ADVENTURE: Two Strangers Take on the 10,000-Mile Mongol Rally

Charlie Grosso in Istanbul preparing for The Mongol Rally[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts by former stated feature artist, Charlie Grosso, as she takes on the 10,000- mile Mongol Rally.]

Dear Readers of Stated Magazine,

How are you? Please allow me to take a moment of your time and introduce myself and what I am doing this summer. My name is Charlie Grosso, and a 140-character description of me reads something like: Art Gallery Director. Photographer.  Adventurer. Brand Consultant. Rule Breaker. World Traveler. Writer. Possible Spy. Only fitting I Live under an Alias.

I am taking on The Mongol Rally this summer—a 10,000-mile unsupported car rally traveling from London, UK to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. The Mongol Rally is adventure philanthropy at its best. We take on the adventure, roam across 1/3 of the world in a tiny car, and raise money for local charities in Mongolia at the same time. The rally has raised over £3.5 million for charity since 2004.  

I will be tackling The Mongol Rally with Pamela MacNaughtan, a fabulous woman I met on Twitter (yes, I don’t know her in real life, not yet…). We are team SM Stowaway and we are one of the few all-women teams in an 85% male-dominated rally.

Here is a short video to give you an idea of who we are and what we are about to get into!

What made me say YES to this 10,000 miles of insanity? 

On a not very special evening back in Nov. 2010, I was in Taipei visiting family. I had just finished dinner with my mom and was attempting to fight off the onset of food coma by poking around on the Internet to see what kind of mischief all my globe-trotting friends were getting into. I stumbled across Sherry Ott’s post about something called The Mongol Rally. What is that? I clicked over to give it a quick read and the first thing I see is this:

“10,000 miles of bad roads, no roads, bandits, deserts, mountains and other adventuresome stuff…”

Ughm. Ok. Sure. It didn’t really quite sink in. I read a little further down and read this:

“Your chances of being seriously injured or dying as a result of your participation are high. Individuals who have taken part in past Adventurists’ adventures have been permanently disfigured, permanently disabled or even lost their life. These adventures are not glorified holidays. They are unsupported adventures and so by their very nature extremely risky. You really are on your own.

The Mongol Rally is dangerous!

The Mongol Rally is NOT an organized tour. You may end up stuck at the borders of any of the countries you choose to travel through for days or even weeks. You are completely at the mercy of those countries’ authorities. You may miss your flights home, you may not get even half way to Mongolia. You will likely find yourself in situations that were not foreseen and which pose you some degree of danger. And you will receive no support should such a scenario occur.

The Mongol Rally poses risks to your health and your life. You will be driving for many thousands of miles in parts of the world that are unfamiliar to you, which means your chances of being involved in a road accident or in any number of other health and life-threatening situations is significantly increased from your day to day life.

Road traffic in many of the regions you might encounter can be hectic, chaotic and dangerous. Should you be injured or harmed in some way, medical help might be hours from where you are. Even then, the kind of medical help you may receive may differ vastly from the quality of medical care you would expect to find at home. By way of example, Mongolia itself has no centre of excellence in which you could be adequately treated for serious injuries.

If you are unfortunate enough to become involved in an accident it is quite likely you will be blamed by local authorities for the accident regardless of whose fault it was. At this point you may end up in prison for several years or face very large fines.

This adventure is not a glorified holiday. It is an unsupported adventure and so by it’s very nature extremely risky. You really are on your own and you really are putting both your short term and long-term health and even your life at risk.”

These long paragraphs describing risk, injury, mayhem, and chaos send a rush of adrenaline into my system, put a pause on the food coma, and an unmitigated, unprovoked YES jumped out of me!

Am I insane? Maybe.

Why would the warning about risk, liability, and danger be the thing that made me want to take on 10,000 miles of the worst terrain in the world? Any sane person would say…“I don’t think that is a good idea.”

What we often forget is that Life is a dangerous proposition.

There are a hundreds of ways to die an unexpected painful death, thousands of ways to waste life away slowly and unconsciously, and the ways in which you can make sure that you can feel alive often involve risk. To risk pain for love, risk humiliation to sing off key in front of your friends, risk potential harm to ascend the highest peak, risk rejection and publish…being ALIVE involves risk. Life dares you at every turn to see if you will take the bait.

Pamela MacNaughtan and I will be taking on The Mongol Rally as SM Stowaway and we would like to invite you along to join us on this most epic adventure ahead at:

SMStowaway | Like Us | Tweet at us in real time.

Go on… take the long way home.