LRM TRAVEL GUIDE
VISAS
• No visas are required until you reach Turkey. Visas for Turkey ($20), Azerbaijan ($20), and Uzbekistan ($20) can be purchased online. I recommend visiting the UK government’s FCO travel advice website and follow the links from each page to the embassy websites to purchase these visas as Google can lead you to fake websites. • As a British Citizen, you do not need visas for Georgia, Kazakhstan, or Kyrgyzstan. • For Russia and Mongolia, as a British Citizen, you will need to apply in person at the corresponding embassies. Our double-entry Russian visa from their London embassy took 20 working days and cost £113, plus £38.40 service charge, £9.80 passport postage return fee and a £15 Letter of Invitation from russiable.co.uk. We applied for our Mongolian visa in Ulan-ude in Russia; this cost $70 for eight-hour processing or $30 for three-day processing. You can also apply in person in London – it takes up to five days, and costs £40.
FUEL
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Prices en route vary hugely. Naturally, Europe has the most expensive fuel by far but as soon as you get out of Europe, prices plummet. At 20 pence a litre of diesel, Azerbaijan was the cheapest country we visited. • Overall, to get to Mongolia and back it cost us £1272 in diesel.
WHERE WE STAYED
• We built a bed into the back of our Freelander and often slept on it. Overall, it cost us around £150 to build the bed. Costs include: £45 on wood, £25 on fixings, £55 on a memory foam mattress and yoga mats, £15 storage and £10 for thermal insulation foil roll used to fashion covers for the windows. • Unfortunately, due to a broken sunroof and lack of air conditioning, we did not really use the bed in Europe as it was too hot during the month of July. When we did use it, we woke up very early owing to the heat. For the rest of the time, we slept in hotels and motels. • In Mongolia and Russia, we slept in the car most of the time. We used the app ioverlander to find other places overlanders have scouted out and marked as convenient to sleep, or sometimes veered off-track to easily find our own little spots.
TRAVEL TIPS
• Whatever you do, do not forget your V5C certificate. Ensure that it is up-to-date and in your name. • Harness the power of technology for the latest advice. Facebook groups such as Overlanding Asia provide a wealth of information in this respect. The website caravanistan.com is also very useful for central Asia, as are the apps ioverlander and Park4night. • When it comes to GPS navigation, do not rely on Google Maps. Unfortunately, we found it took us to very random locations nowhere near where we wanted; the timing is also wildly inaccurate. We used the app Maps.me. While it gets you everywhere excellently, it also vastly underestimates the time needed to reach your destination. When you are planning your route, do allow for extra time as a result.