This Year’s Challenge
Cross the Sahara on a push bike- December 2008
Fat tire bicycles offer some intriguing possibilities, in fact one suspects a mtb revolution is brewing somewhere- there are big big big snow and desert trips just waiting to be done.
Our contribution is an attempt to cross for the first time by bike the Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Sahara from the Gilf Kebir to Siwa Oasis. It’s the world’s biggest sand sea.
600 km through the most profoundly arid region on earth bar none.
We will start at the ‘cave of the swimmers’, so named after the 5000 year old rock art paintings of seemingly diving men on the walls of the cave. This was the place featured in the English Patient movie where Kristin Scott Thomas’s character dies- which we hope will provide a suitably upbeat start to the trip…
We then ascend the Aquaba pass, discovered by Count Almasy (the real life English Patient) and used by him to spirit spies into Cairo behind English lines during WW2.
Over the top of the Gilf Kebir, a plateau the size of Switzerland, only with no groundwater at all.
We then go through the Silica Glass area of the great Sand Sea, a mysterious natural glass that was used to make the chest scarab of Tutankhamun. We will skirt the meteorite crater that may have been the cause of the high temperatures needed to make the sand fuse into glass.
It is then up dune corridors between the highest dunes in the Eastern Sahara- over 700 feet high, more than high enough to put the fear of Ra up a cyclist aiming to cross them. Which we will have to do at their end in order to enter subsequent new dune corridors.
We aim to do all of the above on a suitable fat tire bike such as the Surly Pugsley or similar. We will have two Toyota Landcruisers as back up vehicles.
To donate money or goods to aid this trip email the explorer school or phone Richard in the UK. We will also be raising money for charity, principally an orphanage in Luxor.