Welcome to episode 4 of our biggest adventure ever. Every year, around a 100 teams set off to drive over 5,000 miles from Europe to Asia in tiny cars that were never designed to make it that far. But we needed something a little bigger for our team of nine. Meet Big Bertha. We bought this retired school bus off a government auction website in Colorado. We're just bus owners now. Roadtpped it all the way across the US. Shipped it across the Atlantic to Germany. then finally drove it to the start line in Prague. Then the real adventure began.
This is actually what the Mongol Rally is about. So there's no official route for the Mongol Rally and it's not a race, just a massive challenge to make it to the finish line party in 6 weeks and have as much fun as possible along the way. But it's completely unsupported, which means once you leave the start line, you're on your own to navigate unpredictable border crossings. I cannot make the bus. So where do how do we get to Kazakhstan? fix anything that breaks and whatever else that will definitely go wrong along the way. I think you're getting stopped by the cop. Oh gosh. The crazy people who decided to join us on this adventure are Nate's brother Dusty and his wife Sarah. The whole Notch family who we've done some of our
craziest adventures with, including riding this ridiculous three-seater bike all the way across the US a couple years ago. And our best friend Charlie from Australia, who we've already traveled to 14 countries with. Somebody asked me for a dude and I sent it and we haven't heard back. In our first 7 days of the rally, we've driven over 1,000 miles through Czecha, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Malddova. Once we finally got in, [screaming] I cannot believe we're in this country right now. In this episode, we're really getting into this Valley experience and driving the bus to one of the strangest places in the world.
The prices here are crazy. This whole bottle of whiskey, $2. A place where the US government recommends we reconsider travel. There's the possibility of falling objects from the surrounding airspace. So what do we do? Just keep driving. Frankie, you ready to go to Transnistria? It is day eight of the Mongol Rally and today has the potential to be the most interesting of the entire trip because we are going to attempt to go to Transnistria which is an autonomous region that sits on the eastern border between Malddova and Ukraine. It's
basically a country that claims to be a country but no other country recognizes it. Like technically it's not on a map but they have their own borders, their own government, their own military, their own police, their own flag. It's basically a country but also not really. And so what happened was back in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, this was a small sliver of Malddova that wanted to stay closely tied to communist Russia as opposed to the independent country of Malddova. There was a small war and then a ceasefire. I'm honestly not sure how a country ends up in this position, but I think we'll learn more about that today. So, we're about to drive an hour to the border and hopefully get across.
Oh, I really hope we get in today. What do we think our chances are? Maybe 50/50, man. Like, this is just a border that like no one has any real idea of like how difficult it is. We've got a local guide who feels optimistic even though we're in a big yellow school bus. But it will be so cool because from what we understand, it's like a time capsule that's basically stuck in 1950s Soviet Union. We do need to hide the Maldo national masks that we got. We can't be seen as being overly uh Maldo sympathetic. I normally don't stress about border crossings, but after how challenging it was for us to get this bus into Malova and it doesn't have any at all.
This isn't going well. This is uh one of the most nervous I've ever been. We're either at a check or we go to Transistria. Yeah. Okay, we're coming up on our third checkpoint in the last like 5 minutes. I see a bunch of guards. Are we in Transistria? That guy just waved us in. Didn't even check a single document. There was a Russian tank with two military guards and they just waved us through some checkpoint. I'm not sure if we're in Transnistria, but if we are, that would have been the easiest border crossing ever. crossing a river which feels like a good
border. We've got another checkpoint coming up we might not be in yet. Okay, I'm trying to be discreet because border crossings are scary. However, everyone here is very nice so far. Couple of guys got on the bus, looked around, and then asked Nate to get out with all of our passports, and he's waiting in line. I don't know what he's doing, but everyone's smiling. I think they love the bus. Uh he just handed everything back to me and said go. Let's take this opportunity to uh drive away before they change their mind.
Agreed. Ah but now you need Okay. On your bus. Yeah, that's that's the road. They might have a little easy uh cash documents on the driver. Oh, okay. Uh what money you have? Um we have USD and euro. M UK. Do we have 100 Maldovian Lake? Well, I'm glad we didn't drive off aggressively. Uh maybe give me the insurance just in case. Okay, thank you. It's definitely the heaviest garden. I felt the most intimidating driving past the tank. Mold first American school bus ever in Transis.
