Team Basic Cruising Goes to Mongolia

Sadly, our Puntito is beyond repair.

After an open heart surgery, this is what we found:

Puntito Motor - Broken Pieces

Puntito Motor - Broken Piston

This is it’s replacement:

Moskvitch

Made in the USSR

Will we ever make it? Who knows!

The Puntito sounded like hell, and Vogel was driving it as best as he could. The engine kept sounding worse and worse, and all the proud feelings of patching up the car in the middle of the Pamirs were quickly fading away. We all knew that what we were hearing was a death rattle, but we still held our breaths, until the engine finally gave up and sputtered to a halt. We knew instantly that there was some serious damage.

I could still see up ahead another Mongol Rally team that had passed us a few minutes before, and I immediately got out of the car and started running up the highway, jumping and waving my arms above my head for them to come back and give us a hand. As I saw their ambulance get smaller and smaller, I stopped running and waving my arms, and the feeling of being completely stranded in the middle of nowhere hit my like a punch to the stomach. I walked slowly back to the Puntito to see Enrique and Vogel.

This is when we decided that we had to get the hell out of the Pamirs, with or without the car. Luckily the first car that passed through promised us a solution in the form of the truck (see previous post) and since there was no cell phone reception, Vogel left with the car and promised to secure our rescue from the Pamirs ASAP. The driver said that the truck would leave from Murghab the instant that he had reception and was able to call them, so this meant that the truck would pick us up about three hours from then (it was 3:30 PM), so sometime between 7 and 8 PM.

3:30 PM

As soon as the car was out of sight, Enrique asked me “Do you have the keys?”. I searched my pockets, and looked at the ignition, and quickly realized that Vogel had accidentally left with the keys. Enrique and I walked down to a stream at the bottom of valley, to wash up and to refill our water bottles. The water didn’t look fit to drink, so we just washed up and walked back to the car. We sat down in the Puntito and waited for the truck to come.

7:00 PM

Three and a half hours had passed, and still no sign of the truck. We were sitting there in the car, nervously eyeing the rearview mirror for signs of the truck. Not a soul on the road.

8:00 PM

I see in the rearview mirror dust stirring in the highway behind us. A car!! I stare at the mirror as it gets closer, but my hopes sink when I can see it is not a truck. As it gets closer and closer, it starts to look familiar, until I recognize it: it’s another Mongol Rally team! Between a Yak and a Hard Place, an ambulance with two English guys, who we had run into in the Transfagarasan road in Romania. They stop right next to us, and then we see another rally car, 3PANDA, pull up on the left of the Puntito. We got out of the car and explained the situation to them, exchanged some war stories, and had a couple of laughs. Like every other rallier, they offered to help us in any way they could, but since we didn’t want to leave the car for fear of missing the truck, we thanked them and told them we would wait for the truck to arrive. Josh and James (the two guys in the ambulance) were kind enough to leave us plenty of water, and then both teams drove off. It was a hard moment. We saw them drive away. It was getting dark, and the wind was picking up.

8:30 PM

At this stage, our hopes were dwindling that we would get out of the Pamirs that night. We had full confidence in Vogel, but we were very aware of the difficulty of arranging transport in Murghab. We realized that we might have to spend another night in the Pamirs, sleeping in the Puntito. We sent out a Spot GPS saying “Puntito hotel once again. Que onda Vogel?” in the hopes that Vogel would see that the car still hadn’t come. We decided that if by 9 PM the car hadn’t come, we would pull out our small stove, cook some food and then pull out the sleeping bags. I remembered that I still had half a bottle of Ballantine’s Finest stored in my bag, and so I pull it out with two glasses. In situations like this, whiskey definitely helps. A lot.

9:15 PM

Night has fallen, and it’s freezing cold. Enrique and I are sitting there in the car, and we see a car approaching from the opposite end of the road. The Puntito is parked right smack in the middle of the road, and the car is heading right at us. As it gets closer, we see it is the awesome guys from 3PANDA. They tell us that they are camping about 500 m ahead, and that if we want to join them for some food and hot drinks. They offer to tow us, but since we didn’t have the keys, the steering was locked and maneuvering was impossible. The wheels were slightly turned, and we tried towing it but it was impossible. Afterwards, they offered to let us use their satellite phone to call Vogel. Standing in the freezing cold, I dialed his number and waited for the call to go through. It rang and then he finally answered, and he told me that the car would be coming in two hours. I tell Enrique, and it lifts both our spirits immensely. We agree to go to their campsite, get into their wood-colored Fiat Panda, and head over to a small crater where they are camping. We still had a bottle of wine which we had bought in Dushanbe, so we take this with us.

