The Baatarnators

Impressions of our journey

We haven't translated this logbook entry to English, it is just available in German. Sorry chap! If you really really want to know what is written here, try to translate it with Google or tell us to translate it for you!

Presentation on the 20th of March, 2015

Day 31: Mongolia 5

Day 30: Mongolia 4

Day 29: Mongolia 3

Day 28: Mongolia 2

Day 27: Russia, Mongolia 1

Day 26: Russia

Day 25: Kazachstan, Russia

Day 24: Kazachstan

Day 23: Kirgistan, Kazachstan

Day 22: Kirgistan

Day 21: Tajikistan, Kirgistan - Pamir Highway 4

Day 20: Tajikistan - Pamir Highway 3

Day 19: Tajikistan - Pamir Highway 2

Day 18: Tajikistan - Pamir Highway 1

Day 17: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan

Day 16: Uzbekistan

Day 15: Uzbekistan

Day 14: Kazahstan

R.I.P. Right Fender

Day 13: Russia, Kazahstan

Day 12: Russia

R.I.P. Left Fender

Day 11: Ukraine, Russia

Day 10: Break - Ukraine, Chernobyl

Day 9: Ukraine

Day 8: Romania, Moldavia, Ukraine

Day 7: Austria, Hungary, Romania

Day 6: Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Austria

Day 5: France, Switzerland

Day 4: Start of the Mongol Rally 2014 in London

Mongol Rally Teams 2014

Teams at the start of the Mongol Rally 2014 in London

Day 3: UK, Battersea Park

Day 2: Belgum, France, UK

Day 1: Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium

Farewell-Party

Unser Abschiedsfest war sehr gut besucht - vielen Dank an alle, die gekommen sind!

Wir haben den ganzen Abend über die Rally, das Auto und generell Abenteuer geplaudert und gelacht, Probesitzen im Auto veranstaltet, und auch die Benzinkassa etwas gefüllt ;-)

Hier noch ein paar Impressionen des Abends:

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Die Baatarnators besprechen die Route

Day 1: London calling

We started!

Today at 8pm we started our adventure - but not eastward to Ulaanbaatar! We will drive westbound to London, where the start of the Mongol Rally 2014 will happen on sunday! :-)

We will keep you posted with new entries here in the logbook and on facebook.com/thebaatarnators, and our GPS-tracking-device will send our coordinates to the Map, where you can track us at all times and even send us short messages!

So long: See you in Ulaanbaatar! :-)

Our living room for the next 6 weeks! (© Volker Weihbold, OÖN)

North, south, east, west?

Because of current developments in regions along our route we did recheck the feasibility of our plans. Especially in Ukraine and in Tajikistan there are some troubling developments.

We did stick our heads together to come up with a genious plan: Just drive around those "dangerous" regions :-)

We will adapt our route as follows:

The eastern part of Ukraine is to be avoided, so after reaching Odessa we will head north to Kyiv, and cross over into Russia there. Sounds safer to us.
According to caravanistan.com the border next to Samarqand is closed for foreigners, so we will go a little bit further south and will cross over near Dushanabe.

These changes should not affect our timetable, and otherwise will not cost any fun along the route.

Along with working on our route we came up with another decision: How we will navigate around one third of the earth! We will leave our navigation devices at home, and will only use our newly arrived paper-based maps to travel east! And the codriver will never be bored again ;-)

Here are some pictures of our route-genious map-moments:

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The Baatarnators plan their Route

GPS-tracking of our route

We have purchased a Delorme InReach SE GPS-tracking-device, which enables you to follow our journey.

The device sends our current GPS-coordinates to a satellite every 10 minutes, and with that you can see our current position on a map on our website!

The Delorme InReach SE has even more functions: We can send short messages to our girlfriends and families, and in case of an emergency there is a big red "SOS"-button which alerts international rescue teams.

The Delorme InReach SE

We will link the device and messages to our Facebook-page facebook.com/thebaatarnators, where we can post new status updates via the satellite-connection. Cool, right? ;-)

All infos about where you can find the map on our website and where we post messages will be up here in our logbook shortly before the rally starts on the 20th of July!

We've got our visas!

After weeks of hoping and waiting for fast processing they finally are here: Our passports with the required visas!

Russia, Kazachstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan with GBAO (Pamir-region) and Mongolia have issued our visas, and so we are ready to tackle our planned route!

Our passports with the required visas

Stickermania

Finally our Car looks like a real Rally-Monster: Full of stickers from sponsors, families and friends! We made a time lapse video from this 5-hour-Stickermania, have a look:

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And here are some pictures from the fun (with helpers Fritz and Christian):

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Our Fiat Stilo before and after the "beautyfication"

Your sticker is missing, because you are not a sponsor yet? Get in touch and become one of our highly beloved sponsors!

A big thank you to our sponsors (we will publish a detailed list soon)!

Baatarnators farewell party: Start of the Mongol Rally 2014

Dear sponsors, friends, families and fans,

we'd like to invite you to our farewell party on Tuesday, 15.07.2014, at 6:30 pm at the Kulturtreff Bad in Tragwein! We will present our small adventure, have cool drinks and small snacks and chat about the Rally and our car "Bruno".