[screaming] I love it. Hi. All right, we're getting into the city now and we just got a honk, a wave, and someone filming us. All good signs. So far, the city feels much bigger than expected. There's a noticeable difference in the road quality. It's a little old and things look run down, but I don't fully feel like I've stepped back into the 1950s. According to the internet, there are between 350 and 450,000 people who live here. Wa, that's a cool old bus. That feels like 19. That's probably the oldest functioning bus I've ever seen. In that 20 minute drive, we saw more people smiling and waving than in
Malddova. And there's this adorable kid at a playground just staring at us right now. I'm so happy we're here. Nice to meet you. Meet Tim. He's going to be our local guide for the day, but he's actually an American who's been living in Transnistria for 16 years. He was the one who showed our friend Drew around when he came last year, so he was nice enough to connect us. Wow. I can't believe we're here just walking down the street. This is Dome Sovieta, home of the Soviets. And it now functions as city hall for terrestal. You can see the flag there. That's the transista flag. And on the right is the trust flag which
symbolizes the nster river. And this is Mr. Lennon. Selfie of Stalin. Len close. And then the official flag has a hammer and sickle still in the top leftand corner. So all of our official documents, military, police, everything. uh stamps still have the old Soviet uh symbolism with the current situation with the war and obviously being in an area that's like occupied by I guess sympathizers of either of those countries. Has it created tension here or is that just No, we have 30% Ukrainian population. We have a huge Malddoan population, Romanian population, we have a Bulgarian population. When uh the second half of the war started, we got 7,000 people from Odessa who came here. Everybody's
laid back here. Everybody gets along. Even uh the Russian army that's part of the peacekeeping force here is integrated. They have Malddoan soldiers and they used to before the war have Ukrainian soldiers. This is a old Soviet communal cafe. Back in the day it would have been very plain and subsidized by the government, but good homemade grandmother food. We still got the old grandmother food here, but now it's privatized and it's all decorated in tons of Soviet uh antiques. These are authentic flags and authentic antiques. None of this is Chinese-made. Old Soviet television. Hello, Stalin. Drop the bomb.
I feel like I should clarify. We passed probably four different cafes that were super cute and like normal, but this is crazy. This is just a chicken breast with cheese and tomatoes. That's chicken fried. Uh this is a like pig meat. Dangerous at buffets. I got so many things. [clears throat] borch, which is a traditional soup that I think only had in Russia. We got minced vegetable rice, some kind of noodles with sauce, and blended beans. So, this is original Soviet beer called Star Clubos. And the great thing about this is it's nonpasteurized, no chemicals, no preservatives. It can only be sold for 7 days. So, it's not
exported. It's only made and sold here in Penro. I like it. This is why we came. No, it's not the only. Cheers, team. Cheers. All right, team. How's the food? It's really good. The wor is amazing. Everything else, not so much, but it's not nourishing or not good. Yeah.
See, how much was lunch? Uh, it was just fake money, so it was almost 2,000. 100 bucks from this is our former president, our very first president, Igor Smeirnoff, and he was president of Penn Stroba for 23 years. So, we've been calling this Transnistria, which is the wrong pronunciation anyway, but the locals call it Penny Stroa. So, from here on out, Transnistria will be Pennistrova. Why? They were renovating the park in front of the university here and they had the students vote for what they wanted to put here as a fountain statue and they voted for Harry Potter.
There's two statues in the world of Harry Potter. One's in London, one's here. So, I get a lot of guests from London who want to see the terrestal Harry Potter. So, here it is. Has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, but it's interesting. Would you have been more excited about coming and I told you there was Sanji? Now you see I' like one of two Harry Potter water statues in the world. We have to go. My friends never had kavas before. Ah, really? Never. So Kavas is the Soviets made it for summertime in the heat of summer so people wouldn't get zombied out drunk. And it's it's like a semieet beer with very little alcohol in
it like 0.5%. So it was actually the first non-alcoholic beer. And uh they still serve it everywhere here during the summer time. We just ordered nine kvass and it cost $2 for all nine. Yeah. Cheers. Nazovia. Very low alcohol. Just for the camera. It's like a non-alcoholic beer in America. It's uh it's sweet. It's heavy, but it's bubbly and brown like beer. Tastes like honey. So, here we stand in the Soviet rain. It's the tears of the former Soviet Union for their fallen empire.
