Tag ukraine

We rolled into Odessa quite late in the evening, having been held up at the border a bit longer than anticipated. Odessa came highly recommended by our Ukrainian friends in Minnesota, as well as by a friend whose father lives in the Crimea. Apparently during the cold war, Odessa was infamous for its webs of spies from both sides fighting for information and control. I was intrigued and when doing the initial route planning from the States we simply could not imagine going any other way but through Odessa.

We spent the first hour and a half driving around looking for a place to spend the night. We checked several hostels found on hostel world only to discover they were abandoned apartment complexes or simply a field or parking lot. Eventually we found a cheap hotel, but the advertised prices were off by a dozen Euro so we simply didn’t want to pay it. We asked at the hotel if we could park our cars in their protected parking area for a Euro, they said “sure!” so we positioned are cars near several other rally cars in the parking lot and decided to sleep in the cars to save money. But first, it was time to meet the other ralliers and find out what the latest gossip was.

We found a nearby pub and, not surprisingly, about twenty ralliers. They had been in a caravan of eight cars, which meant extremely slow progress. Nevertheless, they had beat us there, which doesn’t say a lot for our speed. We introduced ourselves and soon were engulfed in great conversations with amazing people from all over the world.

As the night wore on people began to drift off to find a place to sleep. We all moved our cars towards the water a bit and several teams through up their tents right by the side of the road. Mike and I slept in the Face Race car while Bill reclined in our ATC car. The Face Race crew have an instant pop-up tent so they threw that up near the road. Surprisingly, the police did not kick us out.

In the morning we all felt a bit gross having spent the night drinking and then sleeping in hot, disgusting-smelling cars. Mike, Bill and I walked down to the Black Sea to take a quick dip. I decided not to get in, but once we had walked all the way down the hill to the water I changed my mind and jumped in fully clothed. It was the closest thing to a shower in several days, and it was wonderful. We swam out a ways and just enjoyed the feeling of being cool for a change rather than dripping sweat. When we had been in long enough, we walked back to the cars and brushed our teeth and got cleaned up (as well as one can on the side of the road).

Everyone was milling about, so we made plans to head to the Steps of Odessa, a famous and beautiful area a bit north of our current position. We set off, the Face Race team in tow, and a new car joined our mini convoy, the Mongol Schumachers. We hit the steps within the hour, and found all manner of strange sights before us.

One man had a pet alligator and parrot, another had an owl and a monkey. For a few bucks you could play with the exotic creatures and have your picture taken. We opted against it for sanitation reasons, and bounded up the steps to do the happy dance from Rocky. Classic.

Back at the cars, I met an amazing gentlemen who is friends with Charlie Boreman (who rides with Ewan McGregor and co-wrote Long Way Round, and several other books). This guy was extremely interesting, and was going on yet another round-the-world bike trip. You never know who you’ll meet in strange places, but you can guarantee they will be much more interesting than the folks you meet back home.

We chatted with the bikers for a while before hitting the road. The goal was to make it to the Russian border, but as the goal was entirely unrealistic we thought we’d see how far we could get.

Crossing any protected border is a bit of a pain. Over the past few years we’ve had our fair share of problems at various border crossings. In China, we were told we had swine flu at one border and nearly quarantined. In Turkey we were stuck in no-man’s land trying to buy a visa. In Turkmenistan we were held for over a day trying to catch the border-ferry out. In Azerbaijan we were lectured about the evils of their neighbors and forced to promise never to visit Armenia. So, when we came to the Ukrainian border we were not that worried. No matter what problems arise, you always find a way through them.

We had already waited several hours to go through the exit procedures for Moldova. We drove through no-man’s land and waited in a huge line to enter Ukraine. The line inched forward slowly, and rather than waste gas we simply put the cars in neutral and pushed them. This drew the strangest compilation of stares from other motorists and, of course, the Ukrainian border guards. We’ve since learned that these gentlemen don’t have a sense of humor.

