No Money, No Worries, No Sense

Now in its fifth year, the London Tashkent (aka The Silk Road Run) is a sister rally to Julian Nowill's Plymouth-Banjul Challenge, which first ran just over five years ago as a more adventurous and more accessible option to the high profile, corporate sponsored and immensely expensive Paris Dakar and the likes.

Along the lines of the Plymouth Dakar Challenge, the London Tashkent does not really start from London and does not end in Tashkent. It will set off from wherever you push-start your car, and ends in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (or wherever your vehicle decides that this time, it really has had enough...).

Also following the principles of Plymouth Dakar, the cars must be worth less than £100 to participate. The kind of cars your neighbour wouldn't drive to Tesco. A real banger. So bad, it is good. Look at this as an opportunity to celebrate our motoring heritage - when was the last time you saw a MG Montego or heard a Rover SD1 with half its exhaust missing?

You will be dashing across Europe to your first rest day in Kiev.  You get 4 days to do this, in which time you've got to fit in a couple of laps of the Nurburgring (it's o­nly polite when you're passing that way), a visit to Auschwitz, and a couple of thousand miles. 

From Kiev you may wish to take a detour to Chernobyl (the o­nly thing in Europe more polluting than a convoy of bangers...). From there it's a short 300-mile dash to the missile silos of Dnipropetrovsk before winding into Russia and enjoying your night out in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).

Passing by the delights of Astrakhan we then arrive at Atyrau, o­n the northern edge of the Caspian Sea, and pause briefly before attempting the largely unsurfaced desert road to Aqtobe. It's then flat-out all the way down Kazakhstan, pausing o­nly to take in the ship graveyards of the Aral Sea and to enroll as a space cadet at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If all goes to plan (which it won't) we'll arrive in Bishkek 15 days after leaving the UK. 

After a brief pause to enjoy the delights of Bishkek (and deal with the envy of locals who want your rally-hardened wheels o­n their drive at any price!) it's a trip to the orphanage, our final destination, where you'll finally hand your vehicle over with a tear in your eye. 

Will the car break down o­n the way? Probably. 
Will you get lost? Most definitely.
Will you have the most amazing experience of your life? Absolutely!

If you've read the above and been overcome with an irresistible urge to throw everything aside and go raid the local scrappie, you'll be glad to hear that registration is now open for the 2010 (horse games themed) event! 

The London Tashkent 2010 sets off July 14th 2010 and for most participants finishes in Bishkek 30th July 2010.  That's two and a half weeks, if you're very lucky and nothing goes wrong.  So if you've got a few days holiday you don't know what to do with, fill the registration form out and find out whether it's possible to average over 300 miles a day the hard way!

The 2010 event is timed so that when you get there you will be able to take a couple of days rest enjoying the Kyrgyzstan national horse games.  We've never been before, but check out Wikipedia o­n the subject! 

If you're not sure yet whether banger rallying is for you, you can register for the online forum where you can ask any question and those who have been before will tell a tall story in reply.

There are no age restrictions o­n who can take part - if you can drive a car, you're old enough.  And we're always looking for somebody to set a new record for being the oldest person to successfully make the trip (now standing at 69 - beat that)!