This article is about the story of Martyn Johnson and Craig Chamberlain who participated in the Mongol Rally in 2007. The story has been published in a book titled Rising/Falling – Always Hoping, ‘a journey to a part of Asia’.

 

On this page you will find:

• A synopsis of the story
• The first few chapters of the book
• How and where to order

 

 You can also read a book review here.

 

A synopsis of the story

The work narrates the experiences of two students, Martyn Johnson and the author Craig Chamberlain as they prepare for and participate in the Mongol Rally in 2007, in which they drive a twenty year old Citroën 2CV from London to Ulanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

Descriptions of politics and geography are stitched together by a string of barely believable events and acts of generosity that ensure the boys are not only able to survive but to complete the challenge in style.

Amid the noise of two hundred revving engines and blaring horns they spin out of Hyde Park. The busy streets of London, then the European and metalled roads are over in a blink.

By day three the pair are driving through the flat and fertile plains of Ukraine in their first convoy with the multi-lingual Herwig Marx and Jacob Friz of ‘The Austrian Team’.

The convoy breaks up before Martyn and the Craig enter Kazakhstan as the Austrians must take their schnapps and follow a different route.

At the Kazakh border the anticipation builds. Martyn and Craig have just glimpsed their first camel and the sickeningly green flatness of the Volga plains are replaced with the dizzying orange of the Kazakh Steppe - where only the desert eagles and big red sun wheel overhead.

Passing through the area where once the Aral Sea had been, alone and stretched by the lack of sleep, the author and his partner enter into a thirty six hour race to Tashkent, pursued by some Kazakh truckers who they had fled following an episode in a roadside brothel.

In Tashkent, the capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan, a man in a big black Mercedes is waiting for them. He introduces himself as Bakhtiar and wryly asks if his country's newest guests are really spies. They are invited to go to his garage to tidy themselves up and, of course, they acquiesce.

Uzbekistan proves to be a fascinating country where politics and passions lie thinly disguised.

However, they are ready for a break by the time they enter Kyrgyzstan and, although much poorer than its neighbours, the atmosphere is noticeably calmer. The people are mostly simple farmers and their country and its mountains some of the most beautiful in the world. Camping next the crystal waters of the Karakul Reservoir is one the highlights of the trip but one that cannot be savoured for more than a night.

Their route takes them back into Kazakhstan and briefly into Russian Siberia before they reach Mongolia where the challenges really begin in earnest. After just a few hundred kilometres, a bad river crossing renders the car undriveable and the narrator and his companion are thrown into the most taxing leg of their journey.

Stranded and alone in the Gobi Desert they must negotiate the final 1000km without abandoning their broken car. This is of course only made possible with the aid of a good number of remarkable people; notably a team of Austrian medics, who perform an epic three hour tow and a Mongolian family who shelter and fill them with food, five times a day, for the best part of a week.

After many trials and amazing encounters they make it to the finish line and are just in time for the finale party where they catch up with all of their friends from the rally.

A few days later, and after further hurdles, the car finally arrives and is auctioned for just £8.74. The journey and experiences leave the friends exhausted, exhilarated but wiser and a little more aware of how big a Citroen 2CV really is.

 

The first few chapters of the book

Alright Duck?

“Hi Jonno, are you looking for someone to drive to Mongolia with?”

Martyn Johnston, aka Jonno, had been planning, or more accurately, looking forward to taking part in The Mongol Rally for over a year. An epic journey, the Rally crosses the little seen deserts and ragged mountains of Central Asia. Jonno was originally set to go with Andy, his school friend and seasoned travel partner. However, due to commitments to his band, ‘The Touch’, Andy had to pull out with just four months to go.

“Yer man.”

Jonno had been appealing for a replacement co-driver through the Yorkshire Post, The Sheffield Star and BBC Radio Sheffield. Expecting a reply from someone he had never met, Jonno was quite surprised when I piped up and volunteered. I knew Jonno quite well. A native Bradfordian proud of his textile heritage you could be sure to find him wearing at least one item of tweed or knitwear, often of the ‘dirty green’ or ‘mucky orange’ variety he so loved. He also wore a distinctive ginger leprechaun beard which made him hard to miss and easy to remember.

We were neighbours on Barber Road and had become close friends as ‘freshers’ at the University of Sheffield where we both diligently studied architecture. We shared a healthy disrespect for standard practice, weakness of spirit and witlessness. And there were more than enough sources of annoyance for us to share in the architecture studio.

