At least it's not South East Asia

Where to start? Hi? No that’s not good. Thanks for coming and reading? No that’s just boring. The beginning? Yeah I suppose that makes sense. Beginning, Middle, and End. That’s all a story is really; and I figure a story is all this blog is.

Traditionally bloggers probably start documenting these stories as they begin to happen, but this is most definitely not the case here. However, I imagine most people wouldn’t be too excited by what has happened up until this point anyway so I’m just gonna give myself a pat on the back and tell myself my lack of organisation has saved you all a lot of boredom. But that does leave a lot to explain, so I best get going.

THE BEGINNING

Moving away from home to University is a big event for a lot of people every year, but realistically what could be better? First year is just an 8 month holiday, interrupted only by two weeks of holiday each for Christmas and Easter, and followed sharply by a 3 month summer holiday. Now I know how tough this sounds but as my mum always told me “You’ll make loads of new friends.” Turns out she’s not just a pretty face (she’s probably the only one still reading so a compliment seems only right), and sure enough I was lucky enough to be living with plenty of others as marginally insane as myself.

Now what do you do when on holiday with your mates? Well plan your next holiday of course. I couldn’t say who found it or how, but at some point we stumbled across ‘The Mongol Rally’. “Get a tiny 1.0 litre car, drive from the UK to Mongolia, and raise a load of money for charity.” Now when you’ve been watching between 2 to 3 Top Gear repeats a day for an entire semester this suddenly sounds like the best idea you’ve ever had. But sadly as freshers with all the time in the world, you also have none of the money in the world.

Skipping a little and roughly two and a half years later we were all back to start the third year proper of our degrees back in September. More importantly, having just finished industrial placements across the country/world, our problem was solved. Money was suddenly something we had. What normal people call ‘Savings’ became ‘Mongol Rally Funds’.

So you’ve got the money. Now all you need is some teams, but then you gather all your mates who said they’d definitely want to do it, and it boils down to just 5 of you who can actually go. I’m telling myself this is because I have lots of sane friends rather than just no friends, but it at least it made splitting into teams easier. Can you fit five people in a 1.0 litre car? No. So that’s a 2 and a 3 then. Through no real method the teams ended up as: Alex and I as Team Thunderbirds; and Callum, Guy and Will as Team Two and a Half Men. So at the end of October, for the small price of £600 per team we signed up to the Rally with absolutely no idea of the consequences.

Looking back I've not really explained anything there, but as a first ever blog I think that’ll have to do. I’ll try to keep them regular and interesting but if you really did find this dull maybe just tune back in after the 17th July when the pretty pictures start!