...... on Silk Road adventure… Just 6,000 miles to go !
Having conquered the testing terrain of the Cappadocia and Mount Ararat in Turkey, the Renault Trucks Silk Road caravan has now successfully completed the first half of its trip – 6,250 miles (10,000km) have been covered from Lyon to Iran in forty days and forty nights.
From mountain-to-desert-to-city, the trucks passed through Tehran, a city of nearly 12 million people, on its journey to Beijing. At times the traffic clogging the streets of Tehran proved more challenging than the nomad and bandit filled deserts of Iran and it took all the drivers’ skill to keep the trucks on the asphalt roads.
Despite the epic distance and varied landscape covered, the trucks have so far experienced no mechanical problems, with only one tyre having to be changed, ruptured by a shard of metal.
The journey has proved more of a challenge for the drivers themselves. It takes guts to take on a whole range of obstacles including dunes, wadis, muddy chotts and deep trenches.
Kiki Haller, a professional rally driver on the Silk Road, explained: “Some sections of the challenge are more like special stages on the Paris-Dakar. You don’t just need to be alert to drive the trucks through such difficult terrain, you also need physical strength to hold the steering wheel while being battered by vibrations.” He continued: “It’s really important not to drive over the top of a dune because the ground just falls away under you. If you drive slowly instead, the truck surfs on the sand instead of sinking in – it’s a piece of cake!”
Covering an incredible 12,500 miles (20,000 kilometres) through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China, including Mongolia, Silk Road 2005 is an exciting real-life demonstration and test of the robustness and sheer endurance of the Renault Kerax.
The exhausted first team of drivers, all employees of Renault Trucks, are now back home and a fresh team has taken possession of the trucks for the final 10,000 km push which will bring them to Beijing, their final destination, on schedule for June.
