Magadan Two?

OK - An interesting suggestion has come up - why not go the other way?
Well it's a pro's verses con's scenario here.

Con:
Less confident the car will arrive / Difficult to get from docks due to language barrier.

Pro:
We'll be doing the trip the other way round - we'll get the harder bits done first, and leave the touristy bits to the end (Europe)

Pro: Any excess time can be more easily spent in the UK or Europe - Magadan would get boring after two days.

Con: We'll have to change the name.


One of my personal motivations was to see the 'Mask of Sorrow' which is in Magadan. It seems selfish, but that was one of the non-negotiable destinations. That and 'Buwler' Street in London where the journey commenced.

Shipping can be arranged between Vladivostock & Magadan, but again its more complication and room for errors. The more I look at the scenario - maybe shipping and flying too and from is going to be too difficult.
I'm yet to find a road route between Vladivostock and Magadan but we'll see. I don't really want to extend the trip by two weeks, only to double back. Oh the humanity.

Further thoughts - If we don't bring the car back (original idea) then it doesn't matter - we get to Magadan and sell it! no shipping headaches - then just catch the next flight back homeward bound.

The other thing is, in addition to Magadan's Mask Of Sorrow, is the Kolymer Highway (Road of bones) - again, whats the point of doing this trip, and missing out on that!


We can revisit the idea of selling the car in Magadan because there is no Carnet's for Russia. We don't need it to leave. Only considerations would be possible export limitations but then again it'll be worth less than $3000 so who cares? I guess if I just don't renew the registration the car disappears? Who knows!

Russia Eh?

Ugh - this is one of those down moments.
Why is it so hard to get into Russia. Everything everyone tells me is that it's next to impossible, and that somehow we are odd for wanting to enter and exit where we wish. Why are these people so cynical and suspicious of visitors - it's absurd by our standards. I feel that this one damn country is going to ruin the whole trip.

But then a ray of hope... "The border crossing at Tashanta (Russia) and Tsagaannuur (Mongolia) opened for third country nationals in 2005."

You beauty! that's been one of the most difficult pieces of information to attain! Suddenly things are beginning to look up.

This article has made my day - http://dreamers1.com/russia/Practicalities/Russia_Mongolia_Practicalities.htm
O well - I don't feel so bad now ;-)

First video diary

Hey all
I've been trying to become confident making video diary entries on my mobile phone while driving to work or going for walks. It's going to take a while to learn how to do this comfortably. Lets see how these turn out.



That seemed OK?

Communication Ideas

Morning - It's my birthday today and the opportunity has come up to look into potential gifts. So this is an excuse to go wild and post and article about the type of technology we plan to take.

A brilliant idea that I hope to include is a SPOT Satellite Messenger. http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=102
It's a one way communication device that allows you to send the below messages with the press of a button.
The new unit has four basic messages.

911/Emergency - Sends a message to an international emergency department, which coordinates and dispatches local emergency authorities to your location. It continually does this until the batteries run flat. This also informs your contact group which may help if for some reason your 911 call goes unanswered in a certain country - allowing your contact group to coordinate a rescue.

I'm OK - Sends a message to your pre-defined contact group that you are OK and your GPS location so that your friends and family can locate you on Google maps.

Help - Sends a message to your pre-defined contact group informing them that you need non-urgent assistance. For example, I'm bogged, I'm broken down etc. Again giving your contacts your GPS location and visual indication on Google maps.

Track - A facility that allows a stream of messages at roughly 10 minute intervals to be tracked and plotted on Google maps. Probably not a bad idea if you were bushwalking and were not aware when you might become disabled or fall, or become ill - without triggering your SPOT personally. The intent is for people to track your adventure, but I see it more as an 'un-attended tracking in case something goes wrong'. I guess it would be important that your contacts were aware of this prior to you going out - so that IF you didn't come back with an 'I'm OK' after your adventure, they would assume your last location was your last tracking location.

Custom Message - This isn't an interactive SMS type service, but more of a pre-defined message you may often want to send. For example 'I'm stuck in traffic, I'm running late' could be triggered by this button and gets sent to your contact group.

As always with these posts - Click on the pictures to see a larger size one. Above I have pictures of the messenger, and the coverage maps.

OK so that's the spot messenger, but we plan to carry a Satellite phone, on the Iridium network which should give us excellent coverage 24/7 as compared to the laughable 10 minute window every hour or so that you get using the Globalstar network. Play with this tool here to see the Globalstar network shortfalls. Try keying in somewhere in Mongolia. Even keying in Canberra sees similar results. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but that does seem to make it a bit unreliable.

The Iridium network has this to say "According to the Frost & Sullivan report (an independent report) over 99% of calls are successfully connected and completed without being disconnected. Iridium has more satellites than any other commercial constellation, and they are constantly in view of every part of the Earth. With no service gaps, Iridium users should be able to pick up and hold a strong communications signal, allowing them to place or receive calls just about anywhere as long as there is a direct line of sight to the sky." - That's the sort of confidence we want.

You can imagine we intend to document this trip whilst we are on the road and are pretty much assuming there will be absolutely zero WiFi or 3G for 90% of the trip. We will try to use satellite data which has a whopping 2.4kbps speed. For those of you that are too young to remember dialup, that should be just less than 17KB/minute. They say that using a specific kind of data service can get you up to 9600bps or 70KB/minute In the interest of saving our patience and money we're intending to post our blog articles via raw text based email. We intend to write the articles, edit and spell check them with an email client like outlook, and email them straight to our blog using a special email address. This should save us a heap compared to writing these online. Even this post has taken more than an hour. Even best case writing the blog offline, then logging into blogger.com and posting would take us 15 minutes at this speed. Which makes for a very expensive post at roughly $3/Minute. So all going to plan, we've budgeted $5/day satellite phone/data usage. We imagine a once a week call home to keep our sanity - but look forward to text based emails from family.

Do I really want to do this?

I thought it would be great to record those down moments. Not that this is really one of these but it's not a super positive up... so what tha hell.

We have a map that's on our bathroom wall which provides entertainment for those precious few minutes each day. It's a world map that shows political boundaries, time zones etc. Some days I look at this map with excitement yet today I look at it with somewhat of a level head thinking 'do I really want to do this?'. It's a politically complicated and lengthy route which will take months. How about just a beach on some island somewhere? No border crossings, no foreign currencies, no languages, no need to submit trip itinerary to authorities. Why do we sometimes feel like this? Will this huge investment in time and money pay off? I hope that either getting a picture atop 'the singing dunes' in Kazakhstan or stopped at a river for lunch in the Altay region, or seeing Magadan and the coastline in the distance as we descend our last mountain range knowing we have just crossed the majority of the largest continent on earth.

A certainly level of pressure also exists. Some people would call this motivation. Firstly, I've told myself and others that I will do this - that's enough pressure. But in addition to this, at this point in our lives, feels like the only opportunity we will get. Cassie will have finished her studies, we will have the cash and the time. Without putting it off for another year, or waiting to build up holidays with another employer. Cassie will be rapidly building her career and a 3-4 month gap in it could be damaging. I know I'm only 25 now, but when I'm 35/45/55 I may not have the option any longer. I just have to - and that is pressure. Further to this, I've always wanted to. Just because I don't feel it today, I certainly would regret not taking the opportunity.

I think the way to combat these feelings is to make it easier. Easier by having the largest checklist known to man to minimise mistakes and forgotten documentation which could either leave us stranded at a border crossing, or sleeping in a concrete jail.