I think you're getting stopped by the cops. Oh gosh. You are getting stopped by a cop. Oh no. What do I do? Hello. Here. Let me get out. I don't know. I'm sorry. You go. Okay. All good. I think so. Oh my gosh, that was so scary. I can't believe you were the first one to get pulled over by the cop. I know. I love it. Real quick, we want to say a huge thank you to the sponsor of today's video, Surf Shark, who has been a longtime partner of ours. Now, if you've never heard of Surf Shark before, it's a VPN, which stands for virtual private
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SharkVPN. There's a link in the description below, a QR code here on the screen, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee, so there is no risk to try it out. Hi. Since it's uh raining, we've altered the schedule a little bit and we're stopping at one of Tim's friends house. This is a typical uh daca and finisheda and they do everything themselves. They have a large garden that grow their own vegetables. They can a lot of it and keep it in the basement here. But they also make their own homemade vodka and homemade wine in the basement. This is typical of uh how the old Soviet farmers would wash their hands after working in the field. It's
all just self- sustained uh rain water. It's like living in a van. See this? They fill that up with rain water. And because it's black, it's solar and it heats the water. Then you come over here and just hit the tap and take a hot shower in the evening. This is really beautiful. They've even got some cucumber vines growing inside the grapes. They don't even need to go to the shop. They grow everything and then they can it for the winter. Totally self sustaining. Of course, you know, they go buy some candies and some chips and beer from the shop. But tomato garden, watermelon, this is pretty incredible. This
backyard's probably 2 acres, but they grow enough food here to sustain them for the whole year. And they even grow extra and they sell the extra. I would have never thought that food for an entire year could be grown in such a small space. So, you come down into these village sellers. They're quite deep and quite well made. Look at all these yummy fruits that are stored for the winter. So, in the winter time, they will eat like kings and queens. It's like we maybe have some pumpkin here. This really does feel like stepping back in time because of how easy it is to get food. And when you think about like all of the crap that goes into like commercial food, there's actually something really beautiful about this.
She's chopping fresh tomato and cucumbers right now. Zero English and we've just taken over. I mean, we're 10 people, but is everybody growing this in their backyard? Everybody in a village grows all this stuff in their backyard and makes their own homemade wine, homemade vodka, almost every house. Take that whole food. Um, and now we are taste testing a 80 proof spirit. I'm not. Everyone else is. That's basically what it is. Moonshine.
Soviet moonshine for you. I guess it's actually really good, believe it or not. Oh, yeah. I can taste it really. Oh, I'll tell you what. It's working its way down. Stopping is now my stomach. You can't feel it when going all the way down. I don't drink much, but I'll celebrate you guys arrival. [clears throat] Cheers. It's quite a large home. Bedroom, multiple rooms, and this would be like a traditional village home. Yes. Look how thick this wall is. This is a sod wall. It's uh like clay mixed with different grasses and it comes like concrete and it holds cool air in here
all summer long and keeps it quite warm, naturally insulated. So, it's like you're living in a beautiful cave. I love all the different wallpapers. She's been so welcoming. We got like a really quick tour and the longer we've hung around, the more she's wanted to show us, which is just so nice. Uh well, we asked to try a sip of wine. We were given a whole bottle of wine and then as we depart she offered for us to get a second bottle of wine to which uh we play refused but the longer we stay here probably the less likely that will be that we can actually refuse. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We need all the blessings we can get. She's going to get I don't think we're ever going to leave. had a feeling that was going to happen. We now have a bag of sweets, fresh tomatoes, and a bottle of wine. Yeah, she does it all. Even the wine. How do you get the cork in the bottle? Yeah, it's cuz she's harder than me, I guess. That was meant to be the main reason we ended up here is because it started raining and we were trying to find something that we could do indoors and so far it's been the highlight of Transnistria.
