No problem with our border, but teams coming through the Tsagannuur border are having lots of problems and it looks like the teams there are blaming the Adventurists. Even more worrying is that SMS posts that complain about the problems are getting deleted. Censorship? It looks like it. We all knew the official forums were getting censored but it is a bit much to delete the posts from teams.
I only realised because I get the twitter updates through on email but before I read them they were gone. Luckily some of the messages got stuck in the google cache so I could read the full post. Pretty much all the messages critical of the Adventurists had been deleted from the teams sites:
DELETED! Thursday 20 August at 07:37 on Dubai Desert Drivers said: Tsagaannuur - Mongolia In Mongolia but stuck at border since Monday with 38 other teams due to screw-up by TheAdventurists. No end in sight. Jack
DELETED! Wednesday 19 August at 06:46 on Sancho & Pancho - The Bembel Toads said "Olgy - Mongolia we get stuck with more than 35 other mongolisten. We have stamps in the passport for mongolia we can go but not our cars. There was a change in the therms of the tax for the cars and the adventurists have only a temp agreement until last friday. TOM what's happens? Some cars are here 4 days ...... Nobody know how long it will be take"
DELETED! Tuesday 18th August 06:37 on 999 High and Dry said: "We finally passed thru the russian side at 10am, to find the mongolians are refusing to import our cars, adventurists screw up, I expect a repeat of Baku, 2-4 days I reckon, 40 cars waiting. Having some borst in a yurt for lunch, brilliant. Henry."
(This one hadn't been caught by the Adventurists censorship department:)
Friday 14th August at 04:23 on 40 Days & 40 Nights said "Got to Mongol border first thing yesterday but have been stuck here since as customs havent received import tax for vehicles from adventurists. Very cold and windy night at 2600m but hopefully we will be on our way today. C"
Southfield Mongols were not very positive when they said "and yet again it's the Adventurists being their useless selves again. There were about twenty teams when we got there, and none were being let out. Apparently the Mongolian government aren't that happy with all the shite cars being imported, and decided half way through that all cars have to pay taxes, and the Adventurists were being fairly slow about doing that. Not sure if that's true or not, but the border people were definately waiting for the Adventurists to do something, and they weren't."
How many other posts have been deleted? Have your posts been deleted? Let us know. Other teams add your comments below, they won't be deleted or censored!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Why is this blog anonymous?
With deposits not yet paid back to the teams nobody wants to risk getting in a bigger argument with the Adventurists. This isn't meant to be a place to slander the adventurists, just to get to the truth of what is going on as a lot of people aren't happy.
Adventurists Watch blog created
Why this blog? The Mongol Rally forums are moderated, team blog posts get deleted, and nobody is really sure about the truth of the Mongol Rally. Can we find the truth with this blog?
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