Jonno had already registered our team name, ‘Ey Up Genghis’, which was a little too Yorkshire for my liking. I tended to prefer ‘Genghis Khan...eh?’ but it was not a sticking point and I liked the sentiment.

Time was already tight when I got involved and I did not have long to get myself sorted. I immediately dropped plans of my own to go trekking in the mountains of Ladakh, in northern India, and started pulling out my hair organising for the new expedition. We had a rapidly approaching deadline for the visas and my passport was down to its last month. The Identity and Passport Service was more than happy to provide me with a same-day passport for slightly less than double the standard price at any of their several nationwide outlets.

The Durham passport office seemed the natural choice as my parents had met there over thirty years previously as students and were happy to take me and see how things had changed since their college days.

Despite the calming river and spectacular cathedral, the town seemed drab. Crossing the bridge into the cobbled old town, we passed a long haired youth strumming mildly at a guitar, droning on about nothing in particular. This quaint scene was shattered when a forward labouring man suggested that perhaps the budding musician should get a job, to which he lamely replied, ‘I can’t, I’m a student’.It made me proud of my generation, the passion and dignity with which he defended himself could not fail to move.

With my new passport in hand it was time to assault the pile of visa applications. Filling in the myriad forms from the various consulates was a nightmare, Kazakhstan’s being widely regarded as the most pedantic in the world.

We managed to bully and coax each other through. A few packets of biscuits later and, with the sun threatening to rise, we finally signed the last form.

In addition to our bureaucratic toils, we had to get a medley of injections and sort out our vehicle. The Rally limits competitors to a vehicle with an engine of one litre cubic capacity or less. Jeff, a true Sheffield character, on hearing Jonno’s radio appeal for both a partner and car, had promised us our wheels. Jeff had pledged his old family car, a Citroen AX, and after spending weeks doing it up he took it round to his mates to get it M.O.T.’d. Overnight someone stole the car for a joyride and not being insured we were left without a vehicle with just two months of exams before we departed.

Jonno soon found a Citroen 2CV on ebay and we were back in business.

With a new chassis and recent engine rebuild it was the perfect car. By some weird stroke of fate its M.O.T. expired on the 21st July, the very day the car was to leave British territory and begin its swan song journey to the distant steppe of Outer Mongolia.

We quickly got very comfortable with our new car and decided to name her Amélie. On one outing we took her to show the pupils of my former school, ‘Lazonby C of E Primary School’. We had a pleasant afternoon talking the students through where we were planning to drive. The fact that we had very little idea ourselves did not get in the way and we got some excellent illustrations from the group. Stories of camels, distant mountains and people shooting deadly arrows from galloping horses seemed to get the youngsters’ imaginations going. It felt good to be giving the students something a bit out of the ordinary to be thinking about. Having had a continually mixed time throughout my education I remember fondly and clearly the odd occasion when someone offered something personal to break the monotony. I hope that Jonno and I may be remembered at the school in a similar way. I am certainly very glad of the photographs, drawings and memories I got from the day.

We got insurance organised and were putting our documents together when we realised we did not have our V5 registration document (an essential document proving ownership of a vehicle and its key components).

The problem began when we neglected to take the slip from the bottom of the last registered keepers’ V5. The DVLA believed the previous owners were still in possession of our car. It would probably be impossible to leave the EU without the V5 registration document and it would definitely be impossible to import the car into Mongolia without it. To make matters worse the DVLA had not been properly notified about our new chassis and we needed the record of our chassis number to be updated before they would issue a V5.

Everyone at the DVLA assured us they could not possibly get things sorted in less than five months.

We only had a week to go by this stage. We were advised that a temporary V5, despite being officially inadequate, would do for our purposes and would be a lot faster and easier to get hold of. But not that easy; we were still required to register our new chassis, a process that normally has a six week waiting list.

However, Jonno’s stubbornness was to pull us through, and not for the last time.

Jonno had negotiated a plan with someone at the DVLA. We would jump the queue and get the chassis registered the following week, and then we could apply for our V5. The plan relied on a number of operations working smoothly and on schedule but just when we could have really done without it there was going to be a postal strike. I was given a pack of printout directions from Route Planner and told to head for Doncaster to get our chassis registered. I hate Route Planner and soon lost track of the directions.

Given that this will be read by friends and family, I think it is a good opportunity to insist you never, ever, give me Route Planner directions.

They are simply a copout and a nuisance. Show me a map; nothing but a map makes any sense. Failing that, gesture in the general direction with an extended finger, indicate distance as you would cast a fly and place your faith in God, or luck, but never in Route Planner.

