"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting, but it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." Douglas Adams
Regards,
Savageduck
"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature, but plunges him more deeply into them."
Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
Yes, I know; have gathered & analysed/organised tons of info about this and similar trips, past, present & future, accumulated in an somewhat crude raw overview, that I call 'The Great Races'....including several historical side-steps & predecessors, like (pre-)medieval trips between Europe/Siberia/Mongolia/China by sled & horse, plus those in modern times, starting in 1859, even at that time done by a brave female soul, Catharine de Bourboulon.
http://www.markerink.org/WJM/HTML/The-Great-Races.txt
That said, I never really liked the concept of these larger high-profile rallyes, being a bone-knuckle hard, fast & sleepless torture, with a) hardly any opportunity to really watch & absorb the surroundings (if only because of frequent evening/night driving), b) hardly any time to chat with locals, c) have hardly any time to catch up with the group in case of breakdown, and d) still pay through the nose for a service that most often doesn't exist (or used for paying airtime-on/filmcrew-of a prestigious TV-channel).
Doing that trip of a lifetime, along a route hardly any participant will ever travel again in his life, in just 4 weeks is both physical and mental torture.
Maybe die-hard rally aficionado's like living on the clock/tripmeter, and wrenching long nights under a vehicle that falls apart mostly because of speeding, but it isn't my concept of travel/leisure, not even if I had money by the billions.
So this German rally, doing the same trip in nearly 10 weeks, had much more appeal to begin with....you don't want to travel such a distance, along such remote & scenic places, without *also* being a full-package tourist....)
Also, anyone considering this particular Motor Challenge (or one of its deratives by the same organisation) should read several books of past rallys....beyond physical & mental torture, joining one of those borders on sadomasochism....)
PS: if time is no object, and if you can live with the fact that you won't attract the same local fascination with a modern vehicle as you would with a bunch of oldtimers, you can also join one of the few guided camper-tours (mostly German), as a 6 months round trip (combining both south/Silk route & north/Siberia)....
Last edited by W-J-M; 03-05-2012 at 08:07 PM. Reason: URL corrected
Btw, the two guys in the open Willys Jeep were both also close to 70 years of age (one a retired carshop-owner, the other a retired brick-layer-turned-bodyguard-of-German-president-Schroeder)
(same vehicle+trailer+driver also joined another guided oldtimer-rally in Namibia in the year following)
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