Charla Hughes and Chase Berenson will be participating in the Mongol Rally as Team Turnagain, driving a small car through Europe and Central Asia to raise money for two amazing organizations!

What the heck are you doing?

     On July 14, 2013, approximately 300 vehicles will set off from England, heading east across Europe and Asia for roughly six weeks of awesome adventure and motoring mayhem.  Our goal is to arrive in Ulaanbaatar on August 23rd.

     The Mongol Rally is not a rally in the conventional sense.  There are no support vehicles, no checkpoints, and no helpers.  There isn’t even a set route!  Once the teams depart from London, it is solely up to each team to determine the best (or most adventurous) route east to Ulaanbaatar.  It is not a race; the teams are discouraged from finishing first, because if you speed through it then there wasn't enough time for adventure.

     The Rally will cross through some of the most remote and unforgiving terrain on Earth.  To make sure that everyone has good stories to tell, teams are not allowed to drive trucks or expedition-ready vehicles.  Much to the contrary, all the teams must drive vehicles with an appoximately 1.2-liter or less engine and that are less than 10-years old.  We are literally looking for a vehicle that someone’s grandmother would only drive to do the shopping once a week!

Why are you doing that?

     We are participating in the Mongol Rally for charity!  Every participating team must raise at least £1000; £500 goes to the official Rally charity and everything above and beyond that goes to a charity of the team’s choice.

     The Adventurists, who organize the Mongol Rally as well as other events around the world, have chosen Cool Earth as their official charity.  Cool Earth is an organization in the Amazon that is protecting the rainforest; they do so by working with local indigenous communities.  They ensure that they do the most good by only protecting rainforest that's in imminent danger of being cut down, and by protecting rainforest areas that then serve as a protective barrier for even larger areas beyond.  They have already proved their tactics by protected an area over five times the size of Luxembourg, and are still doing great work!

     Cool Earth is a very important organization, but they're located a little far from Mongolia.  Since the purpose of our adventure is to get to Mongolia, we also want to help out someone on the ground at our destination; our organization of choice is the Lotus Children’s Centre.  The Lotus Children's Centre is an organization in Ulaanbaatar that cares for children by providing the basic human rights of food, shelter, and education.  Lotus was founded in 1993 and started by providing the basics needed for survival.  However, education is also a necessity in today's world, and Lotus developed their own kindergarten and primary school to give the children an educational foundation.  Furthermore, Lotus has provided vocational training and increased revenue streams by opening the Ananda Cafe, serving vegetarian cuisine, and the Lotus Guesthouse, housing travelers passing through Ulaanbaatar.  Lotus started as a small organization to help a few kids, but now at any given time they can have over 100 children receiving food and shelter, education, and vocational training to get them ready to head off into the world.

     The Adventurists have a proven track record of “saving the world,” to use their wording.  Since the Adventurists have begun hosting global events in 2004, they have raised over £3.7million; over £1.9million of that has come from the Mongol Rally alone!

Why do you need the money?

     We are raising as much money as possible for Cool Earth and for the Lotus Children’s Centre, ideally well over the £1000 minimum.  (For those of you not in England, that’s over $1500.)  However, in addition to donating massive amounts of funds to Lotus and Cool Earth, we do unfortunately need to cover a bit of expenses like plane tickets, insurance, fuel, and visas.  We are going to be keeping our costs as low as possible; we’ll be traveling with a tent and a camp stove, and we'll be staying far away from things like hotels and restaurants.

     Of course we could do the Mongol Rally with much less money than what we’re trying to raise here.  But we don’t like doing the bare minimum of anything, and we want to donate as much as we can to Cool Earth and the Lotus Children’s Centre.

     Our fundraising campaigns are going well already!  We are backed by the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, Alaska, and the residents of Girdwood generously raised hundreds of dollars for Team Turnagain in a recent fundraiser.  Your Indiegogo support on top of the non-Internet fundraising we’ve already done and we’re continuing to do will ensure that Cool Earth and the Lotus Children’s Centre will receive as much as they possibly can!

Who are you guys?

     We're a couple of awesome people.  We met way back in 2004 while pursuing our undergraduate degrees at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.  More recently, Charla has been finishing up her Masters Degree at Florida State University; before that she spent years living in Southeast Asia teaching English, surfing, and working as a professional SCUBA diver.  In the meantime, Chase has spent the past five years living and working in Alaska.  He's spent his summers working at an airline using skiplanes to fly mountain climber support in the Alaska Range, and his winters working at a resort and snowboarding all the time.

This is great!  How else can I help?

     Thanks!  In addition to donating money, the most important way to help is to spread the word of what we’re doing and to try to get increased awareness of Team Turnagain’s participating in the Mongol Rally!

     You can like Team Turnagain’s Facebook page so that you’re always up-to-date with team prep before the Rally and with our day-by-day adventures once the Rally starts.  You can also check out Team Turnagain's website to find out a wealth of information about us now, and to follow our full blog once the Rally gets underway!

     Thank you for checking out our fundraising campaign and for getting behind Team Turnagain while we raise money for Cool Earth and the Lotus Children’s Centre in the Mongol Rally!