A great aspect of the rally is the amazing people that you meet on the road. In the campsite, in addition to the three Swiss guys from the 3PANDA team, there was a guy from LA who had been hitchhiking through the Pamirs, as well as two Frenchmen who were cycling through the Pamirs, and had been on the road for 14 MONTHS. We sat around a fire were they had cooked a large pot of the most delicious rice I’d ever tasted, exchanged travel stories, and in general had a great time. It  made us forget for a while that we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. It was unbelievably cold though; I almost wanted to stick my foot into the fire to warm it up. We were not well prepared for cold weather.

11:00 PM

Christian and Jan (the Swiss guys) give us a ride back to our car, and we thank them for everything and assure them they will see us soon on top of a truck. It’s freezing; we get into the Puntito and pull out our sleeping bags. We sit there talking and waiting for the truck that is coming soon.

12:30 AM

After more than three hours had passed since the phone call, we realized that the truck might not be coming for us that night. We were struggling to stay awake, trying to create some sort of system where one of us would sleep and the other would remain awake, but since we were in the car and had poor ventilation because of the cold, and the fact that we were exhausted, we were both falling asleep. I sent out a Spot GPS message saying “No lorry in sight. Puntito suite tonight”, and then fell asleep, shivering inside my sleeping bag.

2:00 AM

I wake up to see the unmistakable front lights of a large truck in the rearview mirror.

To be continued…

… it’s been really, really, hard.

I’m not sure if I could ever find the right words for Murgab, but spending 6 days there really tested everything from our patience to our sanity. Having flies wake us up, being swept by dust storms, being unable to shower, and not having enough air to breathe (Murgab’s altitude is about 4,600m) had all become part of our lifestyles.

The Pamir Highway was definitely the most remote part of our trip which made it really hard to escape when our car broke down. We spent about a week there trying to repair our motor.

Fixing the motor
We hit our sump really hard at some point, which broke the oil pickup, which caused poor oil distribution in the motor, which caused 4 thrustwashers in 2 cylinders to completely strip. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry, we didn’t either (a week ago).

Finding a mechanic in the town was a hassle, but we managed to end up with a really nice fellow. Their “shop” was really a backyard full of mechanical parts and lots of dirt. After a quick search for our parts in the only two “car parts stores” (they were really train containers acting as stores) in town, we were told that the parts needed to be fetched from Khorog. We paid the mechanic’s cousin to make the trip with the promise that he would return the next day. And the next day arrived, and the cousin was nowhere to be found. With a constant promise that “he was on his way back”, we waited for about 5 days. The excuses? These are the ones I remember off the top of my head:

• He couldn’t find a taxi
• The President of Tajikistan was in Khorog and all the shops were closed
• No, really, he’s on his way back

A real nightmare of just sitting around, looking at time pass by.

The first couple of nights we stayed at a guesthouse, but the mechanic kept insisting we stay at his place. First we politely refused saying we had already paid for the night, but as the days passed by, we were kind of forced to take his offer, which was both a blessing and a curse.

The opportunity of spending time at a Pamiri House was incredible. We got to experience firsthand the Kyrgyz culture (although we were in Tajikistan, the family considered themselves Kyrgyz and blamed Stalin for the stupid border he had drawn). We ate authentic dishes from the region, jammed with the Uncle who wanted to throw a concert in Murgab, and were tucked in our beds by Solaika, the mother. We all commented that we hadn’t been tucked in by anyone in many years and that it felt really nice.

We were forced to play endless amounts of Pictionary because we don’t speak Russian, Kyrgyz, Tajik, or Pamiri and they didn’t speak English. I think we can probably be world champions by now. This was very testing and frustrating at times, specially when dealing with timelines for getting the car up and running again.

At some points we felt really welcomed and honored as guests, but our inability to take our frustration elsewhere seemed to annoy Abidin sometimes, which made us feel less welcomed. This constant duality required a lot of delicacy and we finally learned to deal with it.

Finally the cousin came back with some Opel thrustwashers that had to be sawed off in one spot,flattened out in another, and finally dented in one last place. The steel piece that sucks oil in from the sump had been glued together with “China Clay”. Not exactly what you can call Precision Engineering.

When the car was ready, the engine once again had a nice steady sound to it, we were all smiles. After hugging and thanking the entire family, we set off to Osh (400km), where we planned on doing some further work on the car.

