Checklists

Before leaving on a 2 month journey towards Mongolia, it’s good to have a list of things that need to be done before you turn your back on your home and head towards the unknown. Here’s an excerpt from mine:

• Visas, Passport, and Letters of Invitation
  Yesterday a courier delivered a huge envelope containing my passport, which contains visas for Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, and China. And today I got a PDF with the letter of invitation for Turkmenistan in my inbox. The visa for Azerbaijan we will have to get on the way in Tbilisi (Georgia).

• The Car
  With Volvo as our sponsor, our ambulance will have superpowers and bring us to Mongolia without trouble. We have 7 spare tyres, tools, two repair manuals, and large amounts of duct tape. We also have various required and optional but recommended paperwork such as the Carnet de Passages, the International Motor Insurance Card, registration certificates, and even parking permits.

• Camping Equipment
  It’s quite unlikely that we’ll find hotels everywhere, therefore we also bring a tent, mattresses, sleeping bags, a petrol cooker, a water filter to make drinking water, chairs and a table. Not to forget Fredrik’s awesome 12 V DC coffee machine.

• Vaccinations and Pharmaceuticals
  It seems our route goes through areas infested with all kinds of scary diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, polio, tick-borne encephalitis, and typhoid. Last week, I went to the Travel Clinic at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at Zürich University, and got vaccinations for “everything”. They had to append yet another page to my vaccination certificate. There are no vaccinations for malaria and dengue fever, though. For the former, we have medication to treat it, for the latter we can only hope that the insect repellent is strong enough. We also have a big box containing everything ranging from cough syrup to antibiotics.

• Insurance
  I double checked that my Rega membership is still valid. For a mere 30 CHF per year, this awesome organization will come and fly you out of any remote place in the world should you become sick or injured. We also have a SPOT connect, which has an S.O.S button that will send our cries for help over satellite should we get into trouble.

• Mail, Bills, Plants, and Pets
  I have no pets, and my plants already died during my last trip. This reduces the problem to finding somebody to take care of my mail, scan the bills, and email them to me so I can pay them via internet banking (thanks, Dave!). Getting my mail re-routed for two months turned out to be simple, but also ridiculously expensive. It set me back almost the equivalent of 100 USD.

• Camera
  I got my camera and lenses serviced at Nikon (and, boy, did they have a lot to fix), and I also got myself a MacBook Air to have decent image processing capabilities en route. I rehearsed uploading pictures over crappy internet connections during the last weeks. With little success, but I’m getting better at it every time. You can look forward to lots of great pictures!

• Copies
  I made several photocopies of all important documents (passport, visas, letters of invitation, insurance, etc.). We’re still working on getting Russian translations for the most important documents. I also uploaded scans of all these documents to various places so I could print them should I loose both the original and the photocopy.

• Announce your Leave
  It’s surprising how many people still haven’t noticed what I’m up to. I frequently hear sentences like “You’re leaving for how long? To Mongolia? You mean, all the way?”. There were quite a few ad-hoc goodbye parties (“come on everyone, last chance to drink beer with Rico”). One of the most joyful moments was enabling the e-mail autoreply at work, stating that I’m out-of-office for two months.

There’s obviously a lot more than this, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out on the way.

Car Keys

This is how configuring a Volvo ignition key looks like.

When we bought the ambulance, it came with exactly one (1!) set of keys. We might be looking for adventure, but embarking on a journey around ⅓ of the world without a single spare key would be more like looking for disaster from my point-of-view.


Just because the laws of the universe stipulate that absolutely nothing is allowed to be really easy when one has far too many things that need to be done, it turns out that also getting more keys for a Volvo 965 ambulance really isn’t that simple. Remember that we chose this particular model to as much as possible avoid unnecessarily complicated electronics, and relish the fact that it nevertheless is modern and complicated enough to have an ignition key in which there is a microchip, that authenticates with the on-board electronics. If the chip isn’t authorized by the car, then the engine can’t be started.


Time to get professional help. One of the larger Volvo dealerships in town is the Häusermann Automobile AG, and they were ready to help out:


– Do you have the Vehicle Identification Number?
– Sure, it’s YV1…
– Hm, that’s a strange one. It’s not in our system. I’ll have to call Sweden.


A great start! But eventually the vehicle was properly identified and keys appeared, so today I drove the ambulance to them to get keys and car configured to learn to know and like each other. I’m getting increasingly fond of driving the ambulance around town, it never fails to attract attention, and even today at a larger Volvo dealership some guys felt compelled to walk out to take a closer look.


– I hope it is a normal Volvo under the hood!


