Mongol Rally Halfway-and-a-bit Update

The Live Updates from the road are still coming in a-pace - brushes with Police in many a country, border crossings in fancy dress, getting lost and losing passports are the order of the day.

A selection of the finest updates from the road are started off today by
I Mongol'd ya Mum who have discovered the pitfalls of a newer car "the on board computer has restricted Tony to 45mph. My dad tells me it's in 'limp home mode'. Does it know home is now 6,000 miles away?"

Keeping in the theme of amusing team names - the Cuddy Munters make an attempt at the World Land un-Speed Record "I am now the exceptionaly proud owner of a kazak speeding ticket, which is quite a feat when you consider we are driving in a vauxall corsa on pot holed roads which dont actually have speed limits on"

The People's Republic of Sheffield report similar interest from Kazakh police officers but were "let off with a stern reminder that our car 'not porsche'"!

The border crossings are still throwing up a few surprises, but for the Let Skoda Mongolia team, the surprise will be for the Russian border guards after their report of "last night we lost high card draw so today we'll mostly be wearing chicken suits. Russian border should be interesting"

It appears the Kazakhstan border guards have resorted to taking the opportunity to brush up on their English, with Team UB reporting that they "Arrived yesterday (in Kazakhstan) after hilarious border crossing - customs official using guide book to practice his english ("do you like wine?" etc) instead of helping up with forms"

Kernow Pirates on the otherhand managed a speedy border crossing but had an interesting nights camping "slept in a field last night, near miss with combine harvester"

It seems that the concept of maps isn't always entirely useful on the Mongol Rally, Team Afrique reporting that they are "now negotiating some of the worst roads so far, with a map that world be better suited to starting a fire", which is a marginally better position to be in than Team Lunch in Mongolia who "managed to ask for directions to Bukhara, little did we know we are already in it! No sign posts anywhere!"

And finally, in keeping with the saying 'two's company, three's a crowd' Team Driving Miss Donnelly are reduced in numbers after a faux pas of losing ones passport resulted in the remaining two team members sending in this plea to any teams in Almaty "Wanted: two lifts to the russian border from almaty for matt and lauren. Driver richard has lost passport"