Big Bertha rolled through the entrance arch of a converted Soviet-era missile base in the Czech Republic and the crowd lost its mind. Every other Mongol Rally team had arrived in a beaten-up compact car, the kind of vehicle the rally was built for. Then came a full-sized, government-surplus American school bus, painted up in Grateful Dead dancing bears, carrying nine people and approximately one plan. The announcer declared Kara and Nate’s team ‘the spirit of the Mongol Rally.’ They had questioned whether the whole bus idea was worth it for weeks. Standing in that converted postapocalyptic off-grid community, surrounded by cheering strangers, the answer was obvious.
The Mongol Rally sends roughly 100 teams on a self-supported drive of over 5,000 miles from Europe to Asia with no official route, no rescue support, and no race clock. The only finish line is a party in Kazakhstan, six weeks away. For a team of nine, that meant buying a retired Colorado school bus off a government auction website, road-tripping it across the United States, shipping it across the Atlantic to Germany, and driving it to the start line in Prague.
Shopping for a disco ball the morning of the start
The team met up in Prague the night before the launch party and, rather than planning the route or sorting bus logistics, spent the evening at an arcade. By morning, with two hours until the start party, they were sprinting through shops buying everything they had forgotten, which turned out to be most things. Body wipes, a portable toilet described as ‘critical,’ a full set of random tools, and a disco ball sourced from a hardware store made it into the cart. Kara noted with complete sincerity that she could not believe a hardware store had a disco ball. Nobody had spare parts for the diesel engine. Nobody knew how to work on a diesel engine. ‘I cannot emphasize enough how underprepared we are mechanically for this adventure,’ one of the crew admitted, staring at the cart.
The start party itself matched the setting. A strongman let someone smash concrete on his stomach with a sledgehammer. A mud wrestling contest awarded victory only to whoever pulled off their opponent’s socks. A car-pushing competition nearly ended with a team getting run over. Then a fire show that, by the performers’ own apparent philosophy, operated somewhere well outside standard safety regulations. The team set up their tents for the first time that night, on the missile base grounds, and slept for roughly five hours before drums and singing started up directly outside the canvas.
Building the bus while driving it through four countries
Day one on the road began with a lost headlight before they had covered 60 miles. Rick, the closest thing the group had to a mechanically inclined member (his own benchmark: he does not know how to change oil either), spent a campsite evening ripping the front panel off the bus to run a charging wire to the alternator. The plan was to power nine people’s devices and a Starlink unit off a large battery bank that would charge directly from the engine. It worked. ‘That is exactly how I thought it was going to work in theory,’ Rick said, ‘but rarely do things work out that well, especially anything electric or mechanical with me.’
Dusty, identified by unanimous group consensus as the best artist aboard, painted the team name on the bus exterior that same night. A cargo net went up across the rear interior to clear floor space for nine people’s luggage. LED lights inside the bus finally came online after an earlier failed attempt. In 72 hours, the team drove through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, having breakfast in one country, lunch in a second, and dinner in a third on day two alone.
Budapest produced the rally’s first genuine parking crisis. The nearest available lot sat almost a mile from the Airbnb. Kara navigated Big Bertha through city tram traffic and narrow side streets, clipping a curb on the highway off-ramp and grazing something at a gas station, before threading into the spot. ‘You have been thrown into one of the most stressful driving situations of the entire trip,’ came the verdict from the back seats. She was not arguing.
By the end of day three, the team had crossed into Romania and stopped at a campground restaurant where a local soup arrived inside a full loaf of bread. Rick, who had never eaten at Panera, encountered his first bread bowl. The mountains around them were steep and green. The gas station toilets were free, the first free toilets of the entire trip, a detail that landed with genuine celebration.
The disco ball, last seen threatening the windows
Somewhere in the back of the bus, bungeed to something near the ceiling, the hardware-store disco ball was already banging against a window at highway speed, exactly as predicted in the Prague shop.
Big Bertha had started in a Colorado government auction, crossed an ocean, and rolled out of a missile base with its dancing bears and its nine passengers and its one toilet and its absolutely no spare parts. Romania was already the best place they had been the whole trip. Kazakhstan was still 19 days of rough planning away.
