Do you want to once explore this land of magic and madness, where sometimes people have to drink bat blood to live?
As hot as it can be today, the Sahara was still the cradle of life, enveloping thousands of ancient inhabitants.
Although the sun burned fiercely all day, the Sahara today has snowfall. Although making people have to drink bat blood and urine if they lost their footing, Sahara surprised everyone by the innocence and holiness of the sand cats in the desert.
Do you want to try once to discover both the magic and the madness of the largest desert on the planet?
According to geological studies, about 12,000 years ago, a few prehistoric people had to temporarily take refuge here. Fierce war was the reason they were forced to leave the fertile Nile Valley, making a living around the lakes in the arid desert.
The desert used to be very fertile.
But as if loving people, about 10,500 years ago, the Sahara received an extraordinary monsoon. Heavy rain poured across the desert. The dead land turns, plants sprout, bloom, and bear fruit.
Rain continued to fall steadily across the Sahara for the next 5,000 years. Ancient people flocked to each other, knew how to breed, cultivate, and thrive.
But nature is inherently capricious. After 5,000 years of having fun with humans, Sahara suddenly turned her face. Monsoon disappears. Prolonged drought and dizzying temperature rise.
Unable to do anything to please the Sahara, the ancients packed up and returned to the Nile Valley. War, looting broke out again, finally forming an absolute monarchy state headed by pharaohs.
In 2017, snow once again surrounded Ain Sefra.
Since turning face to face with humans more than 5,000 years ago, the Sahara has never ceased to be scorching hot. But in December 2016, it suddenly poured white snow in the desert area in Ain Sefra, Algeria.
In fact, the town of Ain Sefra is located at a relatively high place – about 1,078m above sea level. If it’s not in the Sahara, it’s normal for it to snow.
I thought that the snowfall in the desert only happened once. Who would have thought that in 2017, snow once again surrounded Ain Sefra. This winter is not far away. If snow also comes to Ain Sefra with winter, humanity should probably get used to a new normal concept called “desert snow”.
Terrible sandstorms.
Because the Sahara has so little water, the soil cannot stick. They turn into fine dust. Hot temperatures will create wind, blowing dust into the air.
The Sahara is very large, up to 9,000,000 square kilometers. When a dust storm forms, it can be thousands of kilometers long and continue for 12 hours.
In May 2011, NASA recorded a dust storm up to 1,100 km long in the Sahara. Just another 500 km and this dust storm is long enough to be as long as the S-shaped strip of Vietnam.
With dust storms that long and long, you’ll get lost instantly if you’re unlucky enough to get entangled. Despite the danger, long-distance running competitions across the Sahara are held on a regular basis.
In 1994, while participating in a 6-day marathon across the Sahara, athlete (athlete) Mauro Prosperi was unfortunately separated from the squad. The backup water soon ran out of a drop, so Prosperi had to save a bottle that didn’t contain urine.
Mauro Prosperi – athlete spent 10 days of hell in the Sahara.
While wandering to find the exit, Prosperi fortunately discovered a ruined temple in the desert. The temple was full of bats. Immediately, he grabbed a few animals, ripped off their heads, sucked blood.
On the tenth day of being lost in the desert, Prosperi was left with almost nothing but a dead body. He cut his wrists to commit suicide, but the blood was so thick that it couldn’t come out.
Fortunately, the rescue team found Prosperi, ending his days of drinking blood and eating raw meat (lizards or desert snakes). Prosperi burst into tears but not from joy but because the marathon was over and he was the only one who didn’t finish the race.
After that… heartwarming defeat, Prosperi continuously participated in the desert marathon. Prosperi’s highest record was 12th in 2001.
Even if you were so unfortunate that you got lost in the desert today, you can still hope to be saved by the rescue team. But if it was before, it would be different, no one would come to save you. In addition, people still believe that the minorities living in the Sahara desert are cannibals.
