Almost Ready

Only four days to go. The Rally better be an amazing experience, because it's cost us a lot of time and energy in the last few weeks and months. Not just us in fact, but also the people around us. I wanted to take this time to thank them for their enormous patience. At some point they were probably ready to strangle the 413th person to ask me about the Rally (God knows I was ready to do it), but they didn't. For that, I am grateful.

It's not just cost us a lot nerves, however, it's also cost us an amazing amount of money. Between visas and last minute shopping, we've blown through 600€ just today. If think about doing the Rally next year and you read this page on the Mongol Rally website, here's some advice: Don't believe their lies! Fortunately we've had some amazing sponsors and I'd like to thank them as well. Without them, we would have had to cancel the Rally, simply for financial reasons.

Also a big thanks to everyone who donated to our charities. You've done good. Literally. Note that there's been a bit of a snafu with transferring the money collected at the STC. Fortunately that's been corrected and the money is on it's way to us and then on to the charities. I hope we can get this done before the start of the Rally.

Speaking of the start of the Rally, there's finally been some solid information regarding the London launch. If you're in London over the weekend and want to hook up with us, you can do it here:

Location: North Carriage Drive, Hyde Park
Entrance: Victoria Gate, off Bayswater Road

The launch event is from 11:00 to 13:00. Or you can come to the party on Friday night. See the official rally homepage for more infos and tickets. We've already given away our contingent of discounted tickets to people who are slightly cooler than you, however. Sorry.

Anyway, we're this close to being ready to go. We've got the visas for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and our passports are on the way back to us. We might have gotten the visas for Kyrgyztan as well, but that would have been cutting it very close. The passports would have been back an hour(!) before our planned departure to London. Considering the somewhat flaky visa service, we decided not to take the chance.

From what I understand the car is ready as well, and we've bought pretty much all the equipment we need. Still need to find places to stay in London and Prague, we need to buy some food and there's one last vaccination shot tomorrow. Oh, and I still need some decent shoes.

Otherwise I think we're good to go. Let's hope I'm right.