I love local grocery stores. I feel like it just tells you so much about a culture and I always find it so fascinating. Local made goat cheese that's made right here in the village and they sell it in the shop. And a lot of this fish came right from the Nista River said definitely not the same type of fish as you see in the US. The prices here are crazy. This whole bottle of whiskey $2. This is $2. Drew Binsky, uh, he said we had the cheapest vodka in the world. Love you, brother. Yeah. Uh, massive shout out to Drew because he's the one that hooked us up with Tim. Wish our bus was uh powered by vodka cuz it would actually be cheaper
than the gasoline they buy. It definitely would be. Uh some of these village guys, they run out of gasoline. Simona right in the tank. Is that really a thing? It really is a thing. If uh they run out of gas or can't afford it. Not vodka actually. That's that's not true. But the Simagona, the 80 proof stuff, you can run a car with it. An old car anyway. Not a Tesla. I thought you were joking. Not a Tesla. But you can run an old lot with the Simagona. Homemade strong vodka. Wow. Here is the theater. This would have been built in the ' 50s. Nothing has changed. It is an original Soviet theater. And how is this used today?
It's used the same way it was in the Soviet Union. They have a children's theater here, a high school theater, uh singing, dancing traditionally. This is wild. someone like you. Oh, what if we could do karaoke in here? It like smells super old. You can basically do anything here for free. I mean, that's what it's made for is for the community. So, a lot of stuff here is still free. Like healthcare. Yeah, healthc care is free. Education is free. I don't want to make it sound perfect because, you know, the hospital has the equipment from 1980, but it's free. I mean, I uh got a broken bone on my hand fixed and the X-ray and
everything. The X-ray machine, granted, was very old and when it went off, it sounded like I was getting a high level of radiation. It sounded like [clears throat] a fog horn blowing or something, but it worked. Oh, hear the angels voice. So, uh, we have a tradition of doing handstand competitions on these big group trips, and the Soviet stage felt like the most appropriate place. 2 1 go. Ranking out. LET'S GO. COME ON. I've seen a lot of things, but not formers having a handstand competition in an old Soviet theater. That's all there.
This is a little isolated village memorial, and it's to the Kitchenau Yash offensive. The Nazi sixth army had been decimated in uh Stalenrad. So they retreated back here to the terrestal region and the few thousand of them that were left reconstituted the sixth army with Romanian Nazis. The Nazis across the river held the high ground and had the whole area zeroed in with artillery. So it was a hell of a battle. The statues are old Soviet statues. The names on all these plaques are the people who died just from this village. And every village has a memorial like this. All right, this is the grand finale. Tim is bringing us to what he calls his uh gun garage.
Nice to meet you. This is our founding father of the guns garage. He was highly decorated uh veteran of Soviet army and a decorated veteran of the penistrova army. And uh as a result he was allowed to collect all these weapons from every conflict in Soviet history. I mean anything you can imagine. Bazookas, landmines, hand grenades, and we got it all. The Soviets called this a Soviet muha and it was used in Afghanistan. This is a Taliban gun belt that he brought back from Afghanistan. This is a World War I Mousan. This is probably the most famous Soviet submachine gun. These are hand grenades. This is a World War II hand grenade with concave uh iron that just when it explodes, shards of iron fly everywhere.
This is a modern Russian hand grenade and it's filled with steel BB's. So, it has a 360° shotgun blast everywhere and that's the difference. Gotcha. So, the Yeah. So, the pins are still in them. Yeah. But there's no C4. Yeah. From the black market in Odessa. And this is a test pilot helmet that was worn by Yuri Gagaran once. You want to hold Yuri Garren's helmet? First man in space. Frank. How do I look? Leave it. Got to go. Now all you do is put in there and pull the trigger. You ready? YEAH. [screaming] Nice girl.
It is strong. These are just blanks. So nothing actually went up in the air. Feels so powerful. Oh man, you are American, but you've lived here for 16 years. You're choosing to still live here. Why? It's real simple because I can have like a really free life here. What do you think the biggest misconception about this place is? I think this uh propaganda that anyone Russian who is uh loves their culture and loves their history is pro-war. That's not true. Uh there's lots of people here that love Russian culture, love Russian history, and love Russia because they're Russians. Uh
that does not mean they're pro-war. I don't know any pro-war people because there's no benefit to the citizens of either side in a war. It's only the military-industrial complex that wins. Thank you so much for an amazing day and showing us around. Peace and love, brother. Tonight we are staying at Hotel Russia. And from what I found on the internet, this is the nicest hotel in town. How many people do we think we can fit? Just me and the bag. So that's two people. It's all my smoosh. Come on. Sarah, GET IN. I TRIED TO sacrifice my foot. Let's see what a hotel room in Transisria looks like. Wow.
