Dakar Rally participants know what they're signing up for: a gruelling two-week ordeal they have no guarantee of completing. But this storied event was born of an even more extreme and dangerous experience, that one man had to endure all alone...

It was 1977 and Thierry Sabine was lost. He'd wandered the Libyan desert for three days in an ocean of featureless sand. His meager supplies – a few snacks and a bit of water – were gone.

anuary 14, 1977: the daytime temperatures weren't the scorching 100-plus-degrees you'd imagine from the deserts of Northern Africa. In fact, they were downright pleasant, hovering around 68 °F (20 °C). Perfect weather for blasting across the barren landscapes at break-neck speeds on the very best Yamaha had to offer at the time, a tricked-out XT500.

It was the nights. The bitter, nearly freezing nights were the hardest.

The route for the 2025 Dakar rally covers nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km), traversing the Empty Quarter (Rub' al Khali), the largest continuous desert in the world

Dakar