Mongauloises in Mongolia

We arrived in Ulan Bataar on Sunday morning at 4am and had an hours
nod in the car before heading in to town to the End of the Road finish
line for 6am a mere 11 hours late for the party. We lost one of our
convoy here in this photo as Colin from Team TorbayTourists hit a big
rock the size of a turtle which stopped him dead raising his Panda off
it's rear wheels smashing the gearbox bell housing. 4 hours later we
had helped him get going again by straightening out his engine mounts
only to later fail as sand was scouped up into the clutch and starter
motor and the drive shafts snapped. We left him with a lorry driver
who took him back to the airport.
We now were 2 cars with Lloyd and Simon in their 22yr old 2CV. They
after many repair stops had to quit 31 miles from home with a sheared
suspension arm at 2am on Sunday morning. Steve and Will soldiered on
alone feeling their way through the myriad crisscrossing tracks in the
dark completely exhausted but triumphant. We fly to Berlin tomorrow so
should be back in Blighty shortly after. What a fabulous adventure it
has been and we met up in UB last night with the whole gang. The 2CV
Bristol Heroes had been rescued by a passing lorry when a minibus full
of Mongols hoiked the car by hand onto the truck and brought them in
to town. Naturally many beers later we were still swapping horror
stories but we knew that our little car had stepped up to the
challenge and we too had made it. Viva Les Mongauloises!