Wo. Look at the view. What an absolutely wild place to be spending the night. Good morning. It is day nine of the Mongol Rally. I still cannot believe we just had the bus parked in front of the main government building of Penny Stroa all night last night. We spent the past few days maybe having a little bit too much fun between Malddova and Pennistro and we have not made very much progress. So, we've got a lot of driving to catch up on today. The goal is to make it 7 hours south to Bucharest, but we also have two border crossings which previously have taken quite a bit of time. So, we'll see how far we make it.
We had one bubble. We are about to cross the border back into Malddova. Let's hope this goes as smoothly as it did yesterday. Good luck. Thank you very much. We have officially exited Pineis Slova. Uh, and the border guard said good luck when she handed me back the passport. So, hopefully that's not a sign. Oh, no. Really? Hello. Sorry, only English. We go uh today to Moldova, then Romania to Bucharest. Okay, good. Thank you very much. The day is off to a smooth start.
Can I have the uh papers and my passport? We're getting pulled over again. Hello. Sorry. Papers. Uh we go to Romania. Thank you. You too. They just happened to pull out on the street right behind us and I think they were curious about the bus. Hey, do we have tally marks for uh getting stopped by the police? We need to All right, quick stop for gas as I've been driving. I've been reflecting on our time in Pennova and ultimately I just think it was a lot more normal than I expected it to be. I think the internet really hyped it up to be this crazy place that stuck in the 1950s and
being there it really it felt like a pretty normal Eastern European city just with a few more Soviet relics. But I think one of the most interesting things that I learned that happened during a side conversation was about this company named Sheriff. We started seeing this name all over the gas stations, the grocery stores, the banks. And so we asked him about it and apparently it's basically like a monopoly that runs all of the big businesses in the country and they're so powerful that they basically control the government which I just thought was fascinating because when we started seeing the same name I just assumed it was a state-run store because you know there's a lot of communist
influence in Transnistria but to know that it was just a capitalist monopoly I thought was pretty fascinating. Wow that's very nice. Yeah, I will give you some plug natural. Yeah, you can eat. These are nice. Enjoy. It's amazing. Take care. God bless you. Yeah. Great to see you. I hope you have a good like 10,000. I like Americans. I like your boss. Good to see you. God bless you. I love him. The Rally. This is what it's all about. What did you get at the gas station? I think she said in Moldovven or Romanian. She's like, "You're having a big party." Like she was giggling and being like, "There's so many." I was
like, "Yeah, just for me." All right. We have shoes so far. Yeah. No. Bye. Doesn't take care of me. All right. Back on the road and gas station snacks for once again today. Way down you never knew how much water meant to me. Oh, this is a long 5 hours on this road. It's like a Bronco. I feel like I'm just trying to make sure at least three of the four wheels are on the ground in any given bike. You can tell this thing was designed for short trips in the city. What happened? Uh the front headlight of the bus is dangling. But it's still there, so it's not all bad. I can't believe it's not off. You know what's bumpy when your headlights hold up?
I think this is the opposite one. Yeah, the one that I fixed with like a stick stayed in. But uh there is a trick to this. There's a way to fix this. Um, we need to stick something that expands that out. I mean, we can just try. That's not going to stay very good. All right, I got a plan. I can fix it. Just got to kind of get that out of there. It's not very thick. How can we not find a stick with hot dusting? Wait, let me take my ear plugs out from the bus. Are you really wearing earplugs? That is so loud in there. I don't know. There's a piece of scrap metal. I think we bend it back and forth enough times it'll break. So now it's like popped out of it. And I think it'll just hold it in
there better when I jam it in. That shouldn't be like that. This might be a slightly bigger problem than we thought. We thought the light had just fallen out, but it turns out the entire front of the bus is loose. Like it feels like it could just fall off at any moment. That didn't sound good. That did not do anything. Oh yeah, that's actually working pretty good. I think that is actually about as good as it's going to get with this clip. I think it's duct tape time. What you've been saying since the beginning, back, they wrote a whole song about it.
Looks great, guys. Really quality work. You can't even tell. Ah, it's looks as good as new. The bus has really started to fall apart in the last 48 hours. Yesterday when Cara was driving, we had our first uh our first small collision. This part of the bus hangs down much further than the rest and Cara caught a rock here and kind of knocked that off. It was already rusting a little bit, so it just kind of crushed it. And then potentially the most devastating, the uh disco ball actually fell out of the ceiling. We had to duct tape it back.
