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Comment by Luuseens | Hacker News Reader

Oh dear, I can relate. We did Mongol Rally last year, 27'000 km total From Latvia to Mongolia and back. 2 months in an ancient soviet car (Lada 1200 from 1984).

We got proper stuck by a salt lake in Iran. A local tried to pull us out, only to get his car stuck as well. First tractor could get him out, but not us. Ended up getting a bigger tractor which essentially lifted us out.. Took about 4 hours in total.

Here's a pic:

https://i.imgur.com/yA92DZA.jpg

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What a great story, and I'm sure you have more! Why did you do the Rally? Do you have a blog that documents your journey?

The Mongol Rally has been the dream of mine for a while. I have a few friends that I'd trust to do it with but they're not in a financial state to pull this off yet.

That's sounds like quite the adventure, what car was what in, a Lada? I don't recognize it at all but looks very Soviet/Russian like.

Any chance you got more to put in an album?

The ca is a Lada 1200 (or VAZ 2101 "Zhiguli" in USSR). It's visually almost identical to the Italian Fiat 124, the Soviets bought the design and modified it to be more suitable for the rougher road conditions and weather.

Here's [1] a mish-mash of my favourite pictures from the rally, roughly in chronological order - from prep all the way to the finish. And here's the map of the route we did [2]. Nearly a year after finish, I still haven't finished writing up the whole trip though.

[1] https://photos.app.goo.gl/9dzr7vR3DPssv2J79

[2] https://www.ivankathetanka.com/map.html

Those are awesome pictures and thank you for sharing. That must have been a blast!

You have written up the colophon, which is the most important part, however: https://www.ivankathetanka.com/#/2019/05/01/web :-) (as we all know, Archimedes never moved the world because he started on the design of the perfect length lever first.)

TIL it isn't always true that "К Жигулям — литые диски!" What was the truck with the jet-like thing on the bed? Did you ever see the mongolian stick/rope thing being used to catch cattle, or just to drive them?

Yes, can't believe _every_ Ленинград lyric! In seriousness, we wanted to go with some reinforced alloys at first (magnesium ones from Kazan), but due to various constraints went with steelies instead. Main reason - they don't shatter. By the end of the rally, we could lift the car, take off a ruined wheel, hammer it back into shape, re-inflate the tire and re-install the wheel in 5 minutes or so. Alloys have a tendency of shattering instead.

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