I decided to bear north towards Leeds. It was nearly a complete disaster.

I was hammering along a clearway, on the phone to Jonno trying to get instructions on how to get back on track, when the car started lurching. I was out of fuel. I dipped my clutch and by remarkable coincidence up came the first petrol station in miles. I had just enough momentum to get onto the forecourt before stalling with a shudder. I can still barely believe my luck.

It was after I looked at a map in the shop that I realised how much of a mistake I had made. I was now just outside Leeds, about an hour and a half into my journey and Doncaster should only have been half an hour away from my starting point. I just hoped Ulaanbaatar was better signposted.

By the time I got to Doncaster it was way past our appointed time and we had missed our slot. I had camped out the previous night and still had my equipment in the car. I emotionally reassured Jonno that I would camp out on the premises as long as it took to get the car checked. As it turned out, Simon, the man Jonno had got in contact with, could not have been more understanding. He was quick at his job and was confident he would get through the work fast enough to fit it in. Eventually he gave up his dinner break for us.

Simon was particularly interested in our story as he had worked in Kazakhstan, maintaining technologically advanced farm equipment that the Kazakhs had neither the experience nor cultural maturity to possess.

He explained that it had been a constant and futile battle to keep things working. In a nation of proud metalworkers and bodgers the Kazakhs refused to let him do his job properly, withholding parts or insisting on fabricating parts from unsuitable materials. Admittedly, financial reasons may have been a factor but several hundred thousand dollars worth of high tech western equipment was quickly destroyed and left to rot in the sand due to a culture and climate suitable only for the crude but indestructible Soviet machinery.

With his best wishes Simon sent me back to Sheffield with our first crucial hurdle negotiated. Amélie had passed the V5 inspection and the chassis number had been updated. The document Simon gave us would have to be delivered to another contact at the DVLA and, hopefully, just maybe, they would be able to return us a temporary V5 within the week.

 

Not another 2CV problem?

“John-O? Where does the O come from? John-O’Neil? John-O be-good?”

Matt was a bit of a wind up merchant and a fellow 2CV owner. On this occasion he was picking at the absurdity of Martyn’s nickname, ‘Jonno’. If it was not the 2CV that had first triggered Matt’s irregular orbit with its infectious eccentricity it had certainly done nothing to cramp his style. It is easy to imagine him as a hero from a Roald Dahl novel. Oft donning a sturdy pair of leather boots, some oily cords and an oversized woolly jumper, his long blonde hair would be swept back into a ponytail and his forehead and nose fingered black with oil as he brushed his fringe aside.

Matt also had an inventive taste in sandwiches; one memorable example contained stuffing, baked beans and tuna.

I had met him while racing across town to catch a shop before closing time. I’d shot past him as he was pulling out of a junction, roof down with bits of fire wood poking out skyward. He pulled out sharply behind me and the characteristic antenna-like lights blinked playfully at me through my rear view mirror.

Torn between getting to the shop on time and being sociable I drove on.

He followed me through a few traffic lights and a junction before I gave in and mounted the nearest curb. I held out my hand and introduced myself.

We quickly got onto my participation in The Mongol Rally at which point he confidently stated, “You couldn’t have chosen a better car. My 2CV has just come back from Africa. My girlfriend and I slept on a mattress in the back for six months and crossed the Sahara in it twice. They’re brilliant off road. Because of the articulated suspension system they’re really smooth. You can take them anywhere.”

Matt was a zealous preacher who could not extol the virtues of the exemplary post-war minimalist design highly enough. We agreed to meet again in a few days to go over the car and to become educated in the peculiarities of the car’s design.

We must thank Matt as much for his tips on maintenance as for his introduction to the bizarre world of the Citroen 2CV enthusiast. He showed us how to love the car as a lifestyle choice - a manifestation of a strange yet marvellously elegant logic. The car is simply not like other cars. It has a motorbike engine with cylinders that run horizontally not vertically. The wheels are mounted on gigantic anthropomorphic arms - essential to the novel suspension system. The windscreen wipers were originally powered by the speedometer cable and the gear shifter, a horizontal piston mounted where you would expect to find the radio, takes at least a couple of days to get used to.

Not only is the experience of driving and the mechanics quite unlike that of an ordinary car, there is something more than just novelty at play.

Most of the body work is actually flat, the windscreen, the windows, the doors and the boot. Yet the pressed wings, bonnet and fabric roof give the lingering impression of a voluptuous and curvy car. The never ending oddness of this little French motor may have originated in the vehicle’s design brief. It specified that the car must accommodate a peasant driving while wearing clogs and a hat and was to be able to transport a basket of eggs across the furrows of a ploughed field without breaking a single shell. The humble French farmer should have inspired more cars.

