Team Basic Cruising Goes to Mongolia

In Zanjan we met a 20 year old German biker who had been touring Iran for 2 weeks. I asked him what was his favorite thing and he said “a couple of days ago I met some Iranians who invited me to their home and it was wonderful – way better than all the sights in Esfahan and Tehran”.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that Turkish driving was crazy. Well, Iranian driving is mentally insane. Basically anything goes. Cars driving in a pitch dark highway without any lighting, cars u-turning in the middle of busy highways, bikes and bicycles riding in the wrong direction, lanes that are completely disregarded, and add to that pedestrians who cross just about anywhere they like. We had to drive through Iran as part of this rally, but you must really be mentally insane or be an adrenaline junky if you choose to drive through this streets as a tourist.

We paid a quick visit to the Mausoleum of Oljaitu and continued on to Tehran. In Tehran we got ridiculously lost and a local who was previously chatting with pals on the streets offered to drive his car in front of ours and guide us in the right direction. We continued on to Sari where the story was repeated as we were lost trying to find a place to eat. Two young guys in the street hopped back to their car and we followed them to a pizza joint. They then offered us for a place to stay in their home and asked us if we wanted to take a dip on the Caspian Sea. We really struggled with this one – on the one hand, our guides constantly repeated that in a situation like this we should just say “yes” since it would be our chance to really witness Iranian hospitality, but our plan was to wake up at 4AM in the morning to try and cross the border to Turkmenistan. After lots of back and forth between us, we decided to turn down the offer.

During the month of August 2011, muslims are observing Ramazan (Ramadan), which means the entire country is fasting during the day. For various circumstances, we have been fasting during this time as well. As we sat on the pizza restaurant, we were extremely hungry (not having eaten since the early morning) so we each ordered a pizza. After 3 slices, we were each full and couldn’t continue eating. I think our stomachs had shrunk (this was the third or fourth day we had been fasting). We asked for pizza boxes, packed them up, and went to sleep.

Once at the hotel, we had realized it had gotten extremely late and it was unrealistic and dangerous for us to wake up at 4AM. We further lamented our denial to accept the young man’s invitation to stay at his house.

The next day we woke up and did some further planning on the route. We got an e-mail from an Italian team that the border crossing between Samarqand (Uzbekistan) and Pendjikent (Tajikistan) was closed. This would be a major setback for us and are still trying to find out whether this is true and how we would go about it.

We continued driving to Gonbad-e Havus where we saw the Funerary Tower. Here we tried to make our way into Turkmenistan through the Inchehborum/Pol border crossing. Despite our understanding that the border would be open until 4:30pm, we were informed that it had closed at 2pm. We decided to keep driving on the Iranian side to make another border crossing the next day.

The Best Dinner
At this point we had run out of Rials (Iranian currency) and gas. Credit cards don’t work in Iran and you can’t take out cash with debit cards so we had to find someone to exchange us Dollars to Rials. After a lot of asking, drawings, hand gestures, and a little Farsi we’ve been picking up, we finally managed to trade enough to fill up our tanks (still at the black market rate since we never quite figured out where to obtain our foreigner ration card – which would’ve been even more expensive anyway). Once here, we noticed a lot of car shops, which would be an excellent opportunity to find anti-freeze. We found a store that sold it but it was closed. No problem, we were in Iran. Locals knew what we were after, and they made some phone calls so the owner showed up, opened the shop for us and sold us a bottle of anti-freeze.

The next thing on our mind: to eat (we had fasted again). We asked around and we were invited to a traditional Iranian restaurant. Once here we were given the warmest of welcomes. Despite our horrible attire (everyone was very well dressed), they welcomed us to have a traditional Ramazan breaking of the fast. The food was delicious and definitely the best we’ve had so far. When we asked to pay, they told us that we didn’t need to pay. We insisted on paying for our delicious 5 course meal, and even then we weren’t allowed to pay for the full amount. I cannot explain how welcoming and wonderful everyone was. This was definitely a highlight of our trip.

