A pair of London-based adventurists with big hearts are giving new meaning to the phrase “summer road trip.”
Nick Harvey, 29, and Maria Novatschkova, 31, will embark on their 10,000-mile adventure from London to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, to raise money for Mongolia’s homeless children on July 24. ”Team Wanderlust” will join some 350 other teams from around the globe in the 2010 Mongol Rally to raise money for the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation. Funds raised will support the Blue Skies Ger Village in Mongolia, which houses abandoned or homeless children and provides them with a safe place to live, education, and the support of a family.
When it is all said and done, they will have crossed 18 countries, five mountain ranges, three deserts and the second highest road in the world in a tiny 847cc, 72hp Malaysian Perodua Nippa they affectionally call “Polly.” In case you aren’t impressed yet, I will add that Maria and Nick will be living out of the pint-sized vehicle for the duration of their five-week trip. Without A/C.
I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Team Wanderlust about their upcoming adventure. Here is what they had to say:
What made you first decide to do this?
Maria was looking for a good cause to volunteer for some time already and then Nick came across information about the rally and thought it sounded like an incredible adventure… something that not many people could say they’ve done. Once we started looking into it and realized that there was a charity aspect to it as well, it really motivated both of us to take part.
How did you hear about the Mongol Rally?
I’m honestly not sure where we first heard about it. Nick had been looking into it now for a few years and decided that right after graduating from business school would be the perfect time, before he started working again. We looked into some other similar rallies such as the Trans-Siberian, which is a very professional rally, and also the Paris/Beijing Rally where you drive a classic car. We settled on the Mongol Rally because being unsupported, it is a lot more adventurous, you can drive any route you want to, and it raises money for a really great charity.
Do you live in the UK?
Maria is based in the UK and has lived there for the last 12 years, although she is Bulgarian and German by nationality. She has travelled a lot of the world as a child with her parents such as to Pakistan, India and Russia, but hasn’t been able to stand still much as an adult either. She came to the UK to study, stayed here and has built a career that has involved a lot of travel and international work.
Nick was born in Philadelphia and raised in the US. He went to Lafayette College in Easton, PA where he earned a BS in Chemical Engineering. After school he went to work for a specialty chemical company which sent him to Yantai, China for a 6 month contract. At the end of the contract he liked it so much that he decided to stay and start a factory with a business partner making small trailers, which he ran for 2.5 years. In 2008, he came to the UK to study his MBA and has now started to work in Copenhagen Denmark.
What do you do career-wise and for fun?
Nick just moved to Copenhagen, Denmark to start a new job with a medical devices company called Radiometer. He is a project leader within their R&D department. As part of his hiring negotiations he took the six weeks off in the middle of the summer to participate in the rally.
Maria is a project manager that specialises on marketing and communications with a focus on digital channels. Amongst others, she has managed projects for the UK National Health System; Transport for London, who control the London Underground, red London buses and black taxis that are the most used transport modes in London; BP Biofuels, which is looking at sustainable energy sources.
Are you quite the adventurists?
We’d like to think so. We’ve both visited the Taj Mahal in India, on separate occasions and we’re planning on hiking to the Annapurna Circuit, a 3 week circular walk through the Himalayas in Nepal. Nick has also backpacked through Thailand, island hopped across the Nusa Tenggara chain in Indonesia to Komodo Island, home of the Komodo Dragon, and been attacked by monkeys in Malaysia.
How do you and Maria know each other?
Her cousin is a classmate of mine at London Business School. We met in late 2008.
Why the Perodua Nippa? Will that be an uncomfortable ride?
After speaking to many of the participants from last year’s rally, we decided to go with the Nippa, which we subsequently called Polly. Though it is one of the smallest cars on the rally and no one has ever heard of it before, it is based on solid Daihatsu engineering and was one of the few cars last year that completed the rally with no mechanical failures. It is designed as a city car for the Malaysian market, but she’s got some pep to her, and though her engine is only 847cc, because she only weighs 675 kg she is quite ‘Nippy’. She is a very basic car though… power nothing and not a very comfortable ride. Once you get past 60 miles per hour, she starts shaking hard enough that you can’t really see anything in the rear view mirror because it’s shaking so much – and that is on paved highway. On dirt track and gravel roads, as much of Asia will be, we’re pretty sure it will be very uncomfortable. She has a top speed of 80 mph and only has 72 horsepower.
Did you buy the car? How did you get it and how/why is it being donated afterwards?
We bought the car over the phone from APT Motors in South West England without ever having seen her in person. We did that because Nippas are not very easy to find, particularly one with such low mileage. Polly the Perodua is a 2001 year old car with only 15,000 miles on her. Nick took the train out on a weekend and drove her back to London.
It is part of the rally that once we arrive in Ulaan Baatar, Polly will be donated to a charity run by the Adventurists called Adventures for Development, Mongolia (AFDM). AFDM will then either sell Polly, donating the proceeds to local charities, or if she’s still in good enough shape, will give her to a local charity in need. Last year, some of the cars were converted into ambulances or other emergency vehicles and given to a regional area in need. The charities or regions can really use the extra money raised by the sold cars, or in some cases the cars are still perfectly usable.
How long will this trip take you?
The plan is to leave England on July 24 and arrive in Ulaan Baatar by August 28, so 35 days or five weeks.
Are you funding it yourself? If not who is?
