Hello have made a short video about our trip. This can also be seen at Hello Group´s website

Thank you to all of our amazing sponsors and supporters! We would not have been able to have such a successful trip without you. The car will be auctioned off by the Children’s Development and Protection Foundation in Mongolia in September, and the amount will be added to our charity total. We have had a guy already offer $3,500 for the car, which is great. That would bring our charity fundraising total to over $5,700, all for children. 

We had an amazing experience, and covered an incredible distance during our drive. Thanks to everyone for following along with us on the trip as well. We will try and post some more pictures of the trip here soon, once we have some time to sort and organize them.

Thanks again!

In an hour or so we will be on the Trans-Siberian railroad that will take us to Moscow. From Moscow we will catch the train to Helsinki, from where we will fly home to Copenhagen. The train to Moscow alone will take us 5 days, so we should have plenty of time to sort all our photos and post them together with stories that we haven’t had time to post yet.

Soren and I had an award ceremony last night with the people from the CPDF (the charity here in Mongolia where the car was donated) and one of the other teams that had arrived over the weekend. We had a great time, shared lots of laughs, and excellent Mongolian vodka. 

We were presented with plaques honoring our efforts for the charity that are signed by the President of Mongolia, and were also interviewed by a TV crew and will apparently be appearing on Mongolian Television, which is pretty funny. It was really nice to spend some quality time with the people here and see how our efforts have paid off. The Mongolf has apparently been the favorite car of many of the people and teams who have seen al of them them, and one local guy apparently has been trying to buy our car for $3500 before it even goes to the charity auction, and keeps insisting that he wants it, but they are making him wait to bid on it! That is great news, and would bring our fundraising total to about $6000 overall.We hope it goes for that much or more at auction! That will go along way to helping the Mongolian children.

Well, we had an interesting run-in with some funny guys last night, that turned out to be a whole hell of a lot of fun. We went out to a brew pub for dinner (yes, we found the brew-pub in Ulanbaatar!) and when that closed, we walked down the street to the next open bar/restaurant for some more beers.

We were sitting outisde having another round and some espressos (those are both our staples, a shot of espresso every few rounds of beer) when I had to go inside to use the restroom. I passed through the main dining area through a group of drunk guys hanging out at the piano and singing, while one reeeealy drunk guy attempted to bang away at said piano. On my way back from the restroom, this little old guy who was completely pissed, stepped in front of me with a mug of money and said I had to pay the piano player before I could pass! They all kept singing and laughing, so I reached into my pocket and puleed out a wad of bills, and stuffed them in the mug (The bills here are hilarious, and since they don’t actually have coins in Mongolia, many of the bills are worth less then $0.01!!) and was allowed to pass.

I got back to the table and it was Sorens turn to use the restroom. They stopped him to pay as well, and then apparently got in some conversation about what we were doing here. When he told them that we had driven here from London to raise money for two children’s charities, the guy with the mug said “well, YOUshould have this then!” and another guy said, well, that’s not enough and they all began putting more bills from their pockets into the mug for Soren and I to pass on to the charity!

We wound up drinking a few beers with them, singing and having a great time before we headed off to the next bar. They happened to run a Cashmere factory here in Mongolia, and were from allll over Europe and the world. There were a few scotsScots, a Brit, a Belgian, a pair of Indians, a German, an Italian, a few other things we can’t remember and then Soren and I added a Dane and an American! We had quite the worldly drinking session. ( and they were all druuunk before we even got there!)

Here is a pic of us singing and drinking with the guys!

All in all, we wound up getting $75 in pocket change from them all, which we turned over to the charity this morning along with the car. The people from the charity thought it was really cool and funny that we had gotten money for them here in Ulanbaatar from a bunch of guys at a bar!

Aside from the black market, which if full of fake clothing, the next best place to buy knock-off items? The department stores!! Our hotel is attached to one of the “fancy” SKY department stores, and we decided to see what they had. Well, as incredible as it sounds, the ENTIRE CLOTHING SECTION of the store is al FAKE clothing! They have all the brands too, from Polo to Armani, and even much smaller obscure brands. It is all arranged like a real department store, but it is all copies of the real things. It is just kind of unreal that they are in a real store, and you cant even GET the real ones if you wanted to! Ralph Lauren Polo shirts are $10, as are Lacoste’s… Puma, Boss, etc. etc. and there is even an entire North Face section with hundreds of different North Face jackets etc. all for about $35! Some of them look good, and others are just hilariously poor, with poorly embroidered logos etc.