Joyriding with Iranian Soldiers
After that delicious meal, we decided to head for the border town between Iran and Turkmenistan, Bajgiran, so we could attempt crossing it early in the morning. When we arrived it was late and we couldn’t find a place to stay, so we drove around until we found what looked like military quarters. There were Iranian soldiers with guns. When we first approached the military post, they got a bit alarmed, guns were raised and they were stepping back. I told Enrique to lower the lights, which he had already done. I stepped out of the car, and said “excuse me” in Farsi. Soon a soldier stepped out of the gates, asked me in English what I wanted, and I said we were looking for a hotel. They soon asked for passports and made sure we were legally in the country. Soon, about 6 or 7 soldiers were outside asking us questions about our trip, laughing with us, and being really friendly. After a while, two soldiers left their guns behind, hopped into the car with us (they crammed themselves in the front passenger’s seat, Mon and I crammed ourselves into the back compartment), and guided us to the nearest hotel, where they translated everything from English to Farsi and back. Once at the hotel we offered them a ride back, but they refused. The soldiers were very happy we were visiting Iran, and one last time we felt the warmth of the Iranian people who weren’t only happy for us to be visiting their country, but were very welcoming, friendly, and continually offered their help.

Iran (August 5th, 2011)

We woke up at 5:30AM to leave Kahta by 6:00AM and make it to the 7:00AM ferry. The place that looked so desolated last night was full of live and a small ferry was floating on the bank of the road. We boarded the ferry and soon we were the topic of conversation of everyone on board. People gathered around the car and we tried to convey what we were trying to do. I’m not sure if they ever really understood us, but it was still a fun ride. A couple of little kids asked us to take pictures of them and huge smiles appeared when we agreed.

Crossing the body of water we confirmed what we had read on our guidebook – this used to be a road that had been flooded. Every now and then you could see road signs sticking out of the water.

Our goal for the day was to cross the Iran border. On the way we struggled with the Turkish roads which were heavily under construction. Despite the breathtaking scenery of southeastern Anatolia, we were constantly frustrated as few kilometers often turned into long hours of driving.

Right before arriving to the Iran border we made a bet. Enrique said it would take us 45 minutes to cross it, I said an hour, and Andres said 2 hours. The process for crossing with a car wasn’t entirely straightforward but we figured it out. Andres had to drive the car through the border after getting stamped out of Turkey. Enrique and myself had to walk across the border and meet Andres on the other side.

Crossing the border took about 5 minutes for Enrique and myself and another 46 for Andres, since quite a lot of paperwork is required to be shown and the car had to be inspected by a guard.

And then something wonderful happened. Everything we had read about Iran said that it was important to leave all stereotypes behind and enter the country with an open mind. Literature claimed Iranians are amongst the most friendly and welcoming people in the world. At the border we entertained curious locals and friendly guards with many questions about our trip into Iran as the looked at the car, our maps, and guidebooks with utmost detail and wonder. Friendliness is an understatement.

The people we’ve met so far are incredibly hospitable. They love that we’re visiting Iran. We were given phone numbers to reach out in case of emergencies, we were asked for Facebook accounts to stay in touch, and we even had a guy drive in front of us to guide us to the nearest gas station and buy gas for us (in Iran, foreigners must obtain a permit to buy gas and the rate for it is about four times as expensive as for the locals – we didn’t have that card yet but needed gas badly, which the guy who led the way described as “cheaper than water”).

And then, we took an impressive highway that connects Tabriz with Tehran. With smooth asphalt, 6 lanes, indications in Farsi and English, welcoming and patient toll booth attendants, and good lighting – it came as true bliss after the heavily under construction Turkish road nightmare we had endured that morning.

We made it to our destination after over 1200 kilometers and 16 hours of driving. It was definitely a long day, but definitely necessary in order to play catchup with time.

We spent the night in Zanjan.

The Car

We’ve had a couple of failures with the car that I hadn’t had time to post. Here they come:

Hydraulic Steering System Failure
Sometimes when we steer too hard (usually while maneuvering in a tight space at slow speeds – think parking or u-turning), our hydraulic steering system fails which means the steering wheel gets pretty hard to move. It’s safe to continue driving like this, but stopping and starting the engine seems to fix the problem. This is a recurrent issue and has happened sporadically throughout the trip.

