I’m driving to Russia… wait what?!

So remember when I wrote about my inability to stay still? Well, travel has won out, but not in the way you may think. No, I’m not going Korea. Instead I’m driving to Russia. It’s not until July, but it’s one hell of an adventure and one I’ve wanted to do for years. It’s called The Mongol Rally and it’s a 10,000 mile drive from London to Ulan Ude for charity. Yes, 10,000 miles. That’s a lot of time to spend in a car, but it’s for a great cause and it’ll be something to remember.

My team is called The Nerdventurists and I’ll be travelling along with my fellow Baker Street Babe Sora and tea blender and comic artist extraordinaire, Cara McGee. You can learn more about them at the Nerdventurist website. Basically we’re waving our nerd banner high as well as our lady banner. Not a lot of women take on the Mongol Rally challenge and even less Americans. We’re a unique team, but we’re all about the opportunity it’s going to grant us and hopefully we’ll raise tons of money in the process!

While we are given a starting point, a check in point, and a finish line… we are not given an exact route to get to Ulan Ude. It’s called the un-route, and so we have to decide exactly how to get there. There’s multiple options: we could go towards the arctic circle and swoop down, we could go south into Iran and Turkmenistan, or we could go via Australia… if we really wanted to.

In the end we decided to go something akin to the “central route” by past Ralliers. If we go this route we’ll end up passing through: England, France, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia… at minimum. We may decide to swing by Slovakia or Greece or Serbia. Least to say, it’ll be quite the collection of passport stamps!

We will be raising money for two charities: Cool Earth and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America. Cool Earth is the official Mongol Rally charity and is for the protection of rainforests. CCFA is particularly special to The Nerdventurists because both Cara and Sora have Crohn’s disease. We wanted to make a point that just because you suffer from Crohn’s that you don’t have to miss out on travel and adventure. You can learn more about our charities on the website.

Now, we can’t do this on our own, and while we’re seeking corporate sponsorships, we also have a GoFundMe page where you can contribute any amount towards our costs.

You can click on the banner above or go to http://www.gofundme.com/k544w0 to help us out. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards our operating costs and charity. We’ll be raising money for a few months, so if you could share our campaign or if you or someone you know would be interested in sponsoring us, please do tell them to give me a shout at nerdventurists@gmail.com.

The Nerdventurist website is nerdventurists.com and you can follow us on twitter and facebook.