Photo essay: 30 incredible moments from the 2011 Mongol Rally

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Beginning in England, over 250 teams zoom as fast as their diminuitive engines can take them across 10,000 miles to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

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As you can see, Mongolian roads aren't exactly well-marked.

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For team "Fast and the Furry," they chose the southern route, heading through the 'stans into the Mongolian steppe.

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If you're gonna ride 10,000 miles, it's only right to give your ride a strong persona.

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When you think of Mongolia, images of deserts and flat, treeless plains come to mind. But as the distance shows, the geography is as diverse as it gets.

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The journey is full of pulling...

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...and pushing...

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Yet when your ride inevitably breaks down, it's difficult to get terribly upset amidst such phenomenal landscapes.

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Much of the journey is driven alone--so when you see a fellow Rallyer, be sure to make the most of it.

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Good ol' Mongolian road signs. Such jokers.

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Well...maybe they weren't joking after all.

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After 5 years of Mongol Rallies, it's no surprise why everyone knows when they arrive.

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Taken at the Gates of Hell, near the village of Derweze, Turkmenistan. Any team taking the route through the Middle East usually tries to include a visit on their tour. To make a medium-length story short, Soviets + natural gas drilling + collapsed ground + leaking gas from crater + grenade = a burning crater of gas lasting more than 40 years.

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There's always time for golf. Especially when everywhere you look is an endless driving range.

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Flat ground and an epic window view makes camping throughout the Mongolian portion of the rally one of the event's greatest perks.

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Greeting the local fauna.

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The most problematic obstacle for most teams always seems to be crossing heavily flooded roadways.

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Again, the fauna is everywhere.

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In Mongolia, help always seems to be right around the next hillside...

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Although much of Western mongolia is a flattened steppe, the sporadic changes in elevation create the feeling of being thousands of feet in the air, watching the silhouettes of the clouds passing over the ground below.

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Camping in a ger, a typical Mongolian nomadic hut. When coming across local nomads, the Ralliers find themselves welcomed as if they'd been expecting them all along.

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In Mongolia, it's typical to turn a vacant parking lot into an impromptu billiard room. It's amazing what a difference a gravel floor makes.

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This tattoo says 'Mongol Rally' in classic Hudam Mongolian script. At the finish line in Ulaanbaatar this year, four participants felt it such an experience that they wanted it forever entered in the dermis layer of their skin. In this picture is featured Sean Tubby from Team Mechspesh who drove a Reliant Robin 3 wheeler. Check out this video of the subject in question.

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During the finish line parties, traditional Mongolian acrobatic contortionists put on a show for those who've made it to Ulaanbaatar.

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Arrival. 10,000 miles, weeks of driving, untold hours of uncertainty, all summed up in a single moment.

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Looking onward to next year, the Adventurists are currently taking entry forms for new teams for the Mongol Rally, among their other adventures such as the Rickshaw Run in Southeast Asia. We'll let you imagine what that entails.

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For 2012, the official Mongol Rally charity was the Christina Noble Children's Foundation. CNCF protects children at risk of economic and sexual exploitation, while ensuring these and other children in need have access to basic care and educational opportunities. Aside from the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for the charity, the Mongol Rally has brought unprecedented visibility to the organization.

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The Mongol Rally, by the numbers.