A PAIR of students are hoping to drive to Mongolia in a 15-year-old Ford Fiesta van that has just failed its MoT.

Despite having no mechanical knowledge and not speaking a word of any non-European language, Durham University students Richard Knock and Peter Singlehurst plan to drive the clapped-out vehicle almost 10,000 miles to Ulaan Baatar.

The first-year students hope to raise £3,000 for charity on the madcap trip, but first they need to get the van, owned by Peter's relatives in Wiltshire, through its MoT.

Richard, a 19-year-old history student from York, said: "It's Peter's granny's old van and it hasn't moved very far for a few years. It has just failed its MoT -the garage reckoned it would take about eight hours of welding to get it fixed."

Assuming the van makes it through its test, the pair will join 180 other teams driving old bangers on the 2006 Mongol Rally from Hyde Park, London, on July 22.

The journey will take Richard, and 20-year-old Peter through the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, into Turkey, then, international diplomacy permitting, into Iran, through Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Russia and finally into Mongolia.

The journey is expected to take anything up to six months, through two deserts and five mountain ranges, with no back-up support.

Richard said: "We were queuing for food one day in halls and saw a magazine story about an earlier Mongol Rally and thought it sounded quite good fun, so we thought 'why not do it?'

"Neither of us has much mechanical expertise, nor can we speak Russian or any of the other languages we might need outside Western Europe, so we will have to get by with sign language.

"It should be really good fun."

The pair hope to raise money on the trip for two charities: Mercy Corps, which works in Mongolia, and Send A Cow, which provides livestock for families in Africa.

The pair have set up a website -www.marcopolo2006.co.uk -for anyone interested in making donations.