It’s hard to remember now, but when my brother Drew and I first set out from the Goodwood Racetrack in southern England with our friends Rosi and Jane and about 275 other Mongol Rally teams in mid-July of 2016, we had little idea what was in store for us.
In the 52 days that followed, we’d drive a quarter of the way around the planet and have incredible experiences that we’d remember for the rest of our lives.
On the Transfăgărășan Highway in Romania
In the mountains of Kyrgyzstan
Meeting some locals at a rest stop in Uzbekistan
We’d also face a slew of challenges on our journey. As I said at the beginning of each episode of my podcast, those ranged from language barriers to car trouble, getting horribly lost to paying bribes to shady traffic cops. Also, did I mention the car troubles?
Broken down yet again in an extremely remote section of Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway
Against all odds, we someone managed to keep going, we actually made it all the way to the end, and we didn’t kill each other in the process.
But if you thought our journey was interesting, keep in mind that we were just two teams out of hundreds, each of whom went their own path and had their own crazy and fascinating stories of the people they met and the experiences they had along the way. On the map below, you can see our route highlighted in red (as logged by our satellite tracking device) compared to the routes of many of the other teams, some of whom took detours up through Scandinavia, north of the Arctic Circle!
On this final episode of season 1 of Far From Home, we’ll hear from a few other rally participants, and we’ll discuss what it was like finishing this adventure and returning to normal, everyday life.
Listen to episode 24 here:
Thanks to the Garden State Journalism Association, which recently awarded a first place prize in its 2019 awards to my episode from Kazakhstan and to my alma mater Emerson College, which featured a nice profile of my work on this podcast in its Spring, 2019 issue of the Expression alumni magazine. Also, in case you missed it, Garmin just wrote a really cool article on their blog about our adventure on the rally. They're the makers of the inReach satellite device that we used to contact the American embassy for help when we were stranded in the middle of Mongolia!
Finally, as I mentioned at the end of the episode, while I may be finished telling the story of our journey on the Mongol Rally, please stay subscribed to the podcast, cause there’s a whole new season of episodes coming out beginning this summer, with stories I’ve gathered from my travels both on the drive back and elsewhere around the world!
Thanks for listening!
Scott
Photos by Drew Gurian