Fuse Blowout
A couple of days ago (I believe it was between Romania and Bulgaria), we had a small electrical meltdown. To our cigarette lighter we hooked up a 12V splitter. To one 12V supply we connected our mapless GPS unit which provides us with distances covered in kilometers (the car, being English, uses the terribly inconvenient measuring unit called “miles”), altitude in meters, GPS coordinates, average driving speed, and many other metrics that have proven to be terribly useful while navigating. To the other 12V supply, we hooked up a DC to AC inverter so we could charge up our electronics while on the road (mainly batteries for our cameras and sometimes cellphones). The problem is that the hole for the cigarette lighter is way bigger than anything we’ve tried to hook into it, so our splitter is using combination of duct and masking tape to stay in place, but it invariably becomes loose. The spikes in current that occur from quick disconnections and connections blew up a fuse in the car’s electrical system, then a fuse in the splitter, then one in the inverter, and finally another fuse in the car’s electrical system. We re-ingenered things in the road and it’s been more stable now.

Engine light
We also had the engine light come up once more, this time without the temperature gauge dropping to zero. We decided to continue driving since we’d seen so many faults with the electrical system and the light went off by itself. It hasn’t turned on in the last couple of days.

Driver’s Door
No idea how this happened, but while we were in the Cappadocia, the driver’s door just wouldn’t close. A lot of fiddling with the locks and the door got it working again. The problem reoccurred that same day once more but it has gone away ever since.

Media
We’ve struggled really hard finding fast internet connections lately, which prohibits us from uploading videos or pictures. We’ll continue monitoring the situation and will surely upload some stuff when/if we can.

Today we woke up at 4:45AM in the morning to hop on a hot air balloon and witness Cappadocia from the sky. We got back to the hotel at about 7AM, took a quick cold shower, had breakfast and hit the road. We wanted to visit Mt. Nemrut and were given an interesting choice of routes – approach the mountain from the North via 98 km of a secondary road or approach the mountain from the South primarily via main roads but with about 200 more kilometers.

We read on the guide that the Northern route included many unpaved sections and we decided to play it safe and the the southern route. After about 600 km we reached the top of Mt. Nemrut with plans to drive another 300 km.

The route to Mt. Nemrut was a gorgeous drive between valleys, through a canyon of carved out stones. A steep road towards the top proved to be challenging for the Punto, which struggled at times but in the end proved itself as a worthy challenger to the terrain – making it all the way to the top. Once there we were greeted by an enigmatic site full of colossal statues and a beautiful sunset.

We hoped back to the car and started driving towards Siderek. The sun was down and we found ourselves driving in the dark again, but it seemed necessary since we’re a bit behind schedule. Halfway between Mt. Nemrut and Siderek, Andrés noticed something odd in our map – a light red line along our route that crossed a tiny body of water. After referencing the legend and telling us that it meant “maritime route”, we decided to continue driving since there were clear road signage for Siderek with distance markings. And then we saw an interesting sign – the picture of a car falling into a body of water (400 m). Another sign – same picture, but now only 200 m. And once again, now at 100 m. And then we saw it. A body of water. Impossible to cross.

It was 9:15pm and we were surrounded by empty shops and restaurants. We saw a sign that read “Ferryboat” and listed some times, starting with 8:00 and ending with 21:30. It seemed like we were in luck! A ferry would come in 15 minutes and help us cross to the other side. So we waited, and we waited, and the ferry never came. The place we were was completely deserted.

After some time we decided to head back and ask for directions. Not entirely sure how we were able to communicate, but we think we understood the following:
1. No more ferryboats today. The next one is at 8AM.
2. Going around the body of water that’s preventing us to get to Siderek would take approximately 6 hours.

We kept going back with hopes of finding a place to stay. Luckily our guides had some recommendations nearby. We drove back, stopped for a Kebab, got an offer to drink tea at a Turkish home which we politely turned down, and eventually found a pretty good and cheap place to stay with WiFi!

Tomorrow we will attempt to cross with the ferry at 7AM and drive all the way to Iran. Let’s see if we make it this time around.

Sorry for the lack of updates. We promise they will come, but in the meantime I wanted to remind everyone that we send daily tweets from our SpotGPS to the Basic Cruising Twitter Account. You can also keep track of us in real time via the Live Tracking System.

