Dear Allcam

I am writing to thank you one again for the support you gave to me (Rich) and my friend Ben in our quest to drive a Fiat Panda from London to Mongolia last year (under the banner of Team Mongolian Job).

Thanks to our sponsors we managed to kit the car out so well that it actually made it…a final distance of 8,300miles! We also raised a whopping £3500 for the two nominated charities, 'Send a Cow' and 'Save the Children'

The DVD player you donated to us was simply excellent. It was a real life saver as the roads were too bumpy for our car stereo to even function...so we just used the DVD player, with an aux-in cable, perfect!

You'll understand it's impossible to sum up such a journey in a brief way, but I've had a go anyway, at the bottom of this letter…please feel free to use this in your marketing materials or on your website. I've plenty of pictures I can send you too, please just ask.

I've also put together this presentation, mixing photos to music...summing up our amazing adventure quite nicely. If you've a spare few minutes, do have a look – it shows the car in all its glory, and proves we made it!

Mongol Rally summary

It's a windows media file, and because of the software I used to put together the presentation, you'll need Windows Media Player 10 to see the images (otherwise you'll just get music!)

The support everyone gave us was a real boost and gave us the belief we needed to complete the journey. We were donated tools and spares to repair things that broke, and the most satisfying thing was that once we had finished with them, we were able to pass them on to people who truly needed them and they were massively grateful.

We were glad to display your logos on the car and promote you on our own website www.team-mongolian-job.com

As for the future, well after spending a couple of months vowing to myself that this was a one-off, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, I'm now ready and raring to go again! I'm having a think about future projects – that would again involve me using all of my annual leave to do a ridiculous but fun journey in the name of charity. One of the options involves traversing India by rickshaw, something that I might do this Christmas. Do let me know if you might be interested in supporting that campaign.

Sorry its taken so long to get round to formally thanking you. I really am truly grateful. The generosity of people, no matter how small, has touched me and the lives of people across the globe (literally). Thanks so much again.

My regards

Rich

Team Mongolian Job - Journey Summary

The journey was massive, and took 23 days of driving day-and-night. It took us from the launch in Hyde Park, through France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany during the first night and into the Czech republic. We were in Prague after just 24 hours.

After a well earned rest, we then trundled off, now in convoy with 2 other Pandas, through Poland and overnight through Lithuania and into Latvia by daybreak. The next couple of days were spent getting into Russia (surprisingly difficult) and then trundling on a never ending road to Moscow.

After getting completely lost in Southern Russia, having to bribe our way past corrupt police and spending hours just reaching dead ends we finally made it into Kazakhstan, just 7 days into our trip. The nature of our trip changed dramatically at this point. The roads ceased to exist, to be replaced by sand and camels.

A week or so passed by as we crawled through mud and sand, an astonishing 1500-2000 miles, largely off-road. How the car got through it, we'll never know…and the worrying thing at the time was knowing that after our little tour of Kyrgyzstan, we'd have to travel right back through Kazakhstan!

After lording it with people 'bigger than the police' in Kyrgyzstan, we took our sore heads back through Kazakhstan, luckily on a tarmac route for most of the way, and headed towards a special 'secret border' that we'd learned of. This was to cause us immeasurable difficulty, as the army weren't expecting us at their military border with central Russia. 24 hours in jail later, we made our way round to another border, which we passed through without incident.

Then came the Altay region in Russia – a real gem of a place, mountainous, beautiful, truly remote. By this time we realised that Mongolia was to be a sprint as we only had 8 days left.

Upon crossing into Mongolia, even Kazakhstan's non-roads were made to look excellent, as we were faced with a wet, barren, cloudy landscape. No roads. Not even tracks, nothing. Our only hope was to follow lines of telegraph poles, on the assumption they'd lead somewhere.

Several days later, and after a horrible 'wrong turn' which took us towards the Chinese mountains , we emerged in the Gobi Desert. Sand, stones and baking heat turned the car into an oven. Our route was intermittently interrupted by fast flowing glacial rivers. Our attempts to get through these were comedic, and often  involved emptying the car of all luggage, attaching a home-made snorkel to the exhaust and then driving as fast as possible into 2-3 feet of flowing ice cold water!

But we made it, eventually with 5 of us in the car, Ben and myself, 2 guys from another of the cars in our convoy (who's car lost out in a face off with a large Gobi rock) and bizarrely a random Mongolian fella. We trundled on into deepest inner Mongolia, 8,300 miles from home and astonished that we'd made it.

Thanks again,

Rich

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