The Mongol Rally Guys

The flight was only a tad bit delayed–much better than having to reschedule my flight three times because of snow as my friend Ann had to do! The plane was a beautiful, spacious new model with touch screens in every seat–much better than I was expecting from Aeroflot. Didn’t get to take advantage of much of anything but the roominess though as I was pretty exhausted and ended up sleeping the entire eight hours, waking only as we were touching down on the runway in Moscow. I turned my phone back on and looked at the time–my connecting flight was scheduled to depart in less than thirty minutes. If I missed this flight I would have to wait a half-day until the next one, so I got off the plane, hurried through customs, and ran towards my gate. I was one of the last two people to make it to the gate before it closed. As the two of us were being driven on the tarmac to where the plane was I saw that the baggage handlers were still unloading luggage from the plane I had just gotten off of. It seems my bag wasn’t going to make the connection!

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I’ve had a great few weeks in the UK, and have been to London, Birmingham, and a few other towns along the way. As this is the official first (non-U.S.) leg of the journey, I have uploaded some pictures of my recent travels (including a few from the Rotary International 100th Annual Convention that I attended).

It’s not the most amazing thing you’ll see on here, but they are technically part of the journey! View them in our gallery.

Believe it or not, there are actually two Mongol Rallies: the proper one, and a copycat one unimaginatively named the Mongolia Charity Rally. It’s a long story, but this additional rally was formed by former Mongol Rally affiliates that were unhappy with the way the original rally was being handled. The Mongolia Charity Rally‘s entry fee is less than half of the official Mongol Rally, and there are no age or engine restrictions for the vehicles involved (which leads to some teams going all-out in custom Land Rovers…a bit too prudent for my taste!).

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