Visas.  Make sure you have got them!  We used Real Russia Visa Agency in London to get both our Russian and Mongolian Visas.  We could have saved a bit by doing it ourselves, but it would have been a lot more work and uncertainty.  Real Russia have a full pricing structure on their website and were very helpful over the phone

 

You don't need a carnet for Russia or Mongolia

 

For Russia, we obtained 3 month double-entry business visas.  Forget the fact that you are a tourist really, nobody cares, either in the Russian Embassy here or amongst the traffic cops when you get to Russia.  We needed a letter of support from a UK business.  Luckily I have a friend who owns his own business, so he was happy to write me a letter to the Russian Embassy confirming that we were carrying out a trip to research the beauty products market across Russia!  This worked like a charm.  There is a form for the relevant letter on the Real Russia website

 

For Mongolia, we got standard single entry 30 day tourist visas, even though we planned to stay there longer.  It was no problem extending the visa in UB once we got there - just a paper pushing exercise when you had to leave your passport at the relevant office (near Peace Bridge) for a few days after filling in the forms and paying the fee.  It wasn't expensive.  Most guest houses in UB will do it for you for a small fee - which would save you half a day's messing around in the Mongolian bureaucratic morass, but then you would miss the thrill of the chase and the sense of achievement in finally getting there yourself!  Don't expect them to speak much English...

 

We had no idea what the roads were going to be like, either in Russia or in Mongolia.  As we only had three months, and we wanted to get to UB in time for Nadaam, we didn't know if we were going to make it!  In the end, I just mapped out a highly optimistic timetable for the journey through Russia, assuming that the roads would be good enough to keep up a steady 50 mph outside the cities.  That worked pretty well - until we got to Krasnoyarsk, the roads were fine, and it was only the few hundred miles from there to Irkutsk that gave us some grief.  So the general tips about "don't plan to cover more than 200 to 300 km per day" can be ignored as hopelessly pessimistic, at least in Summer.  The much more significant variable is what breakdowns you are going to have, and how long it will take you to fix them and/or get parts sent out from the UK if necessary

 

Have a good relationship with your vehicle supplier in the UK.  We bought from Liveridge, who gave us some valuable support while we were on the road - sending parts by TNT courier to obscure parts of Siberia for us to pick up, and giving valuable "coarse engineering" advice by satellite phone when we were stuck with some problem beyond our immediate capabilities to solve

 

Get a two or three (not just one) International Driving Permits from the AA.  They are quite cheap (about a fiver each, I think?) and very useful when you are stopped by the Russian traffic police.  Their main tactic in extorting a bribe is to demand your driving licence and then say they will only give it back if you agree to pay a large "on the spot" fine - the alternative, they will say, is to go through the official process ("protokol") which requires them to send off your driving licence to the court, etc etc.  If you give them one of your IDP's when first stopped, they will probably quibble about it (because it doesn't look much like a driving licence) but they are generally convinced by the Russian text in it and the impressive looking stamps the AA put on it.  So then, when you start your "fine" negotiation, you are in the happy position of not really caring whether they keep your licence or not, which strengthens your hand immeasurably in the negotiations.  If you explain this reasoning to the AA, they shouldn't be too picky about issuing you with more than one

The other main tactic in "fine" negotiations with the Russian traffic police is to say you will want a "kvittantsia" (official receipt) for whatever you pay.  This will instantly bring the "fine" down by quite a lot, because of course the money is going straight into their wallet as a perk of the job (they don't get paid much, and this is how they make a living)

 

The going rate for "fines" for road traffic "offences" in  Russia?  We heard differing stories, but we no doubt got to pay the "tourist price" (i.e. inflated).  Our fines were between £20 and £40.  I think the locals get away with a lot less - maybe around £10.  One Armenian we met said he never paid more than £10, and if you just hang your empty pocket linings out, that helps.  I doubt it, for us!  But do make sure you don't have a wallet full of high-denomination notes when you are pulled over!  It can be a bit intimidating the first time, but remember that for them it's just a routine negotiation, with a slightly different victim

 

Keep all your important papers in one place in the front of the car.  The traffic cops will want to see your passport (with stamped registration card), your driving licence, the "car passport" (which is a combination of the UK registration document and the Russian temporary import permit which you get given at the border) and your official insurance certificate (which again you buy at the border).  We tried to keep as many original documents as possible out of the reach of untrustworthy traffic cops, so we used a high quality colour copy of the UK registration document, without problems.

 

Normal UK car insurance will take you no further than the Russian border, generally.  Apart from the compulsory third party insurance which you buy at the border, it feels nice to have some "hull insurance" on your own car in Russia.  The best we were able to track down came from a Finnish company called Ingonord.  Even that cover did not extend to Mongolia.  Again, there was some third party insurance available at the border (it didn't seem to be compulsory, but we felt it was wise to take it anyway) but apart from that, we drove uninsured in Mongolia.

 

Visa registration in Russia is a subject which causes a lot of confusion.  The basic rule is that you only have to get your visa registered if you stay put in one place for more than 72 hours, but if you want to avoid any problems with the traffic police (who do sometimes check) then you are best advised to stay in a hotel somewhere at least every third night and get them to stamp your immigration card - that is all that is needed to keep everyone happy.  Our Russian was not up to explaining to a traffic cop that the reason we had no registration stamps was because we hadn't stayed anywhere long enough to legally need it!

 

When you apply for your Russian visa, you have to name the places you plan to go to.  We weren't sure, and gave a random selection of city names along the route to Mongolia.  There seemed to be some suggestion that you would be checked up and be in trouble if you were stopped anywhere apart from that list of places.  This is nonsense - that list doesn't get put on your visa, and the cops don't know or care where you said you were going.

 

On the Russian immigration card you have to state the purpose of your visit.  If you have a business visa, you should reply "business"!  And there is a box you have to fill in where you identify the person or company who invited you.  Again, if you have a business visa, you write down "Ministry of Internal Affairs, Moscow", as they are apparently technically responsible for all invites for business visas.  But while we were terribly worried about all this, we could have written "Micky Mouse" on the form and the border guards would probably not have noticed.

 

We had read in a number of places that use of GPS equipment in Russia might not be legal.  We could not get an answer on this, even after contacting the Russian Embassy.  So on the way out to Mongolia, we didn't use the GPS at all (except the small handheld Garmin at the end of the day to get our daily overnight "fix").  And we didn't declare it at the border, because the customs form only requires you to declare things which transmit radio waves (and GPS only receives).  But on the way back we were just a whole lot more relaxed, and ran it all the time (once we got past the militarily sensitive zone between the border at Tashanta and Novosibirsk)- though we still hid the antenna behind a hanky on the dashboard and kept the laptop out of sight when we were stopped!  We are as sure as we can be that they would not be remotely interested

 

Credit cards are not much use for buying fuel in Russia or Mongolia.  Take lots of Roubles, and keep most of them somewhere safe and hidden

 

The fuel prices were between a third and a half of UK prices.  But even in the 3 months of our trip, the prices rose sharply