You can inspect our equipment, get answers to questions about the adventure, sit in the car itself and be persuaded by us to take on an adventure yourself ;-) There will be videos and pictures of past Mongol Rally years in the background, and some unseen shots from our preparations.

For soon-to-be-sponsors there will be an opportunity to get your sticker, logo or text onto our Rally-car at the event, so you can be part of the adventure yorself!

Date:: Tuesday, 15th of July, 2014
Place:: Kulturtreff Bad Tragwein
Start:: 6:30 pm

Please RSVP via email to dominik@aumayr.name or our contact form thebaatarnators.at/en/contact/ so we can cool enough beer ;-)

We are looking forward to seeing you before our adventure starts!

The Baatarnators
Patrick, Marco and Dominik

Kids beautify Bruno's bottom

Last sunday Bruno, our Rally-car, got a creative touch: Cousins of the Team-members took the opportunity and drew paintings onto the bottom of the car! According to the painters the doodles should guarantee us better aerodynamics! ;-)

We will see in summer if this holds to be true!

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Kids beautify the bottom of our Rally-car

Thanks to Franziska, Paul, Carolin and Nina for your works of art!

State of the machine

Our Rally-car Bruno received an important upgrade: Thanks to Fritz, our mechanic-in-chief, our car is save on the roads ofKyrgyzstan and we do not have to worry about stones, pit holes or other obstacles on the roads - at least we hope so! An additional bar and a sump guard will keep our car from damages.

Another important component is our roof rack. It was shortened, strengthened and adapted for our trip, and will host our spare tyres, petrol cans and camping-gear.

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Working on our Fiat Stilo

Thanks to Fritz and Christian for the huge support!

We are in a newspaper: Freistädter Rundschau

The front pages of daily newspapers are not only for the rich & famous: The Baatarnators are now featured on one as well :-)

The Freistädter Rundschau (local Austrian daily newspaper) ran an article about our adventure on the 30th/2nd of May 2014:

Freistädter Rundschau: "Mit dem Fiat Stilo von London in die Mongolei" (Sorry, German only)

Front cover of the Freistädter Rundschau

Article in the Freistädter Rundschau

Thanks Roland Wolf for writing this excellent article!

First car-preparing-session

Last weekend we had our first car-pimping-session, where we removed one back-row-seat, checked the electronics and made some pictures for the press.

As you can see on the pictures below the exhaust is in pretty bad shape, so we will replace it with a brand new one.

After we checked out our freshly-delivered lights (more on them later), took some pictures and put a grid on the car to fit sponsor-logos, there was a small technical glitch with the ignition-electronics and Bruno refused to start :-(

We later found out that the reason was a malfunctioning car-key. We threw it away and everything is fine now.

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Working on our Fiat Stilo, photoshooting and the first "accident".

Million Dollar Rally Car

Like the Million Dollar Homepage we have divided up our Fiat-Stilo-Racer called Bruno into squares and created rectangles as advertisement spaces for sponsors and generally good people that support Cool Earth with us.

If you want to see your company logo riding on our Rally car towards Ulaanbaatar or if you want to put some words-of-wisdom or a picture of your fiancé on our car to drive to the Gobi dessert, just get in touch with us and we will find the right square for you :-)

For a contribution starting at € 20, depending on the square-position and -size, it will feel just like you would go on the Mongol Rally on your own. We have white paint-pencils for your custom drawings, and we can cut images from white Rally-ready sticky-film.

Our Rally-Car with ad-squares - more pictues can be found on our Charity-page

We have updated our route!

The Adventurists have set the start for the Mongol Rally: The rally will start at Hyde Park in London! We would be stupid to miss this highlight, so we have adapted our route and will drive to London!

Our updated route

After we start at Hyde Park we will take the ferry to France, and then drive home to Austria via Paris, Zurich and Munich. At home we will have some hours with family and friends, and then say our goodbyes and take off to Ulaanbaatar :-)

We also have fixed our return: The Adventurists will bring back our cars via cargo-train/-ship, and we will take a flight from Ulaanbaatar back home to Europe!

Our charity-bank-account

The Mongol Rally is not only about adventure - we also rally for charity: We collect money for Cool Earth to support this great organization.

To make it easier for you to transfer the money to us and to Cool Earth we have openend a Chartiy-Bank-Account! We have some special thank-you-gimmics planned for special donations - you know, there is some free space on a Rally-car ;-)

Account No.:: 5140611
Bank Code:: 34460
or
IBAN:: AT65 3446 0000 0514 0611
BIC:: RZOOAT2L460

But we do not only collect charity-money - you also can support us with special items that might be of some value to us during our journey: Camping-seats for repairing our car in the middle of nowhere, or a special mud-resistant car-jack, because we might have to change a tire or two. If you have such adventure-ready items, or just want to send something along so we take a picture with it in the Gobi desert, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Team PMZ drives through Pakistan and China

This may be not how our Route looks like, but this is absolutely impressive: Three Swiss guys driving to Ulaanbataar in a Fiat Panda... via Iran, Pakistan and China.

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Hello World!

Welcome to our brand new website! Here we will write about the adventure, our car, route and ourself, and about things that come across our minds while planning for the trip of our lifetime. We do post things on Facebook and Twitter as well, so feel free to follow us along this grand journey!