Budapest Bamako - Getting There

Today we took on the first (warmup) stage of this year’s Budapest Bamako Challenge from Berlin to, well, Budapest.

For future refererence, here’s the odometer of my T4.

Maybe let’s rewind a bit before going on. A few months back I was asked if I want to join a team in said rally (in an Opel Astra 1.6). Spontaneously (more or less) I registrered another team hoping to find a few friends to have a fun challenge between a potentially “young” team (Team 30-) and that of my father (Team 60+). We finally ended up just spreading the original team over two cars, pretty tough to find interested people.

Okay, back on the road! We first had to stop to get our toll stickers for the Czech Republic, where you can see our two cars nicely!

A few hundred kilometers later, the bus got thirsty.

When we arrived in Budapest, it was already dark, yet the excitement for the weeks ahead started to grow as we saw other cars with their numbers stuck on in the parking lot of the official hotel.

The next day we went to get our technical check done. Made it with flying colours, although it looks weird parking a twentytwo year old two wheel drive bus next to properly big and powerful 4x4 machines.

Our team’s mascot is ready to go for the first stage 2900km marathon to Midelt via Almeria!