We managed to do a bit of sightseeing in Kiev and said good bye to my first co-driver and picked up my second. Ukraine culminated in being fined 1km from the border for having too many lights on the mini!

Then it was into Russia where we travelled through the massive industrial city of Volgograd, drove over a pontoon bridge and had a little too much of the local Vodka. By this point the temperature had risen and carried on rising. We entered Kazakhstan and soon found ourselves surrounded by desert. It was here that 13 days into the journey things went rather bad. A muffled noise and the smell of burning rubber saw us pull onto the hard shoulder (of sorts) and we discovered that a rear radius arm had snapped in two! Not something that you carry as a spare.

We managed to get the part welded with the help of some locals and fellow ralliers that stopped to help but the welding equipment and the condition of the arm meant that it wouldn’t be able to cope with the rest of the trip. At this point it was 2am and things were again not looking good until two passing Kazakh brothers stopped to help. They came back the next day with a flatbed trailer and the mini (minus the two scorpions that had found a home under it during the night) was taken to their house.

We ordered a new arm which was flown out (thanks to Mini Spares for coming to our rescue) and were very kindly put up by the Kazakh family that rescued us. Further bad luck struck as the part was held by customs and the part ended up taking a full week to get to us. By the time we received it we had to make the difficult decision not to head on to Mongolia as we no longer had enough time to make it to the finish line safely. We therefore headed back via the Red square in Moscow, Lithuania, Latvia and the rest of Europe completing 7,500 miles in total. Not the outcome we wanted but an amazing experience and not something we will forget.

Theminiforum2mongolia managed to raise approximately £2,500 for Mongolian charities and Macmillan Cancer Support.
Your help made this possible and is very much appreciated.