Galway pals take on Mongol Rally – ‘We made tea, played the tin whistle and they ended up calling us a tow truck'

Irish Independent

3 days ago

University pals Alan Herdman, Seán Rodahan and Gerard Keelan embarked on the Mongol Rally in July in a bid to raise money for RNLI – and for a taste of adventure.
The Mongol Rally is an annual intercontinental car rally that begins in Europe and ends in Russia. Drivers who partake are unsupported and thus the challenge lies in whether they can make it to the end point of the rally.
Alan spoke to the Irish Independent about the undertaking and explained the impetus behind it: 'I've wanted to do the rally for five-plus years, but several things got in the way. Sean loves cars, Ger's always up for whatever.
'It was one of those things that we always wanted to do, it was always in the background.'
Joined by their pal Trish McGovern, the crew left Galway city on July 6 and travelled through to Dublin, caught the ferry to France, then drove to Prague, where the race officially starts.
The roads are not cleared for the rally, so drivers have to navigate the traffic as they find it: 'There were points where we were in the outside lane taking over Porsches. We were going downhill with that, but I think that's probably as fast as a Toyota Yaris has ever gone.
'We all took turns driving so it ended up being pretty evenly stretched. I only got my license when I was about 25 so I very rarely drove, and I think I've quadrupled my car driving experience on this trip. We encountered all manner of car driving conditions.'
First mechanical troubles
The quartet hit a roadblock a few days later, however, when they began having trouble with the car's wheel bearings. Heading to the nearest auto garage, they were hopeful the dilemma would be solved easily. 'The guy at the garage said aye, come in tomorrow, we'll have the car sorted by 3pm. The next day we showed up, gave yer man the money for the wheel bearings and thought ah, pretty cheap.
'Then he handed us the wheel bearings. We were like, um, could you put these on the car? He goes, 'ah, not possible, not possible at all.'
'We just popped around the corner and there were these lads, just lounged back on this car, chain-smoking cigarettes. We were like, 'hey, how's it going? The man in the shop said you might be the man to replace wheel bearings?' He was like, 'oh no, no, not for two weeks.''
ADVERTISEMENT
Back on the road through Europe
Thankfully, the group didn't have to go to far to find another garage, and they were soon back on the road, driving down through France, to Belgium, Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia and then Turkey.
Alan said: 'Turkey is the most difficult road and basically, we planned on camping at base camp. We did end up doing an excursion through Dark Canyon. Through some bizarre twist of Google Maps, it brought us in this weird spiral where instead of going to our camp it ended up taking us way past and basically back through the Dark Canyon to get to our camp.
'We went through all these really sketchy roads – just like, black and blue markings in the caves. And there's We were kind of like, hm, I think we might be at the canyon now.
'Luckily we had Sean driving and not myself – otherwise we'd probably be at the bottom of the ditch!
'Those are the stories you remember.'
Unfortunately, that's when their good luck ran out. The lads had reached the central eastern region of the country when their car began to break down.
Rescued by the jandarma
They decided to call up the local 'jandarma' (the national gendarmerie force of the Republic of Turkey) for help.
'They found us by the side of the road. We got chatting to them – it was pure great craic, actually.' Alan says. 'We made a bit of tea for them, played the tin whistle and they ended up calling us a tow truck.
'Honestly, the Irish charm will get you very far!'
Alan recounted their attempts to communicate the issue with the car: 'In the front of the tow truck, his sister was on the phone and she spoke English. Yer man puts the phone up to my ear and she told me, 'My brother is not very good at fixing cars'. We thought, that's not very promising!
'So we got the radiator at the end of the day, but we got the wrong kind of radiator which basically valve along the side, so he ended up cutting his hammer in half and stuck that into the radiator in the ack of the car. Shockingly, that didn't work.
'Then we were driving for a while, then we had to stop for about an hour to let the fuel cool down. Then more driving from there, about ten minutes, then more driving.
'They tried diagnosing it, couldn't figure that out, then we got another tow truck in a bigger part of the city, where we had to go to the garage, and that caused a bit of a spanner in the works.'
Journey's end
Eventually the quartet had to give in and head back home to Ireland. Alan laughs: 'We were trying for a while to get the car fixed. It's currently in possession of the Turkish authorities!'
While their journey was stopped short of the finish line, it was the people they met along the way that made it memorable: 'You bump into the same people, often you become friends. It's really just a very long drive with a bunch of people with comically unprepared vehicles.'
All proceeds raised by their journey will go to the RNLI Lifeboats Association, which holds a special significance to the group. 'We all love water sports, so that's one reason, but for me personally, some of my favourite memories are of being a little kid and going into the lifeboat stations. So whatever we could do to help them, we wanted to do.'
Despite falling at one of the final hurdles, the group won't be deterred from trying again, as Alan said: 'We're going to reunite again in two years and try it again then. Hopefully we'll have a more reliable car!'