News / All the way to Ulan Bator
HAVE you got a sense of adventure? It would be hard to match that of three 32 year olds from Lerwick who could be considered little short of barmy.
Their summer holiday plans involve piling three men into a tiny car with a terrible track record and driving it 1,000 miles to London.
Then they face another 10,000 miles across some of the worst road conditions the planet can throw up on their way to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia,.
The idea of travelling through 18 countries in a little car – rated one out of five by one auto magazine – started off in the bored brain of offshore electrical inspector Andrew Hawick four years ago.
“I was working in the Brents at the time, had a lot of spare time on my hands and eBay was getting a bit expensive, so I was looking for something to do.
“I was thinking about getting a motorbike and going to Africa, then I came across the Plymouth to Dakar rally for old bangers and then I stumbled across the Mongol Rally,” he said, with an excitement that still sounds barely contained.
That enthusiasm dragged in his friends Stuart Cameron, a mechanic who has never driven on the UK mainland before, and truck driver Kevin Williamson, who apparently suffers from carsickness when he’s not at the wheel.
The rules of the Mongo Rally state the vehicle of choice must be no more than 1.2 litres and no less than 10 years old, so that the Mongolian government aren’t left with a bunch of useless minis on their hands.
In their hunt for the right steed, the intrepid trio came across a Perodua Kenari – a funny little motor from Malaysia with a high roof and little wheels. Under the bonnet is 989 cubic centimetres of cylinder space and the power of 55 horses.
They knocked a man in Manchester down to £700 after seeing his advert in Autotrader and with the kind help of Shetland Transport, brought it north to their home islands.
Andrew said: “It’s a bit like it’s made out meccano, but it’s got spacious headroom and the back door is hinged.” A quality perhaps not shared by these three young adventurers.
Uncertain of its performing skills, they loaded it with concrete blocks to mimic the weight of six weeks of provisions and hurtled around the closest thing Lerwick has to the rough highways of central Asia – the track over the back of Staney Hill.
“We nailed it round Cunningham Way through all the pot holes and came out the other side with nothing broken, so we thought, ‘this is OK, the car’s going to be alright!’”
Having mastered the Clickimin track, the lads feel ready for their epic journey from London on 23 July that will take them through France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.
In the words of the organisers: “Imagine yourself completely lost in a massive desert, hundreds of miles from civilisation, driving a car that the laws of physics say should not have got you past the M25 as 3 wheels fall off and a troupe of bandits wander over the horizon. That’s when the adventure begins. The Mongol Rally; the world’s best generator of chaos.”
Beneath the madness it’s a serious matter; some folk have died doing this. But assuming they make it across all the borders in one piece, they will have raised thousands for charity.
Under their team name ‘WTF is a Perodua’ they have already raised over £5,000, well ahead of the rest of their 400 plus fundraising rivals taking part in the 2011 rally.
The cash is being divided between the rally’s chosen charity, the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation for street kids in Mongolia, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Shetland Befriending Scheme.
Anyone interested in donating can go to http://mongolrally11.theadventurists.com/index.php?mode=teamwebsites&name=wtfisaperodua
Or you can follow their antics on Facebook by looking up the team name. There is also still room to join Goudies Funeral Directors – someone whose services they hope not to call on – as an advertiser on their little car.
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