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This past week someone wrote a comment stating that they would love to hear more about the Mongol Rally preparations. I’m not one to ignore our readers, so here you go.
Hold onto your hats, this is a long one!
The Mongol Rally is expensive and the planning is time consuming and there are too many rules to follow. As independent travellers, we don’t love rules, we like to go with the flow and this planning thing is all new to us. Wouldn’t it have been easier if we just went our own road trip to Mongolia?
When we talked to Sherry last year, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We have a tendency to say yes to things and pride ourselves on following through with commitments. It definitely keeps life exciting but maybe we should have done a just little more research before signing up 😉
Costs
- The entrance fee isn’t cheap at 750 £ ($1200)
- The Visas are $800 each ($1600)
- There’s gas for the car approximately $3000 to $4000 for the trip
- Accommodations for our duration of the trip (who knows what that will add up to)
- Our return flights home to Canada from Mongolia (At least $100o each)
- Car insurance is 265 £  ($437)
- Car penalty for the larger engine is 297£ ($489)
- We have to raise a minimum of 1000 £ for charity ($1646) – Something that we are above and beyond right now and hoping to keep the momentum going!
- We have to pay 800£ for a car deposit to the Adventurists.($1317) If we don’t make it to Mongolia, we don’t get this back.
- Car Insurance fees once we leave Europe
- Bribes
The list above is well over $10,000 already in expenses for a two month trip.
Sponsorship has been the biggest challenge
It has been non-stop emails to find people that would be interested in having us showcase their product and we have spent every spare minute sending out packages and following up.
People may look at our list and think everything comes easy for us, but it took a lot of work to get in touch with companies and it took a lot of time coming up with an attractive package that would make these businesses even be interested in taking us on.
All four team members of our team have spent the last few years of our lives building our readership and following online to be able to have the numbers and statistics to back up any sponsorship proposals.
When we first did the Tour d’Afrique in 2008 , we saved for a year to be able to afford it and it was our “once in a lifetime trip.” We tried to get sponsors for the Tour d’Afrique believe me, but we didn’t have anything to offer in return. Just because we were doing an epic event (and we thought we were great 😆 ) that doesn’t mean that companies are just going to give you money or products. There were other people on the tour that had full sponsorship and we were inspired by them. We hoped one day to be in their shoes.
And Now We Are.
You can see all our sponsors on our sponsorship page , but here are a few that are relevant this week and we’d like to share with you the reasons why.
Flight Centre Canada is helping us with our flight to England and we are very excited because they are our favourite travel agency. We have been promoting them and telling people about them for years without any affiliation simply because we like their product. To have them as a flight sponsor for ThePlanetD is very exciting for us because we believe in their product so much.
Intrepid Travel is giving away a trip for us to raffle off. We went on an Intrepid Tour to China last November and it was one of the greatest trips of our lives. Next week you will get all the details on how to enter, so stay tuned for Monday morning (June 6th) where you will hear all about it and find out how you can win a fabulous tour to either Mongolia or Peru!
All Ways Rentals has worked diligently on buying our car. Something that we still don’t have in our possession. The Adventurists need all our details today, but the person selling the car to us changed the pick up date to sometime later this week and we are without the photocopy of the V5 (ownership) and the engine number. There is nothing we can do about this and have to hope that things turn out. We are stuck in Canada, AllWays is stuck in New Zealand an our contact in England is waiting for the word to go and pick it up.
We now have an apartment for the week before the rally in London thanks to Oh-London.com . London was going to be our biggest expense for hotels, so this helps us greatly.
People looking in would think that since we have a so many sponsors, we can now jus sit back and relax. This is not the case. We have obligations before, during and after the rally to give everyone the coverage they deserve. We will be working hard to stay connected en route to Mongolia and we have a lot of organizing to do when it comes to setting up a blog post schedule and tweets and facebook updates. When you have companies relying on you, you can’t just wing it and hope for the best.
Planning
As for how we plan for the trip. We meet and chat on skype once a week with Sherry and Rick. We all go away from our meetings with different tasks on hand. Here were our tasks for the week.
Last week
- We had to send out our press release to all our travel contacts and media representatives.
- We had to confirm that border crossings were indeed open during our route through Kazakhstan and Russia and Mongolia.
- We have been back and forth all week buying car insurance in England and working out car details through AllWays
- We have had to set up a flickr account and upload photos for our press release
- We had to build a new widget for our raffle/giveaway happening next week.
- We are in charge of updating the website and taking care of any technical issues.
- We had to update the sponsor list and add logos to the sidebar and sponsorship page
- We had to write the post for our big giveaway next week.
- We have to plan a post each week for the Mongol Rally…this is mine today.
This week
- We have to look into campsites and hotels along the route.
- We have to try to get the details to the adventurists regarding our car before it is too late
- We have to somehow obtain the V5 for our car
- We have to Book our flights
- We have to book the ferry across the Straits of Dover
- We Get our International Drivers licence
We meet with Sherry and Rick again tomorrow so that shorter second list will grow immensely by the end of that meeting.
Planning for the Mongol Rally has been yet another excellent learning experience for us though.
We are looking forward to getting on the road and starting the adventure. We know that all the work is going to be worth it in the end and we know that the next epic adventure that do will go smoother. We have learned so much and have had the expertise of our teammates different strengths to draw upon.
I heard Sherry state on This Week in Travel that within the first week we will be writing about how we all hate our team mates (she said it in jest) but I still would like to say that I don’t think this will happen.
The planning process has been the most difficult time and I think that when we get on the road we are all going to have a blast. We have travelled with Rick before and we had so much fun with him for two whole weeks on Princess Cruises . We have always admired Sherry’s blog and we find that  we have similar travel styles so I think that we will all probably just go with the flow once the rally is in full swing. I just know it’s going to be an event to remember.
Bring on the Mongol Rally, I can’t take the waiting any more!
