It happened as it thad to happen: our families didn’t approve the Afghanistan, we decided to go around the Caspian Sea in the north and to bypass Iran and Afghanistan. This is the final route, approximately:

The good news is that we don’t have to give up on Iran and Afghanistan completely. I have fallen in love with the Delica so much that I decided not to sell it at the end of the trip. Or rather not to end the trip in Ulaanaatar. You can leave your car for up to 12 months in Mongolia and this is exactly what we are planning to do: Interrupt our journey for a short break and continue in 2025. Destination? Don’t know yet. China has opened its borders for foreign cars now, one option is to come back through Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran. But before doing so we could also visit the Pacific Ocean, or even take the ferry to America and drive the Panamericana.

The team for the first leg is complete, too: Janos, my partner on the Budapest-Bamako 2015, his friend Attila, and the two daughters of Janos, Anna and Bogi. I’m glad the Delica has 6 comfortable seats and enough space for our luggage.

The dates have been fixed, too: we are leaving in the evening of June 20, and my flight back from Ulaanbaatar to Vienna is on July 16. Btw the flight was quite cheap, 460EUR with Mongolian Airlines, half the price of the code shared Turkish Airlines ticket.

Since I don’t have anybody to drive my car back to Europe and because it is virtually impossible to sell an older car in Mongolia (there is an import tax of around 8000 USD to prevent old junk flooding the country), I decided to buy a cheap car which wouldn’t be a big loss even if I had to scrap it.

What could be more appropriate for that purpose than a Budapest-Bamako veteran, moreover a right hand drive car not worth much in continental Europe? I remembered that one of the medical teams of the 2022 rally was driving a Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear, a 4WD van with plenty of space built on the drivetrain of the Pajero. You can see the car on this picture which I took at the Mauritanian border a year ago:

Luckily I found the owner who turned out to have prepared it for another Africa trip already, but then decided to take a different car. So what I found was a car with brand new tires, refurbished suspension, freshly changed oils, and an extra tank doubling the original capacity to 150 liters. Such a car, with British license plates, expired MOT, unpaid taxes, and no insurance, is almost unsellable in Europe after Brexit, you would have to do the customs clearance, pay VAT and registration tax, swap the headlights to left hand drive versions, and get an individual approval before registering in Europe.

But who needs all that in Mongolia? We quickly agreed on the price and now I am the proud owner of a rare 1996 Delica which has never been sold outside of Japan (my car was imported as a used car to the UK in 2007).

It turns out Turkmenistan has stopped issuing transit visas. If we want to take the southern route via Iran, the only way around Turkmenistan is through Afghanistan. We are discussing with our families…