It's apparent from scanning down the page that updates to old faithful STTR are somewhat infrequent these days, even by my standards. What can I say, it turns out this whole rally planning malarkey is proving somewhat time consuming.

the major stresses at the moment are regarding visa applications - I never realised that completing two sheets of paper correctly would be so difficult or have so much riding on it. Good news though - finally made it to the Mongolian Embassy today and our first visa applications are go! All being well, I should collect our passports on Friday with a shiny new stamp in them.

I was shaking on the way to the Embassy this morning - a mixture of excitement and terror that we'd somehow messed up the application form and would be refused the visa. My stomach was in knots on the tube and I tried to remind myself, "it's not like it's a job interview or something". Unfortunately my inner Bill Shankly chose to chime in at that moment with, "no, it's much more important than that". Thankfully it seemed to go ok; the girl in the consulate briefly checked the form when I submitted it and didn't highlight anything untoward, so fingers crossed.

Elsewhere, we hope to get the van someday soon, and are starting to look at camping gear. Insureandgo have sportingly offered us 5% off the cost of travel insurance and my mobile phone company, who asked not to be named, have made a goodwill gesture of £25 towards the cost of texting back home whilst we're away. It's all helping, and I'm immensely chuffed to be able to direct your eyes diagonally upwards to our Justgiving widget, where at the time of writing we have achieved exactly two thirds of our fundraising target.

All of which brings me seamlessly to my final piece of news: our fund-raising night in the Prince Albert, Brixton on 25 June. We've just had the date confirmed but will hold off on details until it's all definite. Thankfully, we should be guaranteed a good crowd as it's piggy-backing on a very popular monthly night, so we're hopeful of getting a few more quid in. It's dangerously close to departure day, but far enough away we can hopefully get some friendly faces in the crowd. See you there.