Yes, it is, the data port was right where it was supposed to be, and the keys were properly configured in a few minutes.


That was the ignition keys, that. Now, this being an ambulance, it also has a full-length sliding ambulance cabin door for which there (of course!) is an entirely different key, and such keys turned out to be something with which the larger Volvo dealership had no possibility to help out at all:


– Full-length sliding ambulance cabin doors are not a standard Volvo accessory!
– Really?
– Really.
(… dramatic pause …)
– But it says Volvo on the key. Where else can I get spare keys?
(… requesting assistance from colleagues …)
– This is actually an absolutely normal key. Mister Minit can make a copy of it!


Wonderful! There even is a Mister Minit just next to the garage where we keep the ambulance parked. He does, however, turn out to be quite puzzled when I show him the key:


– This is a special Volvo key. You must talk with Volvo about it. I can’t help you.
– The guys at Volvo sent me here. They said it was a normal key. They said you could copy it.
(… dramatic pause …)

– Hm, let me have a closer look.

(… rummages around an immense collection of key blanks …)

– No, that’s a special key. I don’t have a blank for such a key. Talk to Volvo.

(… desperate pause …)

– I talked to Volvo. They can’t help me. They were certain that you’d be able to help me.

(… desperate pause …)

– Hm, let me have a closer look.

(… rummages around the immense collection of key blanks …)

– Aha! Look here! It’ll take 20 minutes and cost 98 CHF.

Today’s adventures took a little more than 3½ hours in total and cost 383 CHF, but for that we now have a total of three (ie. one each) full sets of keys to the ambulance. Hopefully the magic rule (that stipulates that if you’ve prepared for something, then it won’t happen) works also this time, for then all three sets of keys will arrive with us in Mongolia for the benefit of the recipient of the ambulance.

Now there only are 999 problems left to solve before we leave. Good Night!

T-Shirt

The t-shirt shop has opened:

http://mongolia.to/t-shirt

Show your support of Ambulance To Mongolia by buying a t-shirt (or hoodie, or rain jacket, or reflective vest) in our t-shirt shop! Many different models, colours and sizes for both men and women available. (The t-shirt in the photo above is the regular men’s classic white size L t-shirt test print.) All products are of high quality, with durable flex print that will have vibrant colours still after being machine washed many times. All t-shirts (and hoodies) are also available in more expensive Official Sponsor versions, that directly donate some 80 € to be used for financing the ambulance and the costs associated with it. Payment through all major credit and debit cards, PayPal or direct bank transfer. Shipping to all of Europe and North America.

The Right Equipment

As you might imagine, we are making feverish preparations for the great expedition. And as you might imagine, there are hundreds of things that need to be examined, prepared, applied for, bought, sold, collected, customized, written and translated. But there are certain things that are considerably more important than getting visas and permits. What could that possibly be I hear you ask. It is of course the trusty pith helmet. The must have accessory of any would be adventurer for the last 300 years have always been and will always remain the trusted pith helmet.

The trusty pith helmet has been the headgear of choice for any adventurous man south of the alps since time immemorial. This essential piece of armour against the suns discolouring rays has been worn by distinguished adventurers like Lawrence of Arabia and Orde Wingate (when he could be forced to wear anything at all). It protects the bearer against all trials and tribulations one could possibly face anywhere in the world outside of the arctic. It leads an air of stoicism, panache, and adventurous spirit which is so sadly lacking in the world. And it's available on eBay.

Staying Connected

This nifty little device (it is surprisingly tiny) will allow us to keep you up to date even when no internet or telephone connection is available:

The SPOT connect periodically sends our current position via a satellite, and draws the track on a map that you can view online. This means you can track our progress towards Mongolia in real time, no matter how far we are away from civilization. Additionally, it allows us to send short text messages which will automatically be posted to twitter and facebook, so we'll even be able to let you know what we are doing. It's main drawback is that it requires (non-rechargable) lithium batteries, so we'll have to bring two dozen batteries to make it last 2 months.

We also have a SPOT messenger:

This is basically the same thing, but lacks the bluetooth functionality (and thus can only send one of 3 predefined status messages, "OK", "Help", and "SOS"). Instead it has much longer battery life and is more robust. The OK button logs the position with status "OK". The Help button is meant to notify people of non-life threatening issues (In my opinion this is a rather useless button. I doubt we'll ever use it). The SOS button on the other hand can be extremely useful. It is connected to the International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC) which will forward the distress call to the appropriate agencies (depending on the location). We plan to save it for real emergencies when we're in serious trouble and we ran out of batteries for the SPOT connect, or when the SPOT connect fails.