Rus is a local fire performer from Brighton and as such will be busking his way to Mongolia, stopping off in every country to spin with either his contact poi or fire poi he intends to raise money for both charities along the way as well as entertain the locals, many of whom may never have seen fire dancing before! Over the 4-6 weeks the trip takes Rus intends to swamp this blog with videos of him performing as well as the reactions from the locals!

Having performed for the past 4 years at many of the UK festivals with Poi Passion, including the Brighton Festival, Out Of The Ordinary Festival and Brighton Fringe Festival Rus isn’t afraid of being shoved out by himself in front of an audience and with his charming grin the language barriers shouldn’t be a problem at all!

Explosive Poi Pyrotechnics

Leading the wave in pyrotechnics in Brighton, Rus is slowly stepping up his poi game, strapping pyros to anyone and everyone that will let him. Whilst he won’t be taking any to Mongolia with him, you might have seen some of his pyro work with his Poi Passion performance for the Brighton Fringe Festival in May 2012!

10,000 miles, 20 countries, harsh deserts, treacherous mountains, bandits, bad roads and no roads. The Mongol Rally is about getting yourself in a ton of trouble then trying to get out of it. If nothing goes wrong, we’ve done it wrong!

Team Ronin Mongol Rally Non Route

There’s no set route for the Mongol Rally, it starts in Goodwood in the UK on Saturday 14th July 2012 as part of the Festival of Slow then there’s a party in Prague 2 days later, then we are on our own until we get to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, hopefully 4-5 weeks later!

Our plan is to take a southern route, a ferry to France, with a quick visit to Paris and the Eiffel Tower followed by Luxembourg then Germany where we will abuse their autobahns to the fullest to make as much time as possible before we then enter the Czech Republic and Prague for the Mongol Rally party!

From there we are on our own and intend to visit the beautiful Vienna in Austria, followed by Budapest in Hungary and Zagreb in Croatia, after a tour of the Croatian coast we will cross over Bosnia and Herzegovia, Montenegro and Serbia before we enter Bulgaria and cross over to the Black Sea!

After a quick dip in the Black Sea it’s in to Greece then Turkey and Istanbul! Heading along the south coast of the Black Sea its across to Georgia and the capital Tbilisi, before we enter Russia and visit Volgograd then Astrakhan before we cross the Kazakhstan border!

Heading along the North of the Caspian sea we will then visit Atyrau before seeing the fantastic Baikonur Cosmodrome on the coast of the Aral Sea! We will then make our way across the center of the country towards Astana before crossing the border at Pavlodar back in to Russia!

During our 2nd time in Russia we’ll be hitting up the city of Novosibirsk before crossing back down in to Mongolia and taking in some beautiful lakes and the amazing Khangai Nurru National park!

Then it’s a tiny hop to the capital, Ulaanbaatar and the Gorkhi Terelj National park for a few days of rest and relaxation, before we donate the car to charity, give the country a final wave, and fly back to the UK.

Where no doubt we will need another holiday to recover … 😉

The Route!

1. England
2. France
3. Luxembourg
4. Germany
5. Czech Republic
6. Slovakia
7. Hungary
8. Austria
9. Slovenia
10. Croatia
11. Bosnia and Herzegovina
12. Montenegro
13. Kosovo
14. Serbia
15. Macedonia
16. Bulgaria
17. Turkey
18. Georgia
19. Russia
20. Kazakhstan
21. Russia
22. Mongolia

21 countries in total as we enter Russia twice!

Here it is, our beauty of a car!

1ltr 2003 Suzuki Swift

Isn’t she beautiful 🙂

We lucked out a bit in finding this car, as it’s only got 57,000 miles on the clock! It’s not in bad shape either, so something we can certainly put our faith in to do another 10,000 miles hassle free…. famous last words!

We’ll update this page as the sponsorship logos, graphics and rally mods get added to the car!

Now we just need to have a think on what to name her.