Miles Driven: 432 miles
Hours in Car: 7
Borders Crossed: 2
Junktown - where to begin. Joe ate live worms and Mike ate a live grasshopper. That’s a start. We’ll try to describe the rest of the anarchy below.
About 40 minutes west of Prague, you’ll find Junktown. It’s difficult to describe. It’s like a campground but also a fairground except it’s from the set of Mad Max. Junktown is a large complex littered with post-apocalyptic dwellings, nuclear fallout signage and statues, as well as other worldly “tribesmen” who wander the site. It goes without saying, but it was the most bizarre place I’ve ever been to in my life.
We arrived around 1 pm with the several other hundred rally cars and set up our camp. It was incredible to see the types of cars that are going to be driving to Mongolia. There were two mad men taking a 30 year old Reliant Robin - a 3 wheeled car that’s known to roll if you take a turn too quickly (the team had actually already rolled their car driving into Prague). If you want a good laugh, check out the top gear episode on the Reliant Robin. There is also a couple heading to Mongolia in an ancient motorcycle with a carriage car. While our car looks the part thanks largely to our obscene amount of stickers on our vehicle, some teams had put tons of effort into modifying their car for the rally - custom sump guards, custom roof bars, one team sawed a Suzuki in half and welded it into a trailer. There were a lot of custom paint jobs - one team had a fully custom pink paint job with Muppets characters.
While the cars had varying levels of general shittiness, all the ralliers we met were awesome. It was cool to get the entire 2019 rally participants in the same place to have a proper send-off. We met tons of ralliers from all walks of life. While most of the conversation centered about where they were from, what car they had, and what route they were doing, we all shared excitement for venturing into the unknown on Monday morning, a date all 700+ ralliers had been waiting for after months and even years of preparation and planning. Perhaps the most insane team we met was Fiesta Vikings. They were two Norwegian Guys who looked the part of Vikings. They had done the rally twice previously and this year are driving down all the way to Bangkok before returning north to Mongolia. We met teams that were mechanics and we met teams that couldn’t change a tire. We met teams that were still in college, and we met teams that were in their 70s. All walks of life - one goal, Mongolia.
The launch party was as wild as a its setting dictated. Contortionist dancers. A Russian rallier weighing well over 3 bills and several inches over 6 feet was willing to take on any challenger in the wrestling ring. He was only bested when he went 2v1 against other ralliers. There was food from Mongolia (inclusive of frog legs which most of the team tried), edible bugs (which the same three of us tried), cheeseburgers (which even the fourth teammate tried), mud everywhere (courtesy of an afternoon down pour), and tons of cheap cheap beer. It was a great opportunity to start building relationship with the other teams as we will need to rely on each other going forward.
After a night of rapport building and a quick pre launch ceremony, we were on our way. We exited Junktown in a parade-celebration - a single-file convoy of junkers and a cacophony of horns before passing through the Junktown gates and taking on the unknown of the roads. The Mongol Rally 2019 has officially begun. Today’s route took us through Slovakia and into Hungary, where set up camp just past Budapest. We enjoyed running into the various friendly faces we had met over the past couple of days and passing numerous rally cars (Stevie is certainly faster than many of her peers). Today’s long drive positions us to reach Romania tomorrow, where we will spend a few days doing the Transfăgărășan Highway as well attending a beach party on the Black Sea. Until then - FWY
