THEY broke down 300km from anywhere, in the Kazakhstan desert.

On the side of the road, with a destroyed gear linkage, help came from the unlikeliest source.

“Joel fixed it with the ring pull from a can of energy drink,” 26-year-old Chris Martin says.

“I normally cop a lot of flak for the amount of energy drinks I have, but not that day,” his 30-year-old brother Mike laughs.

The Sydney duo have just finished the Mongol Rally, a 45-day odyssey that spanned 19,041km across 17 countries, together with their friend Joel Berghofer.

They became very adept at patching up their rusty BMW along the way, like when they cracked the sump after hitting a pothole between the borders of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

“It’s effectively No Man’s Land,” Mike explains. “You can’t get a tow truck in there. Luckily it was downhill, so it was like a rollercoaster with no engine.”

Did they ever think they’d fail?

“No, not really,” says Chris, at exactly the same time Mike says: “Yes, absolutely!”

“Joel and I were doing the ‘mechanicking’,” Mike explains.

“We all had a piece to the puzzle,” says Chris, whose job was making sure they didn’t end up in the wrong country. “As far as I’m concerned, three heads under a bonnet is too many cooks in the kitchen.”

They’re speaking to news.com.au from the finish line in Siberia, which they say is “exactly as cold as it sounds”.

The race started in London, taking participants through popular tourist countries such as France, Germany and the Czech Republic; as well as places well off most people’s radar, like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

“You get to know the ‘stans pretty well,” Chris laughs. “When we were trying to figure out a team name, Mike was like ‘Yeah ... nah ... istan’. We couldn’t pronounce half of the countries.”

The rules are simple: first, you can only take a “farcically small vehicle”; second, you’re completely on your own; and third, you’ve got to raise £1000 (A$1750) for charity.

In the boys’ case, the choice of charity was simple.

Their mother Margaret died earlier this year from a cancer called leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, which is uncommon and extremely difficult to treat.

“We wanted to raise awareness for Rare Cancers,” Chris says.

“Mum was a bit of a traveller, a bit of an adventurer, so she’d be stoked,” Mike adds.

When asked how much time went into planning such an epic trip, both laugh.

“Very little,” Chris says.

“It was about six weeks,” agrees Mike. “Mum died in March, and it was probably May before we could function effectively, and we made the decision to go.”

Visas proved most difficult, because many central Asian countries require a letter of invitation.

“Everything else was on the fly. When you’re going to do something like this, you can’t plan everything. You just have to go with it,” says Chris.

Mike and Joel bought the car within hours of getting off the plane in London, after Chris spotted it for sale online, and they spent a few days modifying it before hitting the road.

When they broke down in Azerbaijan, the president of the local BMW club came to their rescue.

“The further east you go, the warmer people get,” says Mike. “At his own cost, he installed new tyres, shocks, a radiator, radiator hoses and a thermostat housing.”

“This guy drives the exact same BMW as us, I think he was as shocked as we were that we were in this car driving it halfway around the world,” recalls Chris. “His hospitality was so warm.”

The road took them to some of the most remote places in the world, such as the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

“That’s our favourite ‘stan,” says Mike, of the latter.

“We chose the camp by good-looking scenery over any kind of fear of ISIS or the Taliban,” adds Chris, admitting: “We might’ve been a bit close to the border at one point.”

They also stopped at the Buzludzha Monument — formally called the “House Monument of the Communist Party of Bulgaria” — which was the party’s symbolic headquarters.

“We camped out the front of it,” says Chris. “It’s strange to think it’s where the Communist elite would have been passing in and out.”

“You can see how the Soviet Union was at the time,” Mike adds.

But since they don’t speak Russian — or any other language spoken along the way — communication was an interesting challenge.

“We relied quite heavily on offline translations, but we found the best way to communicate was written diagrams,” says Mike.

“There was a lot of charades too, and sound effects,” admits Chris.

Some experiences — like the two days they waited at a ferry port, sharing a single toilet with about 60 truckies — they’d probably rather forget.

Others, like visiting Turkey’s Anzac memorials with two Kiwi teams, they’ll cherish forever.

They finished the rally at about 10pm, blasting a Russian banger playlist they picked up while sampling the night-life in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

“No-one was there, but we had duty-free bottles of fake champagne we sprayed each other with,” says Mike.

The boys thought about shipping the car back to Australia, or selling it for charity, but they couldn’t decide which.

“We’ve gotten attached to the BMW. We’re definitely not scrapping it,” says Mike.

“The legend will live on, definitely put that in there,” says Chris.

COUNTRIES VISITED:

England, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Mongolia.

You can donate to Rare Cancers here, or find out more about the rally on Facebook.