After Murgab

After a bit more than 3 hours of driving (160 km), the oil light came on. We stopped as soon as practical and starting disassembling the engine. Soon it got dark and cold, so we put things away, went inside the car, pulled our sleeping bags, and endured a really cold night.

I speak only for myself here, but I really missed Murgab during that cold night. The previous days I had thought we had hit rock bottom, with the lack of hygiene and the overall situation, but for me this was way worse – being out in one of the most remote areas of the world, having seen only one car go by during the entire night, was way more scary than Murgab.

In the morning we resumed our duties and kept repairing the car, finding the same piece the sucks in the oil broken. We patiently stitched it back together, this time using krazy glue, wire, and china clay. Re-assembled the car, and started it. The oil light was off. We cheered with utter happiness and congratulated each other for having done such a daunting task (disassembling, repairing, and putting back together a motor mid Pamir Highway). And then a horrible noise started. We had spent nearly 20 hours fixing the car and our reward was a horrible clinking sound?!

With no desire of disassembling the car again, and even less desire of spending another night in the Pamir Highway, we kept driving. Slowly. Very, very slowly. Rarely going past 2,500 RPM. And the noise grew, and it grew, and we were worried, and then the engine stopped. All warning lights came on. We stepped out of the car, and saw oil, water, and anti-freeze frantically hurrying out of the engine. We’re about 20 km from the border

No cellphone reception. Anywhere.

Splitting Up
A car approached with a tourist and two locals. The tourist was on his way to Osh and spoke enough Russian to help us out. After a lot of very quick decisions, we decided to split up. I would ride with Joseph and the locals to Osh and make sure the driver pulled through with his promise of sending a truck (lorry) to pick up Enrique, Andres, and the Puntito. Their only way of communication with me was the SpotGPS (the device that sends the tweet updates).

3:30PM
I say good bye to the team and the Puntito

4:00PM
Make it to the Tajikistan Border where a guard laughs at my story and screams to my face “Goodbye Pamir, Goodbye Tajikistan, hahaha”

5:00PM
Cellphone has reception, locals arrange for a truck to be sent from Murgab to pick them up.

5:25PM
Cellphone loses reception

7:17PM
Cellphone gains reception and I receive the following SpotGPS message sent at 6:27PM: “Puntito’s last dance. Encore?” I’m still 3 hours away from Osh.

7:30PM
Cellphone loses reception

8:15PM
I notice I have the only copy of the car’s key. I get extremely worried, ask around for opinions, and all I get is: “Well, they couldn’t turn the car on anyways, so whatever.” What if the car’s steering wheel locks (and needs the key to be unlocked? How are they going to mount the car into the truck? What if they want to move the car to the side of the road? I feel like throwing up.

9:18PM
Cellphone gains reception, I see a new SpotGPS sent at 8:45PM: “Puntito hotel once again. Que onda Vogel?” I ask the locals about the truck and they assured me it left Murgab at 7PM, and that it would make it to my friends in 2 hours at the most.

9:32PM
I receive a phone call from Andres. He’s using a satellite phone from someone who was driving past them. I can barely hear him, but confirm he has got my message: “A truck will be there in about 2 hours”

9:35PM
I receive a second call from Andres. He’s asking about the keys to the car…. I tell him they’re in my pocket.

10:50PM
Make it to the Hotel in Osh. Before saying goodbye to the driver, I get his cellphone number, and ask him one last time about the truck. He assures me that my friends will be in Osh early in the morning and that the truck to pick them up left Murgab at 7pm.

The hotel doesn’t have any available rooms. But this is our only meeting point in Osh, so I plead my way into a couch in the living/dining room. After the nice lady agrees, I start looking for a place to fix the Punto.

12:30AM
I haven’t heard from them and convince myself that no news is good news. I finally take a shower, but without any clean clothes, I just hit my couch wrapped in a towel. I set a timer for 30 minutes to monitor the situation.

1:00AM
No messages, all is looking good in my head.

1:30AM
All my fears come true. The rest of the team is still waiting for the truck to arrive. The SpotGPS says it all: “No lorry in sight. Puntito suite tonight”. I wake up, put on my dirty clothes and start putting a plan together.

With no one to help in the hotel, I set foot on the streets of Osh. I ask a Taxi to take me to the University, where I walk around and find empty room after empty room. Finally, at the computer lab I find a couple of students and ask them for help. First they seem disturbed since they have a project due, but they agree to help out when I offer my help in return (never thought I’d be programming while in Kyrgyzstan).

First we talk to the driver who arranged for the truck who now tells us that my friends will be picked up in the morning. I confirm for the tenth time that people in Murgab have a very distinct sense of time than what I’m used to. I try to extract an exact time but all I get is a number for the truck driver, and a time estimate of “early in the morning”.

