Thirst for Adventure
Thirst for Adventure
“It’s like the Exxon Valdez,” Andrew said one morning in Prague, staring at the oil spilling from our rusty Subaru Justy. We were several days into the Mongol Rally, a foolhardy road adventure from London to Ulaanbaatar. And problems were legion in the Czech Republic. At a grocery store, one-liter water bottles cost about a buck. Half-liters of Staropramen and Pilsner Urquell, however, were equal to several skinny dimes,
“Where’s your water?” Andrew asked back at the repaired car, examining my Czech suds. “Beer’s got water, doesn’t it?” I replied.
Till then, I’d been staying hydrated via bathroom sinks—a risky move. Still, I couldn’t buy water that cost more than beer made from selfsame water. So in Krakow, Poland, I guzzled stiff, dark bottles of Okocim. In Riga, Latvia, I loved the light, golden Lāčplēsis. Moscow saw me binge-drink pints of dark Baltika No. 4 and sip tap water the color of a guidance counselor’s loafers.
“You can have some of my water, Josh. Really, it’s no problem,” Andrew said, mortified. “No, no,” I replied. “Alcohol will kill whatever’s in my belly.”
It did. And it also killed my constant headaches. In Kazakhstan, where potholes were deep enough to bury the dead, my skull crashed into the ceiling—and our muffler dropped onto the roadside. Medicine was chilled bottles of caramel-nuanced Derbes Dark. The muffler was beyond repair. Uzbekistan was all gravel and sand, a dusty, agitating duo requiring me to drink Skol, a refreshingly watery beer. I would’ve gotten dizzyingly drunk in mountainous Kyrgyzstan, but I couldn’t stomach kumis: fermented horse’s milk that tasted as if a mare made love to champagne beneath a scorching afternoon sun. Then following a night spent in frigid Siberia, where I kept the chill away with lovely lager Baltika No. 3, we entered Mongolia.
“Hooray!” I shouted, eager for more beer.
Oh, bottles of Borgio Gold were a tasty (if poor) palliative for wretched driving. In Mongolia, yaks roam wild and woolly, and the dirt roads are rocky washboards.
“M-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-k-e i-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-top!” I moaned. The mirthless landscape laid waste to our car’s suspension, shocks, and radiator, as well as my sanity. One molar-rattling afternoon, I unleashed the only known antidote to spasmodic roads: a carafe of 100-proof vodka mixed with the last our strawberry jam. Our frowns flipped upside down—even the driver’s, causing him to speed and pop a tire like a birthday balloon.
The next day, one month into the trek, we haggled with truck drivers to take our broken beast to Ulaanbaatar atop a squishy pile of gore-slicked goatskins. Two days later, stinking of death, we arrived at the finish-line bar near a gargantuan Genghis Khan statue. “Prizes, please,” I told the bartender, wiping road dust from my mouth.
She filled glass mugs of cool, dark Chinggis Dunkel, which we hoisted skyward like shiny trophies. We drank our prize, then another, and another, until, fittingly, we were as wrecked as our car.
A different version of this story was previously published in Imbibe.