Istanbul
What a magnificent city! I really can’t find any other way to convey what I felt as I walked around Istanbul but with that one word “magnificent”. We walked and bargained in the Grand Bazaar, visited the Blue Mosque, admired the Hagia Sophia, ventured into the Basilica Cistern, relaxed at a rooftop bar, and enjoyed many authentic kebabs!

Despite getting horrendously lost as we entered the city, and fending for our lives with our fellow turk drivers (Mexico City driving is a breeze compared to what these people are capable of!), Istanbul was a really breathtaking experience.

Ankara
Nothing much to say about Ankara, we arrived pretty late, went out to have dinner at an authentic Turkish place (which was delicious), went to bed, and were at the wheel by 8:00AM the next day.

Cappadocia
Wow.

Approximately 9 to 3 million years ago, a volcano erupted in this region of Turkey and formed a magnificent set of valleys and rock formations that look as if they were taken straight out of a fantasy book. No wonder George Lucas chose this location for one of Star Wars’ Episodes.

We crawled through underground cities, wondered around the Open Air Museum, hiked to the top of rock castles, and took a balloon ride at dawn.

Moving On
Today we head more East, and have about 22 hours to drive before arriving to our first destination city in Iran. We have also received confirmation from The Visa Machine that we will be allowed to go through Turkmenistan which is a logistical blessing. I can’t explain how excited we are about what’s coming next. It’s about to get funky!

Después de una pésima noche acampando en un pueblo de mala muerte en Rumania, el ánimo se recupero instantaneamente al cruzar la famosa carretera Transfagarasan, reconocida como la mejor carretera del mundo por Top Gear.

Craziness.

This. Road. Is. Epic.

Yesterday we hit the beach at the Black Sea in Bulgaria at a place called Sunny Beach. We relaxed for a while and went for a swim.

When we went back to our car, this is what we found:

We’ve had trouble understanding where is it OK to park. We got parking tickets in Germany and Hungary, but paying them was a whole adventure on its own, so all we did was keep trucking. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t just wave this one off… So we called in and 15 minutes later we were trying to convince two guys that worked at the parking department in Sunny Beach (who didn’t speak anything other then Bulgarian) to take the clamp off. They wanted us to pay the fee of 25USD but after lots of back and forth, talk about Mexico, the Rally, Superman, El Chicharito, and our Cucaracha horn, it was all laughs and smiles:

We continued our drive towards Turkey and stumbled into a bunch of other teams including Rally Team America at the Bulgaria-Turkey border. Jeff and Lex had just been through the entire border crossing process so they walked us through it and probably saved us a bunch of time. Thanks!

Getting our Turkish Visas at the border was a breeze and overall we must’ve stopped for about 30 minutes or so. After the border, the roads turned into real bliss, with amazing pavement and multiple driving lanes. We made it in no time to Istanbul where we got horribly lost since we have no detailed city maps and Istanbul is huge! Before knowing it, we had crossed the Bosphorus and were in Asia! If you have been reading our other posts, you must understand this is an important milestone since chances are 5 teams won’t make it past Europe!

Anyway, after about an hour of driving around, we finally found it: The W Hotel in Istanbul was shinning in all its glory in front of us. After days of sleeping in cheap hotels and camping with Gypsies, we were at one of Istanbul’s finest establishments, all thanks to our good friend Shaker who offered us a place to stay in the top floor of the hotel for free.

Shaker
Shaker is an honorable member of Team Basic Cruising because he was very close of doing the first leg of the rally (Goodwood – Istanbul) with us. Due to unfortunate causes, Shaker wasn’t able to join us but we met with him here and it’s been great seeing him. We feel blessed for the friends we’ve run into during this trip. They have gone completely out of their way to accommodate us and have exceeded what anyone could ever imagine from a hospitality standpoint. Shaker has also been an important donor to our fundraising efforts.

Shaker, there are no words we can use to thank you. You have a very kind heart and are more than a friend to us. Your continued love, friendship, support, and craziness is very dearly to those around you.

Thank you once again, I look forward to seeing you soon brother.
Love,
V

Yesterday was a slow but much needed day. We finally managed to buy all our remaining items in our shopping list which included 2 jerry cans, a shovel, sleeping pads, and a small cooking stove. We replaced a couple of blown fuses and bought a replacement light bulb for our headlamps.

