An amazing six weeks after the Mongol Rally launched from the UK, Spain and Italy back on 18th July 2009, some of the intrepid teams have only just reached the Mongol Rally Finish Line in Ulaanbaatar.
This feat of endurance was celebrated by all last night using that age old method of a party – this time the six week party – the third and final knees up of the Mongol Rally 2009. Full of cheer, the happy ralliers were entertained by some stomping Mongolian music and a quite extraordinary display of flexibility by a contortionist, whose head really should not have been able to find it's way upside down and the wrong way round to between her feet. Cheers went up from all but one poor chap who found the whole thing rather too much. Nightmares of his own contortion experiences for six weeks in a car built for a shrew across thousands of miles of the world's toughest terrain flooding back perhaps? But back to the party!
Indeed – out of a car for the first time in weeks, those rally chaps and chapesses cut some magical shapes on the dance floor, raised more than a few toasts to their enduring courage, and shed more than a tear or two as the party wound down and the oh too familiar rhythms of life in the slightly slow lane of normality began to loom.
Now it's only a few remaining teams of 2009 still to reach the Finish Line, as they wind their merry ways, rather slowly one might say, through places as far flung as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. No doubt we'll see them here soon so keep an eye out here for news of their auspicious arrival...