黑洞社区

In July Mat Kier, a technician for Ridge & Partners, embarked on the Mongolian Rally challenge, a 15,000km road trip that starts in Brussels and ends in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar in five weeks.

The annual charity event鈥檚 organisers The Adventurers call it an 鈥渆pic journey over mountains, across deserts and through rivers鈥� 鈥� while trying to avoid massive potholes and boulders.

Kier, who is in the structures team in Ridge鈥檚 Winchester office, is blogging for 黑洞社区 about the trip鈥�

30 July

Tonight is our last night in Iran. Just got back from dinner with a local guy we met who invited us to meet his family. Not all of them though - apparently 600 of his extended family

live in a village, where they work a lot of land for food. We are beginning to feel like celebs - loads of people want to chat and take pictures. Off to the border tomorrow then onto Turkmenistan!

3 August

We鈥檝e reached Bukhara, the ancient city in Uzbekistan, after four long days in our sweat box (ie the Metro) and camping out in the desert and on the Turkmenistan border.

4 August

As predicted the car鈥檚 suspension has failed on one side. We talk to the hotel and after much discussion about how we had liquid/gas suspension we follow Alli, a taxi driver, to a 鈥榤aster鈥� mechanic (his bother/mate). They fix the yet-another-buckled-wheel and a dodgy door but not the suspension.

We then head back to the hotel - or so we thought. We end up at Alli鈥檚 for tea and fruit. We get talking about holidays, his family general stuff and then beer and vodka. Alli is a vodka man. After much joking we follow him back to the hotel - or so we thought.

What we didn鈥檛 realise was that we had agreed to go drinking with Alli. In a local place in the new town we have shaslick (kebab), shisha, ice cream and two bottles of vodka! The bill comes in at just under 1 million Ubekistan Son!

Thankfully this is only about $160.

11 August

So alive and well in Barnaul. Re-planning as Mongolia very kindly decided to bring a new rule on the 8th August! That means you have to pay a deposit of 15.5% of the customs value of your car which somehow works out to be in the region of $4500!!!!! (For a 拢75 car????) Which is some thing like 9,000,000 local Mongolian.

So we鈥檙e now doing the 鈥楳ongol鈥� rally which doesn鈥檛 go through Mongolia!

Mat Kier is a technician for Ridge & Partners