The first question that comes to everyone’s lips when I tell them we’re driving to Mongolia in a car that barely merits use of the word is, “Why?!”
The truth is, I had a dream.
No, not a groundbreaking dream about civil rights for all à la MLK Jr. My dream did have a theme of ‘freedom’, but in it I was driving from South-East Asia to London. It was a vivid dream, the kind that feels so real; the heat of the sand, the fresh smell of mountain air, it was all there. We drove through so many countries, saw so many things, and by the end of my dream I felt that all the people I had met and all the things we had done fundamentally changed us to enjoy life and think better of people.
So rosy, right?
When I woke up, I became driven to determine whether or not this adventure was a viable thing to do. Upon learning the fact that driving through Myanmar is not an option, and incendiary politics made much of South East Asia a near impossibility, I almost gave up my dream. I chided myself for being so foolish to think I could accomplish something even close to this. Then, so like the magic of the Internet, I stumbled upon the Mongol Rally.
It’s the reverse direction that I had taken in my dream, and it doesn’t involve going through South East Asia (well, I suppose it could, if I was an insane person), thus less of an impossibility than I feared. When registration opened in August, I knew we had to do it.
And here we are. Who said dreams don’t come true? 🙂