Round one is the maze. Basically, you run from window to window trying to figure out what they want and how to deliver it. One window wants your passport, one wants the car registration, one insurance, one just wants to look at you and whisper to their fellow guards, and one window has no purpose at all. While we were jostling for space at the windows another rally team walked up and introduced themselves. They drove an ambulance and had been held at the border for the past four hours since their V5 form was missing. In case you don’t know, it is required that you mail in your V5 form in the UK before exiting the country, so of course no one has the form! This was impossible to explain. The other team was waiting for someone from the embassy to call back and explain this to the guards.

We stayed in line and eventually a guard came around the window and took Bill into a back room. We assumed this had something to do with either asking for a bribe or demanding we find our V5 form. After twenty minutes Bill emerged and said the guard just wanted to chat, practice his English. We finally got our passports stamped and our registration returned to us. Since I had not driven in quite a while I hoped in the driver’s seat and edged us out of the border area and into the straight away.

The feeling of finally being out of the border area was so overwhelming that I wasn’t entirely surprised when I came flying over a hill and saw the police. A huge smile washed over the officer’s face when he aimed the radar gun. It was already too late. I slammed on the breaks but the gun was already coming down to his side and his other arm was waving me over. Bill and Mike had done most of the driving, I drive for five minutes and I’m pulled over in Ukraine.

The cop came up to the window (confused at first as to why the steering wheel was on the wrong side) and showed me the radar gun. 76 in a 60. Not bad! I smiled and said I was sorry, but he walked back to his cruiser, waving me with him. I followed him up the hill (it had taken me a while to stop due to the speed/incline) and he started writing me a ticket. I told him I had no money and didn’t know that I was speeding. I explained that I thought the speed limit was 80, so in all actuality I was actually under the limit. He laughed and kept writing the ticket. I started to look desperate and told the other officer to help me explain the situation to the man writing the ticket. He never took the radar gun off the hill and every time someone swept by under the limit he would shrug and smile and look dejected. The ticket-man was explaining to Mike, who had joined us on the hill, that I owed 250 rubles. I said I had no rubles and started to shift my weight from foot to foot, looking lost. I was about to play the ‘cry on command’ card when the ticket man finally looked up and said ‘go.” I repeated this back to him and then smiled. I wanted to hug them both but thought better of it at the last moment and shook their hands instead. Mike ran down the hill and I followed. Despite the small fiasco I decided to keep driving. This time, under the limit a few notches.

It’s official! We’ve finally ironed out our route details to the finest detail. We have decided to head from London to Paris, and from Paris to Luxembourg. After a break, we’ll head to Nuremberg and the Prague for the 2010 Czech Out Party, which we’re all very excited about. From there we head south to Bratislava and Budapest before entering Romania for a few castle tours and vampire stalking. We then head to Chisinau and then into Ukraine to the famous port city of Odessa. From this point on the trip gets really interesting. We head due east through Russia, hugging the Black Sea coast until we enter Kazakhstan. We’ll cut inland and aim directly for the Aral Sea inside the Uzbek border. We’ll cut across Uzbekistan and then re-enter Kazakhstan heading north into the mountains. Back into Russia for a moment before entering Mongolia and racing across the open Steppe to Ulaanbataar. Yup, that’s what we’ll be doing this summer, driving across 1/3rd of the distance around the trodden earth. If none of this made sense, check out the nifty map we made (yeah, I should have led with that!):

View Central Asia Route Map created by ATC for the 2010 Mongol Rally

This map is awesome, and really shows the distance and scale of the land we’ll be covering. Some 8-10,000km through 13 countries in a car that even Mickey Mouse would say is too small– a 1.5l engine auto. Below is a picture of a rally car from 2009, ours will be very similar.

If you are more interested in the car, aka- how to buy, register and insure one in Europe, or even cooler (if that is possible) a post on all our awesome media coverage, or possibly the list of woe-is-me updates we made when we were feeling down, then check out these other posts or head to the Mongol Rally and Sponsorship pages, which explain it all.