Matt was really to prove his worth when, with just a day to go, our electrics burnt out. On a particularly wet and stormy evening the window wipers had become jammed, the motor overheated and the cables set on fire. The electrical system came into the cab through the bulkhead in a bundle. This bundle had melted together. Mercifully the ignition still worked but many of the wires lay bare and it was in real danger of shorting again. We also had no lights or dashboard controls.

“No problem,” said Matt, “The electrics in a Citroen 2CV are simple really. I could write you the whole wiring system out on a postcard.”

Thankfully his confidence proved to be reasonably well-founded. We started the electrical work rather late, having spent the morning changing the engine and gear oils and replacing the points. Then Matt and I stripped all of the systems out and replaced them in order of priority; firstly the ignition, then the headlights, brake lights and reversing lights.

Things were going well so we fitted a novelty horn and our sound system while Jonno fitted a carpet to dampen noise and made a platform in the boot for his bed and our accessories. The whole street came out to get involved as it was glorious and sunny. Bea, Matt’s nextdoor neighbour, sat on the sofa-like rear seat which we had removed from the car and left in the street.

Her children, Robin and Joshia, played with oily nuts and spanners while Bea soaked up the sun.

We also had a couple of electrical engineers looking suspiciously at our Heath Robinson handy work.

Zaff, not to be confused with Matt’s girlfriend Saf, a high spirited Syrian of substantial bearing, bellowed critical comments about the rigour of the joints, their capacity to carry high amps or our junkshop tools.

Despite appearances it was all in good humour and he also gave us a taste of Turkish coffee and told us stories of running over German tourists on holiday in Crete. Then he showed us round his garden.

Zaff liked collecting things; strong, useful things like Saabs, fire doors and welding equipment.

Conveniently, these interests worked well together. For example, his three Saabs were packed, immovable onto his modest drive. They were all full, and I mean completely full, of useful things. From the foot well to the roof, the boots and the parcel shelves, all were totally jam packed with tools and paraphernalia including four different types of welder, five wire brushes, a number of stuffed toys and several metres of several varieties of pipe - a length of which we used to shield our new electrics.

Ingeniously, a number of hoarded fire doors had been combined to create a huge garden shed cum workshop, although it had become so full of stuff it was barely useable and impossible to find anything.

But Zaff was busy making more storage space. He had moved, by hand, several tonnes of earth from the bottom of the slope in his garden to the top. After building up a retaining wall, to keep the soil piled at the back of the garden, he was now building a steel structure in front. The structure was to support an extension to his new raised, flat garden and give him vast amounts of storage space underneath. We were recruited to help move some huge sheets of shipping steel. They were sitting on a frame about four feet up and were all about four foot square. It took both me and Jonno to lift one tentatively while Zaff pushed it into place; he had lifted them all up himself. The whole project had only taken a few weeks.

When Jonno and I returned from our tour, a little bewildered, Matt had reached the end of his tether.

Problems had developed when he tried to install the blinking system for the indicators and hazard warning lights. After a very long and challenging day we resigned ourselves to setting off to London and into the unknown without any indicators.

We went back to our respective homes and packed. Unsettled by the last minute set backs we had a difficult sleep. The following day we packed as early as we could and set off to Jonno’s Aunt’s house in Essex where we would base ourselves for an early start for London the following day. In true Mongol Rally style we managed to get there pretty late as we had more to sort before leaving than we thought. After a few glasses of wine and a very welcome meal we were ready for bed.
 

Launch day: Hyde Park

21^st July 2007, London

A fine bacon sandwich awaited us when we woke. Jonno’s Aunt wanted to see us well set and his uncle got up to see us off. It took a while to get to London. Somewhere in the suburbs we spotted our first fellow Rally team. They were a Ford Fiesta Trio who, we were surprised to note, were carrying - in addition to their provisions for the four week transcontinental drive - both a trampoline and monkey-bike.

We soon split up to take our own separate routes to Hyde Park. As destiny would have it we ended up arriving at the same time and parked together near the front of the queue which was already a kilometre
long. What a circus it was. Our entrance should have been spectacular, coming as we did through a cycle gate, to the left of the traffic bollards, under a tree and onto the road with a bump. However Dan, the man in charge, was not at all impressed. With the stiffest telling off I’ve received in years we proceeded, a little embarrassed, and joined the crowd which was excitedly discussing routes and pre-race disasters, modifications, rocket boosters and oil slick devices. Rumour had it Jack Osborne was there with a huge support vehicle but we were too busy talking to the brave teams setting off in original Minis, Trabants, ice-cream vans and Hackney cabs.

