Beijing. May 15, 2005.
The old vehicles which have been shipped half way around the world are lined up at the European quarter of old Peking where the Great Race started 100 years ago. Five cars identical to the originals, ready to re-create motoring history. There's limited back-up, hardly any spares and 14,000 kilometres to drive. After just two kilometres there's the first breakdown. The yellow De Dion's having battery problems and neurosurgeon, John Matheson's getting left behind because his gearbox is starting to play up. Even Stijnus Schotte's million-dollar Dutch Spyker has conked out with a fuel blockage. Then they lose John Matheson altogether. There's tension building up and they haven't even reached the Great Wall of China.
The intention is that expeditioners get a taste of what it must have been like in 1907 for the original drivers and after passing the Great Wall of China, the villagers of Xiang Jia Ying help tow the cars up a hillside, just as happened a century ago when the roads were impassable.
The Chinese minders who want to keep the expedition away from some of China's most sensitive military areas thwart the next leg of the journey. Re-routing the cars puts them in the thick of thousands of trucks in a 120-kilometre-long traffic jam. After three hours, someone decides to save face and since the Chinese minders won't allow the expedition to drive around the jam - they decide the cars will go through it. Two lanes of trucks part like the Red Sea and seven hours and 25000 trucks later, the drivers pull into the hotel in Jining victorious.The day has been a blast!
It's getting colder and colder as the cars travel the last 100 kilometres in China. The climb towards Mongolia and the Gobi Desert begins and some of the drivers are quietly nervous. “There's an indescribable spirit of death,” about the Gobi is how one of the travellers put it.
The welcome to Mongolia is unexpected after the hassles of China, starting with the brass band and a flurry of beautiful girls in traditional costume. Each vehicle is presented with a traditional blue scarf, a guarantee of safe passage across the desert that stretches out ahead. The cars leave the dusty frontier town of Zamyn-Uud but quickly discover there is no road to follow. Just a maze of tracks that crisscross the Gobi for 500 kilometres. The expedition makes the same mistake as the original drivers made: they split up when they should have stuck together. It's not until midnight that the last of the cars - the blue De Dion - arrives at camp. And John Matheson is furious.
Everyone's feeling a bit toey the next morning - especially John - he's stuck with the slowest car and it's already shaking to pieces and the Gobi's not going to make it any easier: one wrong move - one wrong turn - and it could be disaster. There are car problems aplenty and the yellow De Dion's broken an axle. It looks terminal, at least without some major repairs.
Just six days in - one car down - 54 days to Paris and the great adventure's looking grim...
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