It's just a matter of how bad this road gets and how many more pieces of the bus fall off over the next couple hours. We were about to cross the border into Romania and we realized that Rick still has 100 Maldoven dollars left or 100 USD worth of Malddoven dollars. So now we're at the gas station trying to spend all the local currency. Every 2 days you got a currency that becomes completely useless. I think I found the perfect thing. Pretzel sticks, ice cream, candy, ice cream. Carol's got I don't even know. So [clears throat] now you spent $4. World Cup Pringles. What else are we supposed to get? We could buy the whole gas station with what we got.
Seems pretty. We still have about 35 US worth of money. We got more whiskey. Like they just keep giving me change back. So we're going to end up just taking some of this. That's receipt number one. That's receipt number two. All right, we are uh coming up on the Maldovven border and hoping that it takes less time to get out than it took to get in. Actually, we're just hoping we can get out. I love that lady. She was great. She was so nice. Like, she was just standing there waiting to be invited on the bus. If we could get an immigration official to quit her job and join us, checkpoints are solved.
Only 23 minutes. Yeah, that's not bad. But we still have to get into Romania. Yeah. All right. There's Romania. We're pros at this now. I'm a lot less stressed now. I mean, we've gotten into this country three times. Valley. Yeah. Please come in. English. How many person? Uh, nine. Passport. United States. Yeah. What is insurance registration? Oh, the registration. Screw guys. Oh, they hate that thing.
They hate when they look at that so long. He's got questions about this. No, but I don't like it. I'm going to hop out and open the back for him. Okay. Hello. Okay. Yeah. This is original or it's a copy. I have the title as well. The original title. Yeah. Maybe you can show me. Sure. So, this is the original title. Something like this. Yeah. They sell you on 28th May for export. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We brought it over here on a boat.
You need to registrate it somewhere in uh Well, we're Yeah. So, we're driving to um Kazakhstan and then once we get to Kazakhstan, there's a charitable organization that we donate it to. But what I know when you take a card and you obtain the documents, you need to register it somewhere in a short period, 30 days, 60 days, something like this. Because this car now you don't pay taxes anywhere in No, we're just doing transit. I understand. Yeah, you don't understand me. You need to registrate the car in 30 days after you buy the car and you put on export.
We'll be out of the EU within 30 days. 30 days from 28th May. This is when it was shipped from America. Yes. It's not when it arrived in the EU in EU. We've only been maybe two weeks. And now where you go? Uh now we go to Romania then Turkey. We'll be in Turkey tomorrow. Actually, the real problem is if I let you entry would appear some problem when you want to exit from Bulgaria on the border because you don't have a state. This is the reason that I cannot let you pass in Romania. So where do how do we get to Kazakhstan? Yes, good question. Well, we've come into Romania two times in the last 6 days and now we're just coming one last time to leave.
Yeah, I understand your situation and I don't want to make you travel. Let me focus and see what Thank you. Take care of them because I think you will need them. Okay. To come with my colleague to make, you know. Yeah. Thank you very much for that. Yeah. Thank you. Somebody touch me. I think we're good. Carol's doing her head. Did she? I love that. The B officer came in here on the way in he hit his head and on the way out he hit his head on the disco ball.
The guy came on here and took every single bag. All of our camping stuff, all of our backpacks, all of our suitcases. There's a pile like this big that they're putting through the scanner. It's just crazy. No other border has done this. They haven't even touched our stuff. What do you think your star sign is? I don't want to offend anyone. It's a good time cuz none of our stuff is in here. You missed a spot over here. I want to see this clean as a whistle. As clean as before, she's not wrong. She's good. Seems like a lot of these border officials just haven't seen a lot of US citizens driving US registered vehicles
come through their borders. And so depending on who you get, if it's a very experienced person, they may have done it enough times to kind of know how it works. And if it's someone who hasn't seen it that much, they just start applying the wrong rules to us. But every time we get to these borders, it feels like a 50/50 chance whether we're going to get in. And it's like we have everything we need. He had a good hard look at Dusty's multivitamins because uh he has them neatly lined up in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I don't know if he was going to let those go. He's like, h I should try these. Uh this job very stressful. I could use it to help my health.
