The route we are taking is called the southern route and is considered the most dangerous and challenging of all routes. It covers 10,000 miles with border crossings consisting of 19 countries.
UK – Our journey will start in Edinburgh and stop over in London for the Mongolian Nadaam Festival organised by Charity Rallies. We will then take a ferry from Dover to Calais in the early hours on Sunday morning. check out: http://mongolia.charityrallies.org/en/naadam
France – We enter into calais around 3am sunday morning, we plan to drive straight to Stuttgart, germany where we will stop over for the night.
Belgium – Its a shame that we will only be here for a few hours as we drive through, maybe we can stop over for a nice coffee break and take in the sights of the service station!
Germany – We will be staying in Stuttgart for the night, plan is to take in the porsche & Mercedes benz museum & soak in the local atmosphere during the evening. day 2 in germany will see us drive to nurnberg to check out the famous Nurbergring Nordschleife racing circuit we are only here for a few hours before we drive to prague.
Czech Republic We cant wait to see this place, so many people have told us its like Edinburgh Old Rustic & beautiful…
Slovakia – this should be an interesting place, its new terrotiry to us as are most eastern europe look out for our blogs we will let you know.
Hungary – Hopefully we will have time on our hands to chill here for a while.
Romania – Staying overnight in Transylvania 
i will say hello to dracula for you all…
Bulgaria – Since Bulgaria is the last country in the E.U. we will stop over to check the car over and get any last minute supplies. we are hoping to drive down the eastern coast here, we are told its meant to be fabulous… watch out we will let you know.
Turkey – Spend a couple of days in Istanbul relaxing after a couple of days hard driving. Turkey has one of the highest number of deaths caused by road accidents, so we need to be fully charged up to drive over 1000 miles in 4 days. The rally tyres we have bought will be sent here and should be waiting for us to collect in the eastern part, we will get them on in preperation for Asia.
Azerbaijan – This is where the real challenge begins. Orginally we were planning to cross from Armenia but currently Azerbaijan and Armenia are at war over disputed territory and the borders are closed. However, we have to to skim past the disputed territory since there is only one main route to the capital. As an alternative plan we have now decided that we will be crossing over Georgia and board a ferry over the Caspian sea which will take a full day. Not sure what kind of ferry we will be using but heard stories of cars falling off the ferry.
Turkmenistan – Since we have a short duration on our Transit visa we will stay a night in one of the big cities. This country is one of the most secluded in the world so it will be good to check it out.
Uzbekistan – Apart from Uzbeks being the inventors of pilau rice and pioneers of astronomy, they were also the founders of the Moghul Empire in South Asia (who were the descendants of Jenghiz Khan and Timurlane).
Kyrgystan – Stunning mountains with very dangerous roads that have hair pin bends for 100’s of miles.
Kazakhstan – Expecting deserts dirt tracks roads mixed with good motorways.
Russia in and out is the game plan…
Mongolia – Expecting deserts dirt tracks roads where you can go the wrong way for hundreds of miles. For a country roughly the size of Spain, France & Germany and a population of 2 million, there is no nearby help and there are only 50 signposts in the whole country (outside of the capital). Mongolia is also the largest land locked country in the world.
China – Its been a mission to obtain a chinese visa and as we are preparing to leave its not looking good, ideally we need to enter china to get a flight home but the Chinese wont let you have a visa without proof of leaving the country and an itinery to go with it and as we wont have a hard copy of any tickets we might just get stuck in mongolia and have to drive all the way back maybe that would be a good thing!!