We also caught up again with Neil and Jan, self-confessed ‘Rally Bores’. It was an encounter with this eccentric couple that had sparked Jonno and Andy to enter the Rally in the first place. Neil and Jan were veterans of The Mongol Rally, twice attempting it in a Citroen 2CV and succeeding the second time.

They were desperate to do the Rally again and avidly followed its developments, twice meeting up with us to share photographs, tell us stories and give us advice.

It was great to see them strolling lopsidedly along. Both suited up in their squires’ outfits (top hats and tails), their startling difference in size was at once dramatic and endearing. A couple of friends who were beginning their own substantial bicycle adventure around the UK came to see us off too. My parents had also come down from Cumbria and bundled some supplies and homemade jam into the car. My mother had stitched us up a Mongolian flag which we strapped to the car where it flapped lazily in the wind as we revved our engine in the pre-race frenzy.

It was nearly too much. Our lack of preparation and the scale of the undertaking began to sink in. We were to begin our journey with no hazard warning lights and no indicators. On a more personal note, I
only had the underpants I was wearing and not even a pair of socks. More immediately we had no plan of how to get from Calais to Kazakhstan and little more idea how to get across London and down to Calais.

With horns blaring and flags waving we pulled out into London proper. It was chaotic and I did not know the first thing about navigating our way out of London. As much by pure chance as anything else, we made it to Trafalgar Square, did a lap with a motley, strung out collection of ralliers and drove blindly off into the unknown. We soon got split up although we were always either flying past one team or another or being overtaken until we got to Calais.

At Calais, we decided to head for Belgium. The home of the EU seemed as good a place as any. In Belgium, they celebrate a national holiday on the 21st July. There was a laser show in Brussels and there would be parties in all the towns. We headed to Bruges. At this point I would like to tackle a myth. Europeans do get drunk on such occasions. It appeared that every self respecting man, woman, child and dog was drunk.

When we got to Bruges, the main square was full of families dancing and singing along to a live band. It was too late to find the youth hostel we had been recommended so we chose to drive out of town for the
first of many roadside sleeps.

By the following night, the 22nd, we were just outside our expected destination, Prague. The following morning there had been a terrible motor crash on a ring road in Prague and consequently there were huge
tail-backs. In order to save fuel, avoid the risk of overheating and to provide entertainment for hundreds of Czechs also caught in the queue, we cut the engine and pushed the car some miles down the middle of
a triple lane clearway that ran parallel to the river. We also had a pleasant lunch break in a small provincial town.

While Jonno read or slept I snuck off and bought a number of cassettes for the car from a man who appeared to be the only punk in the town. His shop was really beautiful and I had the first feelings of the trip that I was in truly foreign land. The wonderful array of comics, T-shirts and CDs all spoke a strange language. The summer sun was hot and as dizzying as homemade wine. I enjoyed a moment with the owner, despite our inability to communicate, before we continued with our respective days. Jonno decided that one of the songs on the new cassette would be the theme to the trip but I am convinced he chose a different song every time. It was fun either way and we were soon racing along, top down, singing the unknown lyrics with gusto along to the strange tunes.

By evening we were lost again. Diversions on the road out of the Czech Republic put us off track. A man of around five foot five with stubborn tufty blond hair put us on the right track. He was not only handsome, he was beautiful and so were his car and his son. He was so proud, so steady and so emotionally dispassionate, he appeared angelic. His son, also blond, sat absolutely still, expressionless if not a little aloof, on a booster seat waiting patiently while his dad was out of the car - a 1970’s Porsche 911. It was jet black, with neither speck nor mar, and as glossy and enchanting as a precious stone.

Several hours later we ended up hopelessly lost and utterly exhausted somewhere in a lush and idyllic national park in the mountains of southern Poland. I insisted on stopping and having a long sleep before
continuing the journey.

 

How and where to order

Rising/Falling – Always Hoping ‘a journey to a part of Asia’  is available online at Amazon.co.uk and can be ordered in any good bookshop. The book costs £8.74 and is also available direct from the distributor by mail-order.

Cheques for a sum of £10.99 (£8.74+£2.25pp) can be made payable to Mr. C A Chamberlain and posted to Glovers Cottage, Lazonby, Penrith, CA10 1AJ in the United Kingdom.

Be sure to include your address and an email or phone number in case a query arises.
 

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