Marathon across the Sahara: an amazing case of human survival in the desert (11 photos + 1 video)

He spent almost 10 days in the desert, feeding on the blood of bats. But he survived against all odds.





Mauro Prosperi decided to participate in the 1994 six-day ultra-marathon, the Sand Marathon in the Sahara Desert, which has been running since 1986.



Sahara

Participants run 250 kilometers in extreme conditions. Prosperi was among the real contenders for victory, since he was a former Olympian (pentathlon), in 1984 he represented Italy at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, worked in the police, had good training and was an excellent runner.





Sand Marathon

But in an area with small dunes, a sandstorm began. The man got lost among the swirling sand and turned in the opposite direction. As a result, Prosperi found himself in some abandoned Islamic sanctuary, where he spent the night next to the relics of a long-dead hermit.



Mauro Prosperi and fellow Italian runner Mario Malerba during the race in 1994

If the first day alone in the Sahara without a landmark was still a kind of romantic adventure, then the second day was difficult for the man. He was suffering from dehydration. The food was the blood of bats, which he found in the sanctuary, twisted their necks and drank dry. True, he showed the last respect to the creatures who gave their lives for his sake: he took out the bloodless carcasses and buried them in the sand.

Then the runner remembered his grandfather’s stories about the First World War: the soldiers had to drink their own urine. I had to resort to this method of survival.



That same refuge

The Italian still believed that he was still a participant in the race. And he even hoped for a prize. I saw a helicopter in the sky, and then a plane, and decided that they were looking for him (in fact, they had not started searching yet, because they did not know that the participant had deviated so much from the route).

A real picture of death loomed before the athlete. Mauro realized that in the sands of the merciless desert, at most, his own skeleton would be discovered, as well as the skeletons of the bats that extended his life. He was very worried that the family would be left without the pension due to relatives of a police officer if the body was not found. And I realized that I had to do everything possible to survive.



Berber dwelling

Mauro went. He walked stubbornly and did everything he could to survive. He caught mice and snakes from the shady undergrowth at the foot of the trees. I crushed them in a small cup that I found in a marabout. He ate large ants, chewed leaves, and cut the backs of his sneakers to relieve the pain of heel ulcers. In the deafening silence of the desert, sometimes the sound of the wind kept him company.

Over the next six days, Prosperi walked, carefully looking around. Not without hallucinations:

I lived with death, hand in hand, next to it every day. Death has become my friend. She was there for me, she was with me always, every day. I strived to survive - and death kept me company, positively, not even negatively. She gave me strength, strength not to give up.



After rescue

Like Robinson Crusoe, he convinced himself to see the positive in what was happening - an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the desert.

One day he noticed tiny moving objects in the distance. I took them for camels, but upon closer inspection they turned out to be goats. Whom the girl was tending.

The runner reached a Berber settlement and realized that he was born again. The man stayed in the desert for nine and a half days. The Berbers tried to give him milk, but Mauro vomited. He had gone without food and water for too long.



Prosperi after completing the 2012 marathon

Prosperi reached Algiers on foot, passing through a mined border area. By that time he weighed only 43 kilograms. Military police took him blindfolded to the Tindouf base and then to hospital, where he spent a week in intensive care. “They thought I was an agent,” he says, “until they found the documents.”

When he finally returned to Rome and posed for photographs, a sports journalist who knew Prosperi as an Olympian asked him: “So will you run the marathon?” To which I received a clear answer: “I always finish my races.”



Prosperi returned to the marabout (funerary sanctuary) with a television crew in 2022

Prosperi kept his word. He recuperated over the next two years and returned to compete in the Marathon des Sables in 1997. Subsequently, he participated in the race nine more times, and last ran in 2017:

After I survived, everything around me became even stronger - my love for nature, my love for sports, my desire to create, my love for life.



After leaving the police force, he worked as a fencing coach and Olympic coordinator. Married after a divorce for the second time.



Prosperi is now 68 years old. He's already a grandfather, but that doesn't stop him from continuing to challenge himself, like kayaking around the coast of Sicily where he lives. He is waiting for the right moment to tell his grandchildren about how he survived among the merciless sands of the Sahara.