The Reunion
Bishkek, Kyrgysztan
October 18th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

BANGKOK. It hovers in my mind like a giant, flashing out-card.
We ship the Trabbis from here in Bishkek, straight to the Thai capital. It takes two to three weeks. While the Trabbis are on route, we meander through China, taking in a few sights, then collect the cars and continue the short trip to Cambodia.
Nice and easy, and within a month we could be on a Cambodian beach, sitting on the bonnets of our cars, warmed by the thick orange sun, sipping Buckets of Joy and telling tales of far away places.
We’d be local celebrities, and could relax, knowing we had accomplished our mission, raised a few thousand dollars, and were the first people ever to get three old Trabants across half the world.
A blissful time, running through old stories with the boys and laughing at the days when we were stuck in bleak, miserable Bishkek. Maybe spend a fortnight on the beach? I’d be home for Christmas.
$6,300. That’s the price of the shipping, a little less than the money we will save by skipping China and that country’s exorbitant car visas.
Such a pleasant daydream.

The other option? The long northern route through Siberia, fraught with risk and danger.
We drive up the length of Kazakhstan, then veer east for a thousand miles into the Siberian wilderness, before dropping south into Mongolia and Ulaanbaatar, the world’s coldest capital city.
It was the route we always planned to take, but we are two months late. We had imagined Siberia in autumn. We will get Siberia in winter.
A time when the temperature dips to -20 ( average temperature in November in Novosibirsk -17). When snow covers the half-paved roads and icy winds slash across the land.
Then the solace of Mongolia? To quote the guide book’s advice: “We would not recommend driving in Mongolia. What appear on maps as roads are often little more than goat paths and the country has virtually no road signs.”
Perfect.
And the icing on the cake. From Ulaanbaatar we ship to Bangkok anyway. We just get there a month later, a month colder and a month poorer.

So it’s no contest right?
Right?

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ON THURSDAY (October 18th) Team USA arrived in Bishkek.
Carlos, Zsofi and I waited at a junction to greet them. We caught sight of Dante first, with OJ at the wheel, trying to drive and change gears with one hand and operate a video camera with the other. Dante’s passenger door is still sealed shut to counter its tendency to swing open without warning, so I jumped in through the window and gave the big Slav a hug.
It was great to see the Yanks, and we went straight to dinner. But it was immediately obvious that there were differences of opinion over what to do next.
“If we ship to Bangkok from here then that is the end of Trabant Trek,” said Lovey, who wasn’t eating.
The End Of Trabant Trek.
I wonder how many times I have heard that phrase. How many more times will it be uttered? (“I think about 50,” Carlos later predicted.)
Lovey had a point. On a map the drive from Bangkok to Phnom Penh in Cambodia looks simple. A week’s drive? Maybe give it two weeks to get down to the coast. Just two more weeks of driving.
“We’re only half way,” Lovey followed up, “so we drove half way to Cambodia and then shipped the cars the rest? That defeats the point.”
It is true that we are just halfway along our strange, circuitous route. But, by a more direct measure, we are more than halfway to Cambodia.
“But we’re going to ship anyway. Even if we go north we’re shipping through China, so what’s the difference?”: OJ was not a big fan of going north, and he was right- we have no way of getting through China, we’ve missed our visa dates and it takes two months to get new visas issued. No one’s prepared to stay here for two months, so if we go north we have to ship the cars through China anyway.
Lovey: “Yes but if we ship from Mongolia then at least we have driven as far as we possibly can along the route. Then we ship because we have no choice.”

The discussion continued in this fashion as we headed back to our homestay, and a few more people revealed their positions.
Tony P said he would not be heading south no matter what. He was dead against the idea of shipping to Bangkok and declared that he would head north on his own, without the cars if necessary. The countries to our north were among his highlights, particularly Mongolia, and he was adamant that he would not be missing them.
I spoke to OJ, who had spent a lot of time with TP in Khorog. He said: “I tried to tell him that even if we head north, we’ll just be driving through the country. It’s not like he can do all the things he wants in Mongolia: ride horses, go falconing, sleep in yurts. We wont have time for that anyway.”
But Tony wouldn’t even contemplate going south.

OJ then revealed that he had to be home by the end of November. He had promised his girlfriend and was determined not to let her down. The end of November seemed a pretty ridiculous promise to me, but I didn’t want to say. Surely she would understand? But OJ was adamant. At the latest he had to be back by early December.
Would it be possible to head north, ship the cars, and drive from Bangkok to Cambodia in time to send OJ home?
We worked through the route and the timing, went over the calculations.
No one knew how long it would take to ship from Ulaanbaatar to Bangkok so we just guessed at two weeks.
That meant maybe arriving in Bangkok December 5th if we were optimistic, December 15th if we realistic.
“So I can’t go north,” OJ said.
OJ doesn’t want to go north. He has a month left of his trip and, understandably, would rather be on a beach in Cambodia than in the snow of Siberia

So if we go south we lose Tony. If we go north we lose OJ.

Then a phone call and another bombshell.
Zsofi’s father, who has lent her the money for her Trek, has heard about our situation and is withdrawing funding.
He thinks Siberia will be too cold (-40c he incorrectly told her) and dangerous, and shipping the cars is just ridiculous.
(Nor was he impressed with our Korean option).
He told her he would continue to pay for her to get to Cambodia, but only by public transport.
“For me this is the end of Trabant Trek,” she told us.
49 to go.

Lovey said that if we were to ship the cars south he would probably go north; maybe take one Trabbi with Tony. He wasn’t definitive, he wants to be diplomatic, but he is very much in the northern camp.

Carlos was more drawn to the southern option.
“Siberia is cold. I don’t really see the point. I told my friend about all this and he said: ‘Hey, if you ship from Bishkek, you are not failures. You will have driven to Kyrgyzstan in Trabants man. And raised ten thousand dollars. That’s amazing.’”
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BANGKOK. It hovers in my mind like a giant flashing out card.
In a month we could be sipping pina coladas on the beach.
But it does seem too easy. Maybe it is a cop out. Surely we should drive as far as the cars, the governments, our tempers and our budgets will allow before we resort to shipping.
I think back to the last time we had to make a call like this. Tajikistan and the Pamir Highway. We gambled then and it cost us three weeks. This will probably be the same.
But if we could go north, I would be up for it.
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No final decision could be made until we heard back from shipping companies. We knew Ulanbaatar-Bangkok was possible, we just didn’t know how much it would cost or how long it would take.
But getting the Russian visas that we would need to head north takes a week. So we resolved to put down the money to begin the process. OJ agreed to begin the application with us so as to keep all his options open.
The next day we got a quote from a shipping company: Ulaanbaatar-Bangkok, $5,000. He would be able to tell us how long the journey takes in a few days, but we reckon for a few weeks.
We were going to head north.

Ends
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For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org