We then try calling the truck driver and get a message saying that the phone is either turned off or outside of service areas. Great.

Finally, we manage to contact a taxi driver in Sary Tash who agrees to go fetch them (minus the car) if I request so at 5:30AM.

I call the US Embassy in Dushanbe and let them know of the situation. I clearly stated I didn’t expect an emergency to take place, but that I wanted them to be aware of the problem in case there was any.

3:00AM
One of the students gives me his phone number and I head back to the hotel.

3:30AM
Silence.

4:00AM
Silence.

4:30AM
Silence.

5:00AM
Silence.

5:30AM
Silence.

I get up to call the student who gave me his number and stumble upon the security guard at the hotel (no idea where he was before). After a lot of pictionary, he starts making some phone calls and finds a driver who could take me to the border with Tajikistan (I only have a single entry visa to Tajikistan) where I would wait for him to pick up my friends and the Punto and then drive us back to Osh. He says the driver could come to the hotel to discuss prices at about 6:30AM.

I finally call the student, but we can’t reach the taxi driver in Sary Tash.

I try calling the mechanic whose house we stayed in Murgab to ask him to send a taxi for them but I can’t get through. Instead I send a text message hoping he gets it soon.

I meet up with the American tourist who is being taken to the airport by the same local who drove me to Osh and that supposedly arranged the pickup. The local tells me the border was closed and that they couldn’t go through but that I should expect them in the afternoon in Osh for sure.

I call my father and ask for advice. I need someone to bounce ideas with and work out a solution – he’s fantastic at that sort of thing. We agree to send the truck to pick them up but that I would stay in Osh in case Andres and Enrique are already on their way to Osh without a way of communicating it (SpotGPS sometimes failed to send messages and could potentially run out of batteries). The fact that I can’t physically enter Tajikistan again due to the lack of a Visa also complicated matters.

I get a call from the mechanic in Murgab who agrees to send a Taxi. I also get in touch with the truck driver from Osh and with the help of the student, we work out a complicated paying structure (in case we need to cancel the operation halfway through) and sent the truck on its way.

With a taxi driver and two trucks on their way to the middle of nowhere, a place where roads mean absolutely nothing, with fallen bridges, and practically no tarmac, I sit and feel a horrible wave of responsibility fall upon me. I really hope they’re already on a lorry with no means of communication.

9:26AM
“Puntito on lorry, on our way to Osh!” I’m relieved and literally jump with tremendous happiness. I call the second truck driver and cancel the operation. I also call the US Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan who are also relieved.

9:26am – NOW
Too excited to sleep I set off to find a place to fix the car. The first stop was a bookstore, where I bought a couple of phrasebooks and a Russian-English dictionary. I’ve located a suitable mechanic who has agreed to take a look at the car tonight.

Now I’m just waiting for the team to arrive. I’ve gotten confirmation that they’ve successfully crossed into Kyrgyzstan with the car. Team Basic Cruising finally escaped the Pamir Highway!

What happens now?
I don’t know what the next steps are. We’ve made it really far and endured a horrible setback we didn’t have planned.
Furthermore, I’m not sure how or if the Puntito’s motor is repairable and how long it would take to fix. Add to that our deadlines to be back in the US and we have a very interesting set of conflicting factors to take into consideration. For the time being, I have secured rooms for Andres and Enrique at a nice hotel with hot showers and will have beers waiting for them.

This update needs to be brief. I had to buy petrol to power up a generator in order to set up a satellite link with the internet.

We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in Murgab, Tajikistan. It’s pretty much a ghost town.

The facts:
Leaving Dushanbe we could take two roads. The longer and easier route, or the shorter, more impressive, but way harder one. Seeing that we would only get one shot at the Pamir Highway, we opted for the harder one. Boy should we have listened to the locals.

In a few kilometers our exhaust had fallen off. We struggled with it, but managed to re-atach it. Then, a few kilometers after that, our sumpguard fell off. A few kilometers after that and it was dark. After about 10 hours of driving, we had only advanced 200 km. The route was amazing, and you won’t believe the footage we have of it, which will come (hopefully) soon.

We camped two nights in the Pamir Highway, one of the nights right across from Northern Afghanistan. It wasn’t really a surprise when we were visited twice by border patrol agents who were trying to figure out what on earth we were doing there. But it wasn’t a problem.

Then we made it to Khorog, picked up some more supplies and headed to Murgab. 100km short of Murgab our car finally died.

