The Mongol Rally

What: The ‘great­est adven­ture on the plan­et’ – or per­haps more accu­rate­ly motor­ing stu­pid­i­ty on a glob­al scale, the Mon­gol Ral­ly  is an inter­con­ti­nen­tal char­i­ty car ral­ly that chal­lenges par­tic­i­pants to find the worst car they can (1 litre or less and no younger than 10 years) and dri­ve it over 10,000 kilo­me­tres from the streets of Lon­don, through Europe to the plains of Mon­go­lia before fin­ish­ing in the Russ­ian town of Ulan-Ude, with no sup­port, back-up or assis­tance.

Described as ‘top gear on  steroids’ the ral­ly is a char­i­ty focused event (rais­ing funds for the organ­i­sa­tion cool earth) and offers no safe route to com­ple­tion, with the non-exis­tent roads in Mon­go­lia, which force com­peti­tors to dri­ve over bogs, lakes and across mud fields adding to the dam­age to cars, rob­beries and injuries that fre­quent­ly befall par­tic­i­pants  — as they seek to trav­el a third of the way round the world in a com­plete­ly unsuit­able vehi­cle in what it sure to be an unfor­get­table adven­ture.

When: The ral­ly offi­cial­ly begins on the 17^th July each year – with the fin­ish line open­ing in mid-August for those that have put their foot to the met­al – although ral­ly dri­vers can take as long or as lit­tle as they like to reach the fin­ish line in Ulan-Ude, Rus­sia – just be sure to pass through Mon­go­lia.

Where: The ral­ly fin­ish­es in Ulan-ude, Rus­sia – after that there is not set route or guide on how to reach Rus­sia, with most par­tic­i­pants begin­ning in Lon­don (due to lax vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tion require­ments) on the 17^th July and meet­ing up with fel­low com­peti­tors at the launch par­ty in the Czech Repub­lic on the 19th July.

In terms of the route, some par­tic­i­pants head­ing to Istan­bul and through Turk­menistan to reach Mon­go­lia and Ulan-Ude and oth­ers going via Iran or the Karako­ram High­way in Pak­istan– with some teams even head­ing as North as into the Arc­tic Cir­cle before drop­ping down into Rus­sia to reach the Fin­ish Line, with par­tic­i­pants encour­aged to be as cre­ative and adven­tur­ous in pos­si­ble in their ral­ly route.

Dura­tion: After the launch of the ral­ly, it is up to par­tic­i­pants how long the dura­tion of the ral­ly lasts, with some teams com­plet­ing it in 2–3 weeks and oth­ers going on for over 6 months owing to break­downs, repairs and falling outs – on aver­age it takes teams 3–4 weeks to com­plete the ral­ly – so long as they have appro­pri­ate plans and pro­vi­sions in places and a good sched­ule.

Tick­ets: The full price of the Mon­gol Ral­ly varies for each time based on their route and car – how­ev­er for the entry fees it costs £595 Per car to enter, with teams required to raise an extra  £500 per per­son for the char­i­ty cool earth – and entry and sign up avail­able at [https://www.theadventurists.com/adventures/mongol-rally/prices-and-dates/].

The entry fee includes entry to the launch par­ties and some infor­ma­tion from the adven­tur­ists on how to com­plete the ral­ly, as well as an eas­ing of visa appli­ca­tions in some of the tougher coun­tries such as Turk­menisa­tan and Mon­go­lia – how­ev­er after that com­peti­tors real­ly are on their own for equip­ment, car costs, insur­ance etc – so expect the bill for each per­son to run to around £3,000 – allow­ing for no major inci­dents or break­downs.

Need to Know: First­ly the Mon­gol ral­ly is not safe, despite the good natured humour of the event injuries, car­jack­ing, crash­es and even fatal­i­ties have occurred on the ral­ly, so dri­ve sen­si­bly and don’t take extreme lib­er­ties.

After that despite the fun and adven­tur­ous trip, there is a lot of plan­ning required, most­ly around car pur­chase, insur­ance and visas which can require a lot of paper­work – it is also high­ly rec­om­mend­ed to plan equip­ment needs in advance, both spare tires, fuel and food and camp­ing sup­plies which are espe­cial­ly in short sup­ply in the deserts of Turk­menistan or in the bogs of Mon­go­lia.

Oth­er than that, make sure to enter into the Mon­gol Ral­ly with a free-spir­it­ed nature !

More Infor­ma­tion: An overview and guide of the Mon­gol Ral­ly and the option to sign up is avail­able at: https://www.theadventurists.com/guides/mongol-rally/ for a more com­pre­hen­sive guide, to ask ques­tions and for fur­ther tips vis­it our very own guide here.