We have raised £1,350 that go directly to the CNCF charity from friends, family and co-workers. Anyone can donate to CNCF by following the Just Giving link (www.justgiving.com/team-wanderlust-cncf) on our website. That money goes directly to CNCF without ever passing through our hands.
The costs of the actual trip itself, including the car, equipment, food, fuel, etc. we have been entirely funding ourselves, but we are seeking corporate sponsorship to help cover part of these costs. We are more than happy to offer companies advertising space on Polly, our website, any merchandise that they want to give us, and mention in news articles, on a radio show where we will be featuring on a repeated basis throughout our trip, etc.
We hope that newspaper and blog articles such as yours will help raise awareness of the Mongol rally and the great cause it supports and that some individual or corporate sponsors will come forward with donations or products. As everything we take with us will remain in Mongolia and be donated to AFDM, any moneys or products we receive and use on the trip will effectively help the charities and children they support.
How much money do you and Maria hope to raise? Does each team raise money for CNCF?
The Mongol Rally has various official charities that the participants are raising money for (available from their website) and some teams spread the money they want to raise across multiple charities. We chose to support the CNCF because of the work they do with homeless children and children at risk of sex trafficking and child labour.
The minimum amount of donations that we were obliged to raise for the rally and CNCF was £1,000. We set ourselves the goal of £3,000 and we have raised £1,350 so far. For the direct sponsorship money, we are hoping to raise between £5,000-10,000 although any contribution, no matter how small is very welcome.
How much work has gone into preparing for this?
A huge amount. It seem like all we do is talk about ways to approach sponsors for donations or products, fundraising events we can do, modifications that need to be made to Polly. We have driven around to many autoparts shops and car junkyards looking for various spare parts we require. Having a care that is quite rare doesn’t help in this instance.
Some people have been generous and donated equipment such as a tent, fire extinguisher, oil filters, octane booster (to deal with watered down gasoline in some countries), etc. Additionally, Polly will need several modifications to make her sturdy enough to tackle the long journey – we will be installing steel guards under the car to protect vital parts from sharp rocks, our air intake will be raised within the engine compartment so that we can drive through streams and small rivers safely without her drowning. Nick has had to hunt down special reinforced tyres that can cope with the beating we will give them by driving on gravel for thousands of miles.
Maria has been busy setting up our website and raising awareness through online methods. We have quite a substantive following of our website and our facebook page, which we hope will expand as the rally gets going and we start to post both photos and updates from the road.
Are you excited/nervous?
Not a day goes by, where we don’t think or we get told that what we’re doing is crazy, especially now that there are unrests in Kyrgyzstan, but our excitement is mounting. It will surely be an incredible adventure and we’ll have lots of stories to tell and photos to share. Best of all, we’re doing it for a good cause which really makes a difference in so many lives. For more details about what donations can do, please read our blog posts on our website.
How do you plan to pass the time?
Polly doesn’t have a radio or A/C. We currently cool off by rolling down the windows, but one of the most important things we are adding is a radio. We plan on listening to lots of music, quite a few books on tape, and lectures from the TED series. When we’re not driving, we will set up our tent on the Mongolian step, trying to avoid too many encounters with indigenous wildlife or go on the hunt for food, which will be an adventure in itself, since Maria is a strict vegetarian. We’re also hoping to take as many pictures as our portable hard drive (which we would love donated) can take and meeting some interesting cultures and people along the way.
Any destinations/sightseeing you plan to do?
We would like to stop along the way to see some of the places we’ll pass through, although our schedule doesn’t really allow for much of that. In order to complete the rally within the five weeks, we will need to average 300 miles per day; a long drive on tarmac, but tough on dirt roads in a car the size of a thimble. Nature will be our sightseeing, with some spectacular views of the Black and Caspian Seas, the Pamir Highway and the Gobi desert to name but a few.
What happens when you reach Mongolia?
The Adventurists have arranged a big party at the finish line on the 28th August. After recovering from these celebrations, nick will fly back to Denmark and to his job, while Maria is planning on visiting her family in Bulgaria.
What do you hope to get out of this?
Aside from the views, the donations raised for CNCF, the trip itself and actually making it, we are looking forward to meeting people in places that we’ve never seen and where we’d have otherwise never gone to. We would love to be invited into a Ger in Mongolia by a herding family to share Yak butter tea with them.
However, in all of the places we’ve visited, we’ve learned that deep down people are all the same – we all have hopes, dreams, and worries. Sometimes it’s not until you get out of your own comfort zone and immerse yourselves in the lives and realities of other cultures that you really understand this.
This is why we’re hoping that our contribution will make a difference for CNCF and the lives of the Mongolian children it supports and we look forward to visiting CNCF and their Blue Skies Ger Village to see the work they do.
Anything else?
We would love to raise enough awareness of the rally and CNCF to reach our donations goal. If this blog post has moved you to donate to the charity, please use the donate button on our website. Every donation, no matter how small, makes a difference for the children of Mongolia.
Of course, if instead you or anyone you know might be interested in providing corporate sponsorship, we would be very happy to send you more information about the rally and what the advantages of sponsoring are for you and your business. Please email us at teamwanderlust2010@gmail.com.
Finally, we would love for as many people as possible to subscribe to our newsletter feed through our website and the Mailchimp button. This will keep everyone up to date with how our trip is going and what we’re experiencing along the way.
