Monthly Archives: July 2011

Car, with roof packed (and Adon's awesome self-haircut)

G’day folks! We’re almost ready to hit the road. We’ve put our swags and spare wheels on the roof now and have much more room than we expected. There’s still a fair bit left on our list of things to do and buy before setting off but the really important stuff is now done.

It’s quite likely that we won’t have much of a chance to update the blog while we’re driving, but we have a satphone which should let us update Twitter from anywhere in world. Our Twitter feed is replicated on the right-hand side of this page, or you can go to http://twitter.com/perthtoyurt

We also have a web page with a map built from our satellite tracker: http://largestprime.net/perthtoyurt. The satellite tracker is not amazingly reliable but we’re going to try to update it at least once per day.

Hi everybody! It’s been a while.

Time has flown – Patrick and Adon will arrive in England this Saturday afternoon, and then we spend a day in Ireland, and then the remainder of the week making sure that all the last-minute things don’t get forgotten. Then on Saturday 23rd July, we do a slow lap around Goodwood Racetrack as part of the Festival of Slow, and begin the actual driving part of our journey to Mongolia.

Since our last update, we’ve been madly running around trying to get everything organised for the rally:

• Patrick and Adon have had to get concurrent Australian passports because our Iranian visas have taken much longer than expected. We were informed today that the Iranian visas have been approved, so we’re now fully visa-d up for the road ahead.
• The car has been serviced and we’ve stocked up on most of the essential tools and spare parts. We’ve had roof racks fitted to carry all of our stuff. The mechanic who serviced the car is going to give it a thorough look-over for free on Friday and is getting us two spare wheels (with tyres) on for cheap “from a mate” – giving us a total of three spares.
• Patrick and Adon purchased swags for themselves and for Cameron – since apparently a swag is not a common camping implement in England.
• We’ve got ourselves a Carnet de Passage, the legal document required to temporarily import a car into a country and then take it out again. Iran requires one of these. Thanks Iran. Thiran.
• We’ve procured a wad of US dollars, since from Iran onwards our credit and debit cards are unlikely to be much use. Thanks Iran. Thiran.
• Cameron bought a bunch of maps, guidebooks and phrasebooks, and ordered a whole lot more from The Internet. Thank you, The Internet.
• Patrick and Adon are going to borrow some satphones for emergency use from their work.
• We’ve all committed to mildly outrageous adjustments to our personal appearance which you’ll have to wait ’til you see our photos to find out about.
• For most of next week, we’re booked into a B&B on the Isle of Wight. When Patrick booked this, he was unaware that the Isle of Wight was actually an island separate from mainland Britain. We may or may not end up changing this booking to somewhere more convenient for rally prep!