We also took the car to the local Fiat dealership in Cluj Napoca since our engine light had come up again the night before and the temperature gauge had again dropped to zero. They couldn’t determine what was wrong with the car, they suspect a faulty water temperature sensor but inspection of the sensor showed no damage. They polished the contact points of the sensor and sent us on our way.

Unfortunately, once we had finished pimping out our Fiat Punto (which remains nameless), it was almost 5PM which completely destroyed any and all possibilities of reaching the beach party at Vama Veche on time. We decided to find a spot to camp in hopes of reaching the Transfagarasan early in the morning. It got dark really quickly and we found ourselves driving around in a pretty awful city looking for a place to camp (as pointed out by our map). We finally found it but had run out of local currency. The price was 28 Leis or 7 Euros. We ended up paying with 5 Euros, 2 Leis, and 1 Dollar.

After battling many second thoughts of running away and finding a hotel instead, we set up camp, built our brand new camping stove, and heated up some tomato soup we had picked up for dinner. Our hunger had grown to a point where we were having trouble thinking straight, but the soup was getting warmer, and soon we would feast – and then we hit our lowest point in the trip – the soup was spilled all over the grass. And there we were camping out in a horrible place, with our soup spilled on the ground, and all three of us looking really hopelessly at each other. We must have looked at each other for about a minute, until Enrique started screaming “NOOOOO” at the sky to break the silence. Fortunately we had planned to eat some eggs with sausage the next morning, so we went to the car and cooked that instead. We went to sleep to sleep things off.

Today we woke up at 5:30AM, we were packed and out of the campsite by 6:30 and headed straight to the Transfagarasan, which was everything Top Gear had promised and more. The road to get out on the south side of the mountains was really bad, and we found our first set of pothole fields which lasted for about 60km.

We obviously ran into many other Mongol Rally teams and talked to a couple of them. It seems like here is where a bunch of teams split for either the southern, most difficult, route and the northern route. The teams taking the southern route have Istanbul as their next target, but we’ve chosen to hit the beach in Bulgaria to see and enjoy the Black Sea.

Some thoughts on Romania
Driving around we started running into people riding chariots pulled by donkeys and sometimes horses. The roads started getting significantly worse but still really good in general. People definitely drive more aggressive here then in Germany, but nothing compared to Mexican standards. When we drove through the little towns, we would wave to the kids who would smile and wave back. People remained friendly, putting up with our non-existent Romanian and communicating with us in combinations of Spanish, German, Romanian, and English. We did pick up a couple of phrases and people would really enjoy it when, after minutes of trying to understand each other, I would say thanks in Romanian. Big smiles, hand shakes, and overall great vibes would always follow. Another crazy thing about Romania: they have Julio Iglesias’ CDs at every gas station we stopped at.

Crossing the Border to Bulgaria
We couldn’t find the damn thing. It’s probably obvious from our spot gps route. I don’t know if we missed a big sign somewhere or what, but we just couldn’t find it. We obviously knew the Danube divided Bulgaria from Romania so we tried to use that to give us some directions and finally talked to some locals who pointed us in the right direction – not before trespassing the free zone between Romania and Bulgaria without a permit. Despite the signage for punishment, nobody seemed to really care, so the same way we entered (blasting through a security checkpoint), we left.

When we finally made it to the border, we were greeted by the cyrillic alphabet and surprised border guards that started repeating “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico!” After waiting for ten or so minutes without our passports, our passports were returned but not without some talk about Chicharito and Dimitar Berbatov (Bulgarian soccer player for Manchester United who got benched by Mexico’s Chicharito).

Once at Varna, we made a quick stop at a shopping mall to get something to drink and catch some wifi. Talking with locals we were told to leave Varna and head south on the coast to find prettier and cleaner beaches. Found a good cheap rate at Palazzo Byala Hotel with free parking, free wifi, and breakfast included in the city of Byala. We’ve arrived at night, so we’ll see what’s waiting for us in the morning. The one restaurant that was opened had fantastic pizza. Let’s see if these Bulgarian beaches are anywhere as nice as our Mexican beauties!

