So as you know, we’ll start our round-the-world-trip with the Mongol Rally. But what is the Mongol Rally we hear you think.
Each summer, the Mongol Rally thunders 10,000 miles across the mountains, desert and steppe of Europe and Asia. Bollocks to tarmac, ABS and gadgets that help you find your navel. The Mongol Rally is about getting lost, using your long neglected wits, raising shedloads of cash for charity and scraping into the finish line with your vehicle in tatters and a wild grin smeared across your grubby face.
If nothing goes wrong, everything has gone wrong.
ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE
We really wanted to go traveling but, as you know, it’s not so easy actually to leave everything and everyone behind for an unknown period of time. After our first backpacking trip to Norway in the summer of 2015 and reading some travel blogs, our wanderlust was bigger than ever. First we wanted to leave home after New Year, but eventually this wouldn’t worked out because we didn’t had enough budget back then. Our next goal was to leave in April but that was a little bit too hard for Myrthe to quit her job (because she just started in January). But then we discovered the Mongol Rally. A rally that goes from the UK to Mongolia, all to raise money for charity. This was just perfect, it has the perfect route that we wanted to do and it’s a hell of an adventure! Now we had a start date that we couldn’t change anymore and enough money saved to leave. No more waiting or just talking about it, but actually doing it!
We’re really excited about this adventure because it’s something different than anything else. We need to buy ourselves a (shitty) car of no more than 1200cc, we need to pimp it, find sponsors and make it rally proof. Actually that’s a lie because we know already that we’re going to breakdown multiple times, if not a hundred times. With the possibility to end up in a desert where we won’t see anybody in days. That’s what the rally is all about. About the full-experience, the adventure. That’s why there won’t be any back-up or support and no set route. Just us, our fellow adventurists and our tiny old car.
SUPPORT US AND SAVE THE WORLD
As we mentioned before, we also need to raise money for charity. At least £500 goes to Cool Earth, a charity that works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction. All the other money that we can raise goes out to a self-chosen charity. We have chosen to raise money for Plan Belgium because they are helping a lot of children who live in poverty to give them a better education and to protect them against child marriage. We think that a good education is important for everybody on this planet. This charity is also interesting for us because when we head further into Asia, we’ll see the improvements that Plan does for the children with our own eyes.
