Can anyone come up with a rational explanation why a couple of 50+ brothers from Scandinavia should buy an ambulance and spend their entire summer holiday driving thousands of kilometers into Asia just to donate the car to some total strangers and pay for their own flight ticket to get home?
Suggestions anyone? read more »
Our ambulance is now been taken care of by the VW-garage free of charge and we look forward to get it back good as new (or almost:-)). All the visas are stamped and glued into our passports, and we are now down to the small details in our list of stuff to bring. We also have collected some toys and childrens shoes that we hope will be usefull in Tajikistan.
We are still struggling a bit when it comes to the car-documents. In Norway it is not allowed to have red or blue lights on a car unless you are in "the ambulance- police- or firebusiness". It might be necessary to take all these off before we get the plates and documents and then put it back on just before the launch, we'll see.
We thank our sponsors for their help and donations so far!
Another month has passed, we make progress in our planning but departure date seems to come a bit early! Anyway, one of the first days of July we head for the "stans" no matter have far planning has come! Visas are ok, tickets for the returnflight - checked!. There are som sponsors that are helping us, and we welcome more help with just about evereything! This weekend we pick up the car from the barn where it spent it's last winter in Norway. Next winter we hope it will be on duty in Tajikistan!
Thanks to Sparbanken Tanum for the donation and mentioning us on their website! Thank you also to our other sponsors, you can see who they are another place on our page.
Vidar and Arne
Late March and still winter in Norway! We hope to get the ambulance out of its wintersleep soon to start preparing it for its lifes longest trip - so far! Two weeks ago we got very good news from the company importing Volkswagen to Norway: They will take a look at our car and do necessary repairs free of charge! We are struggling to get other sponsors, but are keeping up the good work to fill up our account on justgiving. If we don't get help we will have to put in our own savings!
Happy easter to everebody!
Vidar and Arne
At last we found out that we have to speed up planning! But now it seems like we have a problem finding an open road from Bishkek to Dushanbe without going through Uzbekistan or taking the Pamir Highway. Not that it would be a problem to choose one of these options, but it wasn't a part of our first plan. Will this be the first of many changes in planning from here to Dushanbe?
At least the flight tickets are booked - for the journey back home in August!
Till next time: tjallabajs!
Wow. That was hard work to sign up. I hope the trip is easier.
I welcome my younger brother as a tour member, and even if I some times wished so when we grew up, I do not have three brothers. It is one guy, he is a bit younger than me but is also a "silver fox" that I look forward to have as a co-traveller.
We've just filled in all the entry documentation and signed our lives away; it's just hit us in the face that in merely six months time we will be on the road, hopefully with a perfect working vehicle, a sense of direction, some organisation and a huge feeling of anticipation.
In the mean time there is a huge amount of work to be done and the hurdle of first year exams to be hurdled, we hope that any sponsors looking back at this first post will have a much better idea than we do right now of quite what we are getting ourselves in to. We've done a fair amount of planning and forethought but there is not much substance to show of it yet; hopefully our next post will focus on the recent procurement of a lovely ambulance.