How many more borders do we have before we get to Kuran? Kazakhstan. This is just going to be a hilarious saga for the next 5 weeks. Frankie, what's the time? An hour and 9 minutes. That's not so bad. There's like two different types of people. One's like, "Did you bring enough wine with you though? I hope you had a good time." Next one's like, "Rip out all your bags. I don't think your documents are in honor. We are really behind. So, dinner was at the grocery store tonight. We got pasta and a block of tofu.
This is a traditional Romanian tofu salad recipes we've passed out for generations. Here we go. The Golden Gate Bridge of Romania. This is epic. Yeah, there's like full ships. This is like the business of your river. Oh, it's the Danube. That's the Danube. one of the largest waterways on the planet. So, we're we're like 2 or 3 km from the Ukraine border. We've been kind of like real close to it, edging along the edge side of it for a while now, last couple hours, and we just got a emergency alert extreme, which I've never seen one of those on my phone before. It says uh there's a possibility of falling objects
from the surrounding airspace. Keep calm. Take shelter in basement or in civil protection shelters. If there's no shelter around you, stay inside the house and keep away from windows and outside facing walls. Estimated duration 90 minutes. It's like they literally know something's about to go on. We're kind of driving in a very beautiful but pretty remote area. I don't even know where we'd go. I'm hoping that the problem lies on that side of the 2 km or whatever they are border over there and not where we are. I'd be surprised if it actually is going to affect Romania, but that's certainly a scary uh message to get out of the blue.
Oh gosh. So, what do we do? Just keep driving literally like make sure you film that. I mean, we really don't have much of a choice but to just keep driving. I think that's the best option cuz we're driving away from the border. We were a lot closer to it, so now we're getting further away. Yeah, I think we're just going to keep heading south and stay out of this region right here. Are you aiming for the bombs, Dusty? Dusty, I think you missed one. Go back and get it. Yeah. All right. The last time I let you guys come down the campsite, I love what you're doing this.
Uh, we are attempting to wild camp for the first time. Charlie found a beach on Google Maps. Driven to it. It's I just say it's nothing but negative energy and I'm This is probably why we've got the block and we keep coming to closed gates is because people in the bus are barricade. Oh, is this a quantum uh what's it called? Entanglement. So, the loops collapse and I'm trying to restart it constantly to get that sine wave action. Please restart it soon. Well, we're going to The road LOOKS LIKE THIS. I KNOW HOW we can fix the quantum wave. Go back out the way you came to the main road.
No, look, we got stuck down here. Look, we want to go over here. Yeah, look, I'm going to have to been planning all the campsites up to this point. Well, what I'm sorry, but why are you filming this literally in the doorway? They look irritated at me, and I'm here talking to Darcy, who's been driving quietly, and like It's just giving toxic energy. Let's explain all the campsites and hotels up to this point. We let Charlie pick for one night and this is where we end up.
He also picked the night where we had a half building with electrical wires. Honestly, based on the amount of fun we're having right now, Charlie is picking the rest of the campsite, the rest of the trip, cuz this is actually what the Mongol Rally is about. It says stop property private drive on. There's no one there. Come on. No, it's fine. We'll pay them in the morning. They'll come to the tent. Are we going to get stuck in the sand? Everything's getting a little crazy with all the alarm. Still getting Oh, this is a flood alert. My phone's just going crazy. The look isn't great that I'm having a beer right now. But look at this. This is the firmst sand you can imagine. panic.
It looks quite very fine to me and but we can go and park over in the vans. It gets real hard too. Nice. So that's right. So it doesn't do well in the sand. One, two. I just don't understand. I try really hard. There we go. I never doubted you for a second, brother. That was actually a really nice cuddle. Oh, what a day. We have ended up in the town of Corbu. We're camping right next to the Black Sea. We can hear the waves from our tent. And uh I can't wait to see what this place actually looks like in the morning.
Oh, what a good way to wake up. First time ever swimming in the Black Sea. So, we've just had our first bus stop pick up. Now both seekas on board. How cool is that? It smells like poop. Charlie's right. We're rubbing ourselves in poop. Charlie is not right. Why would we do that? We've driven an American school bus from Europe to Asia. This place is just absolutely unreal.