On day 23 of the Mongol Rally with Kara and Nate, Kara stood in a Tbilisi hospital room with eight of her closest friends crowded around an ultrasound screen, having walked in off the street without an appointment 10 minutes earlier. The entire thing cost $30.89. That moment, wedged inside a 10-day logistical nightmare involving a stuck school bus, a $700 border bribe, and a hotel manager who declared himself a millionaire before refusing to issue a refund, turned out to be the emotional center of one of the most chaotic legs of the rally so far.
The core problem is geographic: Russia sits above Georgia and Iran sits below Azerbaijan, and as a bus full of Americans, neither country is an option. The only path forward for Big Bertha, a retired school bus purchased off a Colorado government auction website, is to be shipped across the closed land border between Georgia and Azerbaijan, a crossing that shut during COVID and never reopened, then loaded onto a Caspian Sea ferry. The team knew it would be complicated. They did not anticipate 10 days of waiting.
The bus sat on the side of a highway while the team waited in Tbilisi
Dropping off the bus was its own strange sequence. A shipping contact sent a pin that turned out to be a gravel patch on the side of a highway. The team climbed into a stranger’s Tesla, followed him to an office, watched Nate sign and notarize paperwork without anyone translating a word, then rode to a lot full of parked rally cars that Nate described as ‘a graveyard.’ The man took the keys and said it would be picked up in a couple of days. What happened after that, nobody said.
With an AirTag hidden in the bus, the team tracked it from Tbilisi and eventually flew to Baku to wait for it there. The eight days stuck in Tbilisi produced some of the trip’s most memorable moments: a wine tour through Signagi in the east of the country, a return visit to the traditional sulfur baths, and then Sarah somehow convincing the entire group to get piercings. Charlie ended up with his tragus pierced, the small cartilage flap at the entrance to the ear canal, and was given a diamond stud without being told. He reported not sleeping well for four days afterward and later discovered he could not wear earplugs for the next six months.
The ultrasound happened in between. The whole rally crew walked into what Nate described as the best hospital they could find on a quick Google search, waited 10 minutes, and were shown in together. Kara put it plainly afterward: ‘Now it’s real.’
A $700 bribe, a missing toolbox, and a tank of siphoned gas
Baku brought its own cascade of problems. The first hotel had a floor with a gap wide enough to fit a foot through. The manager of the second place blamed the team for existing damage, citing ‘people like you dranking the whiskey breaking things,’ and refused a refund while claiming he was a millionaire. Then came the news that the bus was stuck at the Azerbaijani border for 48 hours and would need a $700 payment to move. The team paid it. The bus was still delayed an extra day.
They spent that final waiting day at the Fairmont inside Baku’s Flame Towers, which Nate noted is probably the most iconic building in the city. When the bus finally arrived, the toolbox purchased in Prague was gone, the USB cables had vanished, and the fuel tank, which had been at just over three-quarters full, was completely empty. Someone had siphoned roughly $100 worth of gas out during transport. The shipping contact, who turned out to be considerably more likeable in person than over WhatsApp, drove the team to a hardware store and replaced most of the missing tools out of his own pocket.
Charlie’s diamond stud, still unasked for
Charlie never did consent to the diamond. The piercing artist gave it to him without mentioning it, and the moment the group realized he could not use earplugs for six months was, by general agreement, funnier than the piercing itself.
Big Bertha rolled out of Baku customs with a detached AC button, an empty tank, and nine people who had spent a fifth of their total rally days sitting still. The ferry terminal was next, and the smell of the bathroom there arrived before anything else did. After 29 hours inside what the team agreed felt exactly like a prison, the Caspian crossing and the vast open road through the Stans was finally, actually close.
