This is the day-7 report — retirement kept flashing through my mind the whole way, but we pushed on without giving up!

As a test run ahead of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge,we're now past the halfway point of the twelve-day Sahara Challenge.

Do take a look at the earlier reports too!
The previous day-6 report is here
↓ ↓

The record of a motorsport woman driving a life: the challenge to 14,000 km, Peking to Paris
29.12.2022
Sahara Challenge, day 6 — is a craftsman's spirit universal?
/saharaday6
This is the report from day six, the turning point. As a test run ahead of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, we're now past the halfway point of the twelve-day Sahara Challenge. Do take a look at the earlier reports too! The previous day-5 report is here ↓ ↓ Setting out from Spain, day six brings us here. In outside temperatures I never could have imagined, driving several hundred kilometres a day, both of us drained of strength and sometimes running fevers, we just keep pushing forward, further and further, toward the finish — but for the past few days the brakes haven't been working well, so we've been stopping to adjust, stopping to adjust, and on top of that…


Driving from morning, and driving still, into this same scenery — day seven. Stopping over and over from the morning to check the wooden wheels, already hours behind schedule…

Both of us, and the car, had already reached our limits.
Once we got past this mountain, the real crux of the day would be waiting… and then, at last!

As you'd expect, up on the mountain… the temperature plunged suddenly, from 45 degrees Celsius.
At this rate, there was no way we could go down or push forward! Total pinch!!
While we waited for support… my stomach had already given out, no time even to pull my pants back up,hit by a full-on “diarrhea rally” (laughs)…


After hours of struggling… the support mechanic finally arrived. Normally the rules say we handle our own mechanical work, but with the wheels in this state, there was no going forward or back.

We fought it out in the cold and the rain, but in the end judged that it truly wasn't possible like this!
So we decided to go down the mountain and have a local Jura woodworker make us a new wheel!!
So — would God actually be on our side this time?…
And an hour and a half down the mountain later… we reached the woodworker's home.
Wait, this is his house??
And that's where the wonderful hand-built wheel revival battle began!
This report is better enjoyed as a short video than as photos!
↓ ↓
The wooden-wheel revival theatre!

By now… six hours had passed, and everyone was a mess of cold and exhaustion — that's the state we were in.
Partway through, gangsters showed up around the car we'd left waiting and started poking through it, and just barely in time, a police patrol car
showed up for a genuinely hair-raising moment!

We somehow made it down the mountain… and realized we hadn't eaten a thing since morning.
But all we had were nuts we'd brought from Japan… we judged there was no way we could still reach the finish on the original route, so we searched out the shortest possible path and just pushed on, hurrying!

We made it back in the dead of night… and dropped like a stone. Day 8, here we come!!! What happens now???
We'd made it to the lodging for now… but there was no food left.


The instant cup udon I'd brought from Japan saved me… This hotel barely had hot water, and almost everywhere else had none at all — I learned right there that for the real Peking to Paris, I'd need to prepare a proper thermos to secure hot water myself…

I don't think udon has ever tasted that good to me before (laughs).

Five days left… continued in day 8.