Roof of the World Rally
Launching 12th July 2008
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History
The Roof of the World rally has evolved from two ambitious entries into the Mongol Rally in 2007.
Ryan Walker, Alex Welsh and Michael Holloway decided that taking a crap car just was not adventurous enough, and so took an Ice Cream Van on the 10,000 mile journey. Despite the freezer packing up due to the crap roads and extreme heat, the ice cream van made it. Some of the highlights/lowlights included their encounters with the Kazakh mafia during a drug run, attending two random weddings and a bizarre event late one night involving a brothel, which did nothing to dampen their sense of adventure. Their trip captured the imagination of the BBC and UK:TV amongst others.
Sophie Willingale and Helen Emery took a Nissan Micra named Daisy on the trip. Not doing things by half, they struck trouble by having expired visas in the one country this was a really not a good plan – Turkmenistan. They got chatted up by the mafia during a drugs run who wanted to find them some nice husbands (regardless than Helen already had one), tackled a severe case of altitude sickness crossing a mountain pass at night and broke down in the rough part of Irkutsk at 2am one night. Sophie loved every minute and actually wants to do something a little more adventurous this year.
Both teams happened to convoy and whilst doing so they pioneered a Mongol Rally trip into the wilds of Tajikistan to visit SWORDE-Teppa. All that visited Sworde-Teppa were blown away by the great work and fantastic reception they received. The desire to help this very small charity along with the desire to come back and take on the almost mythical Pamir highway (a road touched by very few tourists – that includes the Mongol Rally!) led to the creation of the Roof of the World rally.