Also, along with the fake stuff, they sell what I can only think is over-runs or mistakes from actual clothing orders from other places in the world. They have shirts from Vail, andrandom elementary schools and other places all over the US mostly. They even have a Reno Air Races hat for sale!! (That will be funnier to the people in Cali than Denmark) 

Here are some shots of the hilarious clothing for sale at the nicest department store here in the city. We couldn’t stop laughing while we were at the store…

And like I mentioned, the strangest part is that these odd assorted items or FAKE clothing is ALL YOU CAN BUY HERE!!

We have been exploring the city the last couple days,(when we haven’t been partying or sleeping-in because we got home at 5am last night) and it is quite fascinating. We went to an open-air market, The Narantuul black market, that was simply massive, where people sell everything from clothing of every brand imaginable (all of it fake), tools, bicycles, food, kittens/ducks, furniture etc. etc. literally everything that people here ever need. There are millions of stalls, covering a huge area and several huge buildings, and each clustered by type. Need toothpaste? There is a row of stalls selling just  toothpaste and soaps… how about sunglasses? literally a 100 meter wall covered in them, with each vendor having about a 3meter section, and all for about $4. There is an area bigger than a large supermarket just full of fabrics… and a massive parking lot full of furniture and appliances.

But, surely this amazing market couldnt be free, we had to pay an entrance fee and buy a ticket to get in…. the price? $0.09… yes, nine cents.

Soren bought a pretty nice, heavy-duty duffel bag to bring home the new tent and cookware he bought in Germany.. for $3.50. I got a pair of chrome aviators for $5 that i don’t have to worry about losing, a cool t-shirt for $3 and we both bought Mongolian work jackets from some sort of public service or another. Sorens came with matching pants too! haha. Mine has something written in big yellow mongolian letters on the back, i should find out what it means, but I think it is either a security guard or janitors uniform… im not sure, but it’s cool looking!

Anyway, we picked up a few other odds and ends and headed out.. after buying a few bottles of some ice cold water, for about $0.20

This afternoon we handed over The Mongolf to CDPF (Children’s’ Development and Protection Fund) who will receive all the cars and auction them off in September. It was a bit wired to give away the car since it has been our home for a month. We had already delayed the handover but this morning we went to the train station and bought tickets for our home trip, and after that we could not delay the handover any more…

After some paperwork and lunch we walked through the details of the car with CDPF’s people and then we emptied the car and gave them the keys. We met two other teams that had handed over their car 2 days ago, and they had come back the see their cars a last time before they fly home - so we are not the only ones that had grown quite attached to our car!

The plan tomorrow was to rent a Jeep and discover some of the beautiful countryside, but CDPF was so kind to lent us one 4×4 from one of the other teams for the day tomorrow!

We have reached Mongolia! and after driving all day, we reached our final destination of Ulaanbaatar late tonight! The total distance turned out to be almost exactly 16,000 km! (10,000 miles!)

We drove around until we found the nicest high-rise hotel in the city and have checked in for the night. The Mongolf got roped-off VIP parking treatment in front of the hotel when we arrived as well! We will post more to come, but are literally starving at the moment and are now off to eat our first real meal in four days, and drink lots of cold beer!

Here we are in the middle of Mongolia, with nothing more than beautiful rolling hills and mountains as far as the eye can see! The Mongolf made it!

Thanks again for following along, there is still plenty more to come, but for now, we celebrate!

We are only 1km away from the border… and hopefully we will have service on the other side. Just wanted to let you all know that we have finally made it to Mongolia! We are hoping to rent a Jeep once we have arrived, and do some real exploring of the remote countryside for a couple of days, before returning via train next week.

You know you’ve driven far when it takes 5 whole days on a train to get HALF way back to where you started…