*The following is adapted from the official Mongol Rally website.* Found here.

How can you sum up the Mongol Rally?

How does the greatest adventure in the world sound? What about 10,000 miles, 7 mountain ranges, 3 deserts, bandits, roads ranging from bad to non-existent and all this in a car you swapped for a bag of crisps?

When is it?

The Mongol Rally 2007 starts on July 21st 2007 from Hyde Park in London.

What's the point?

The world is just a little bit too safe. Gone are the days where the edge of the map called you forth to discover what lay beyond - satellite maps and GPS have it laid out before you leave the armchair. What if you want things to go wrong? What if you want a bit of unknown in a world full health and safety measures? What if the words “adventure travel” conjure images of old ladies on a guided tour to Everest base camp with all the danger and real adventure neatly removed? What you need is the Mongol Rally.

Imagine yourself in the middle of the gargantuan Kazakh desert, your car slowly being shredded by the dirt track your map says is a motorway, completely lost hundreds of miles from civilisation with no back up crew to rescue you. Just you, your wits, your increasingly brown pants, a car that the laws of physics say shouldn't have got you past Peckham Rye and a slightly angry looking man with a gun.

The charities

The Mongol Rally isn't just about adventure, it's also about raising huge sacks of cash for some great charities. Last year they topped £200,000 and they hope to smash that this year.

The challenge

Travel a third of the way around the earth, from London to Mongolia via a plethora of countries most people haven't heard of in any crap car that has an engine with no more than 1 litre of power.

Starting from London, the rally finishes in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar around three weeks and a whole heap of adventure later. It's between about 8 and 10,000 miles depending on the route you choose to throw your crap-mobile at. We don't believe in telling you what to do or where to go as this is supposed to be an adventure not a cosy guided driving tour, so the world is pretty much your oyster. To get to the end teams have gone as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Afghanistan on what can only really be described as somewhat circuitous routes. What happens to you between London, the deserts, mountains, bandits and wilderness is anyone's guess. In a normal year just over half the teams make the finish line in one piece.