tourists to enter the frigid waters of the the Atlantic ocean.

The fourth Phart arrived. Ron the mechanical messiah is here. We all squeezed into Alsison’s mums place much to her dismay. We also managed to organise stuff before Alison departed on her pre holiday holiday in the north of Scotland but Karma got her.

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Dragoman headquarters in Debanham to work on our cars. And boy they needed some work. The green car needed new wishbones, clutch, CV joints including drive shafts, Sump guard and we also had to build some kind of roof rack to carry fuel and spare wheels. The black car required a lot less stuff.

Ron worked tirelessly with me the not so good apprentice with Deb there to feed us and make sure we wash edbehind our ears :).

G and Charlie from Dragoman along with Nick and Dave from the workshop made us feel more than welcome . A great company with great people behind it. And I’d just like to say if you don’t want to do something as difficult as the Mongol Rally but would love the adventure then I’d recommend Dragoman’s Silk Road adventures.

The month has passed us by and now the eve of the start of our journey it is hard to believe it is actually happening. We have tested the car , tested our camping gear but now the biggest test of all. We are heading off on our 3 month adventure to test the personalities of the Travelling Pharts.

Love ewes all

All later

xx Pete, Deb,Alison and Ron

Some would say Business Class ,you lucky sods !

The day has arrived as it does everyday. But for Debs and I it is the start of an adventure that we are prepared for without being prepared. Many many months of Visas, Loi’s and of course the cars. I think the cars will be whole blog on their own.

So it's goodbye to the family, lots of kisses and I love you coming out like we were taking a one way trip to Mars. Then there is the guilt we have for missing our only grandsons first birthday but this guilt is wiped because of the plain reason he will never remember that we weren’t there, except may be we will be missing from some photos.

We get a lift to the airport from Mitch in his rather large 4 x 4 , lucky though because this trip is BC (Business Class) we are permitted to carry 70 kilos each and who doesn’t want to carry 140 kilo between 2 on a 4 month holiday. For the record we have under 60 kilo. But we do have items that you don’t take on a normal trip. New lights for our our Mongol Rally cars, honey from our farm, tents , sleeping bags wiring kits , Cherry Ripes and Tim Tams etc etc. So once they managed to move our bags it was off to the BC..thats BUSINESS CLASS lounge. Not the Qantas Coles Cafeteria we visited on a previous BC flight full of screaming kids and people overwhelmed with self importance. It was the SKY Team lounge. That sounds like we are Astronauts or pilots or similar.

It is here that the BC (. again that's BUSINESS CLASS ) starts to have a detrimental effect. Free food and alcohol , because we need to eat copious amounts food and drink the same proportion of Champagne before we get on a flight to drink copious amounts of alcohol. But nonetheless that's what we did.

Well this business class was good but not to the standard of Qantas. The obligatory hot towels, drink and whatever you wanted before they let the cattle on the flight. Having never been in a long haul BC before I was keen to use everything as soon as I sat down. But to my dismay I had no idea so I throw my toys out of the cot . Unlike some men I asked for help and one of the forty flight stewards looking after BC gladly showed me stuff a 5 year old could work out.

Anyhow we left Sydney, we ate , we drank and the best thing of all was that we slept on a flatbed in an aeroplane, who would ever have thunk ??, we arrived in Shanghai, did the transit thing which took a while and ended up again in the BC lounge, thats business class lounge for those who missed it. Next stop London

We're going to live in this for 3 months ?

We started with a cheap car now we are taking it to all new levels by using a cheap tent, an Aldi tent to be precise. Unlike our German designed and manufactured Vauxhall Corsa the only correlation to "German" is the fact the tent comes from a German grocery chain.

Lucky it doesn't rain in the Kyrgyzstan deserts.