In 1815, the merchant ship of James Riley (USA) was wrecked near the coast of the Sahara. Both the captain and the crew swam to shore. Perhaps it would have been better if they had survived ashore and tried to repair the ship, but, fearing that rumor, had returned to the boat.
Even if you were so unfortunate that you got lost in the desert today, you can still hope to be saved by the rescue team.
After 9 days of sun exposure and frost in the sea, they could not bear it and swam back to shore. Hell is now really open. A slave trader accidentally passed by and was frivolous. Some crew members were sold, others died of starvation and violence.
Unable to give up, Riley mobilized all his tricks, eventually successfully convincing a merchant to buy both him and the remaining four crew members. Riley swore that he would return ten thousand times more than the merchant spent to buy them all.
Intrigued, the merchant agreed to the transaction. Two more years on foot, devoted to serving this merchant, Riley returned to her hometown.
Passion to conquer the Sahara has never left the human mind. In 1993, Emile Leray, a French electrician determined to make a trans-Saharan trip in the world’s slowest car Citroen 2CV.
Less than a day in the desert, Leray’s sluggish Citroen 2CV was motionless. Not wanting to sit still and wait to die, he dismantled the tires of the car to make a shelter, trying to turn the remaining iron trash into a motorbike.
Emile Leray and the “rescue” reverse vehicle.
It sounds far-fetched, but Leray really succeeds. Only thing, this homemade car refused to run forward but forced the owner to … drive backwards.
Leray thought it would take only 2 or 3 days to complete, but in the end it took 12 days. He climbed wearily into the rickshaw, running backwards (both figuratively and literally) out of the desert.
After a day and a half of turning his head to the point of twisting his neck, Leray ran into a Moroccan patrolman. They saved him but also fined him a large amount of money for driving a vehicle that did not match the vehicle registered in the immigration application.
Don’t think that the desert is full of ugly armored animals like salamanders, lizards and chilling survival stories. The desert also has a super cute furry animal called the sand cat .
Sand cat.
No matter how hard the desert makes you, all resentment will disappear immediately when you meet a sand cat. Their head and oversized eyes on their small bodies make them unbelievably cute.
Sand cats are difficult to meet because they are extremely alert. With their small size, light weight and feathered footbed, they don’t even leave a mark in the sand. Strangely, despite living in the hot desert, the sand cat still has a thick and soft coat of sand or ash color.
Your heart will skip a beat before the innocent, unmatched holiness of the sand cat, but don’t be confused. It’s the most ferocious carnivore in the desert.
Even venomous snakes become pitiful prey under the clutches of these angelic-looking evil cats.
Those are fast-growing and drought-tolerant plants such as cacti and paper grass. Some varieties can sprout in 10 minutes and take root in 10 hours. In the contiguous area of the Mediterranean, olive is a common tree species.
The central part of the desert has extremely limited vegetation. The north and south poles of the desert, along with the highlands, are sparsely grasslands and scrub deserts.
The oasis serves as a hub for economic activities in the desert.
Although the temperature is extremely harsh, there are underground water sources below the desert. Underground rivers flowing from the Atlas Mountains rise to the surface, creating oases, covering more than 2% of the total area. In the oasis, rows of palm trees soar, both blocking the penetration of sand and providing a source of food for the inhabitants.
The oasis serves as a hub for economic activities in the desert. But the people who settled in the oasis engaged in farming, called date residents. Particularly, nomadic peoples such as the Arabs and Berbers in the North of the Sahara have to live in tents, find places with water and grass, so they are called camel inhabitants.
The city of Chinguetti located in West Africa Maurirania is a huge bookstore in the middle of a vast desert. The city was once one of the bustling and wealthy trading centers of merchants from Africa and North Africa.
Here there are a huge number of books up to more than 6000 books and rare manuscripts. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that needs to be preserved.
The Sahara possesses a diverse topography.
The Sahara is known for its huge sand dunes. However, the Sahara possesses a diverse topography, the surface of the desert expands with many different terrains such as rocky plateaus, plains covered with gravel, valleys and even saline lands. Scientists have spent many years explaining these landforms.