Our plan for tomorrow is to head to the beach very early to relax, and then storm all the way to Istanbul where we’ll hopefully run into a good friend of ours, Sir Shaker Muasher!!

Yesterday we took it easy, waking up at around 11am with plans to tour Budapest for a bit and then head off to Romania. At the hostel we were staying, we were offered a cheap laundry service which we agreed to take based on the promise that our clothes would be given back to us by 10am.

Needless to say, we woke up, went to pick up our clothes only to find them all wet and dispersed in hangers so they can air-dry. We told them we were in a hurry to get on the road again and asked if they could put our stuff in the drier. They had no idea what we were talking about. After trying to explain to them what a drier was, we did some Google magic only to find the following phrase “there is no such thing as a laundromat in Budapest”. They signaled us to a place near the Basilica where they might help us. A quick trip around the city with hopes of getting our clothes dried ended up in a battle with an “electric condenser” so we decided to lay our our clothes in the car and hit the road. It’s was a pretty damp ride.

Before leaving Budapest we did get to do some sightseeing and ran into many other Mongol Rally teams. All other teams were in good spirits and with plans of hitting the beach party by the Black Sea organized by The Paramongols, so that’s where we’re now headed, to Vama Veche.

Unfortunately, while Enrique and Andrés were dealing with the laundry, I was fixing up our electrical system and had to declare “La Cucaracha” horn dead – after all those hours of fun, our little horn died… RIP.

Romania
We crossed into Romania and were stopped at the border for quite some time. The guards were pretty friendly and were obviously fans of Chicharito. Unfortunately we did lose about an hour there. Furthermore, Romania was our second time zone crossing, so we lost another hour. It was quickly getting dark and we still had a long ways to go.

Not after long, the sun was down and we noticed that our dipped headlights weren’t working, which made it impossible to drive through the countryside. We decided to turn around and stop at a gas station at the border town we had just left. We first suspected a broken fuse, but close inspection of all of them proved us wrong — all fuses were working fine. Since both of our lights were broken, we thought it could be a broken relay, which are difficult to debug. Slowly we worked our way around the electrical system for the headlamps and dipped headlights, which none of us had ever touched. We nailed it down to the light bulbs and were pleased for having bought a replacement set of lights at Halfords in the UK. Well, I took the burnt-out bulb only to find that we didn’t have proper replacements.

It was here that our saviour, Florin (the attendant at the gas station), stepped in by providing exact replacements. After tedious fiddling with the lamps, we finally replaced the lamps and had a new friend, which didn’t speak a word of English, Spanish, or German. Florin was really curious of our adventure and with lots of signs and mostly Spanish (Romanian is remarkably similar to Spanish), we were able to communicate with him what we were doing. We pulled out our maps and he gave us some good driving tips for getting around Romania. He offered us free coffee for our drive and set us off into the wild!

We originally had planned to make it all the way to Târgu Mure?, but decided to stop short at Cluj Napoca, which was about 120 km away. About an hour into the drive, our temperature gauge dropped to zero and the engine light came on – damn. We slowed down and were shortly stopped by the Policy afterwards. Enrique was driving and we were told we broke several laws:

• Speed Limit was 50km/h, we were doing about 65km/h
• Overtaking in a solid line, we had overtaken a slow car while the line was dashed
• Driving with a non Romanian license, we obviously did break this one, but it sounds like that was a made up law

To this point we have no idea what exactly happened, but we were let go with just a warning… After about 15km we reached the first hotel and went straight to bed — not before taking all of our damp clothes from the car and dispersing them all over the room.

Today we are planning on taking the car to a Fiat agency, buy some more camping supplies, head off to the Transf?g?r??an (featured in Top Gear, and make it all the way to Vama Veche for the Beach Party.

Will we make it? Stay tuned.

Hungría nos trato muy bien. La gente se porto muy amable, la ciudad de Budapest fue realmente interesante, sus mujeres impresionantemente hermosas, pero lo mas asombroso nos lo fuimos a topar detrás de una modesta gasolinera rumbo a Rumania.

…más por venir proximamente, por el momento me retiro a dormir después de una pesada manejada nocturna por Rumania. El día de hoy tuvimos que parar 200 km antes de nuestro objetivo.