Luckily, a group of Italians we had met a couple of nights ago agreed to tow us to Murgab where we’ve spent the last 3 nights and it looks like we’ll be here tonight as well.

4 thrustwashers on 2 of our 4 cylinders are completely destroyed due to lack of oil since we managed to break a piece in the sump, causing poor distrubution in the engine. Our Puntito is undergoing full open heart surgery, but we’re staying positive and hoping we can be on our way tomorrow.

There are so many things I would like to write about, but my time has run out. We’re healthy and with more stories from the last couple of days than I could ever mange to write about. This is, after all, what we signed up for.

Cheers!

Today we will give the Pamir Highway a go.

The terrain is really challenging, usually requiring 4WD cars with suitable torque to be conquered, but in the spirit of the rally, we will attempt it anyways.

The car is doing good overall, although it’s definitely rattling all over the place. We’ll all have to wait and see.

We’re planning on camping our way around Tajikistan and don’t know when we’ll be back online. We have a couple of videos and updates we’d like to share, but there’s simply no time at the moment.

We’ve also disabled the comments section on this website as it was horribly attacked by spammers. Sorry.

Anyways, follow our Spot GPS updates on the Live Tracking tab or via twitter!!

It has been an incredible journey so far. Definitely very scary at times, but here we are.

Our Trajectory

Turkmenistan is a bizarre country, in my opinion the most mysterious one we’re visiting. Xenophobia runs very deep in the Turkmen government, which makes it a very difficult country to visit. The pathological state paranoia translates to extremely rigorous visa channels. We (and everyone doing the Mongol Rally and going through Turkmenistan) applied for our Turkmen visa in March and only obtained authorization last week – we were already considering alternatives of travel. Just for context, only 5 years ago ballet and listening to music in your car were prohibited by law.

After spending over 5 hours at the border with 3 other teams, we finally crossed into Turkmenistan. The previous day we were at an altitude of over 1900m, and we were steadily descending into a gigantic desert through a magnificent road. And then we saw it, Ashgabat. Sprawling in the middle of pure emptiness was the most bizarre and opulent city I had ever seen. With more fountains than Las Vegas and enough marble buildings to sustain the world’s marble industry, The City of Love (Arabic for Ashgabat), lay in front of our eyes. Soon we were all marbled. Enrique exclaimed “if an alien were to see this, they would easily think this is the center of the Earth”. I couldn’t come up with something better to describe what my eyes were seeing.

Gigantic marble structures, blue domes, fountains making fascinating patterns, and gold statues are an understatement. Yet, the city had an even more bizarre feeling to it. The streets were mainly empty and paroled by the police and the army. People wouldn’t laugh, our hotel and the restaurant we went to were bugged, and the entire affair had a very somber feeling to it. I wondered through the city to try and take some photos but our research was confirmed: photographs of buildings in Ashgabat was forbidden. I asked the surrounding officers for permission but it was constantly denied.

We ran into a couple of more Mongol Rally teams and set up to Turkmenabat, the border town between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the next morning. I was sad to leave Ashgabat since I wasn’t really able to explore the city (and also because the 20 meter statue of Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s previous president and man responsible for the city’s opulence, which used to stand on top of a 50 meter arc and turn with the sun had been demolished a few years back).

We started driving and soon ran into the worst road so far, connecting Ashgabat and Mary. With our sumpguard constantly scratching against the pavement and the car bouncing up and down, we now have more rattling sounds than we’d like. Some we know what they are, but most we really have no idea, although we each have our theories. With such a horrible highway and police officers stopping us for bribes every couple of kilometers, we weren’t able to make it all the way into Turkmenabat. Scared of driving in the dark, we took a side road into the desert making sure we wouldn’t get stuck in the dunes, and set up camp. This is when we realized we had forgotten something rather essential – mosquito repellent. Soon we had hundreds of mosquitos and ants feasting on our exotic mexican blood but there was little we could do. Andres set up a fire which drove some away, but it was still pretty bad. Both of my hands are itching as I type this. Our efforts to find mosquito repellent in this side of the world have been in vain so far.

Bribes in Turkmenistan
In chronological order – seems like we learned something
$40USD to the first set of police officers that stopped us in Turkmenistan
$9USD to the second set of police officers that stopped us in Turkmenistan
A signed photograph of yours truly to the third set of police officers that stopped us in Turkmenistan

In my opinion, the key to getting away with bribes is keeping composure, smile a lot, and play dumb tourist. The last officer I bribed was laughing very hard when I was telling him the days of the week in my horribly poor Turkmen. It was worth the shot and it worked!