Morning arrived again, after last night’s 39-degree fever!
The story of my abduction/captivity??? mid-rally in the last post went down well, and I got
some lovely messages too.
Thank you all.
↓ ↓
Day 5 of the twelve-day Sahara Challenge, the Peking to Paris warm-up.
The finish is still a long way off.
It took five years to get a Japanese entrant into Peking to Paris at all.
Turned down, dozens upon dozens of emails sent …
I flew to England to negotiate in person and finally got my hands on the ticket.
And now, carrying so much support from crowdfunding too as I drive this warm-up race,
giving up simply isn’t an option — morning comes, and I’ve already forgotten about the fever, starting today with this smile.
A 39-degree fever against a 45-degree outside temperature — practically normal, right??
I’ve just proven that illness really does start in the mind, this recovery. But still … it’s hot!
I press on, spraying myself with water, but of course that water turns to hot water too, no relief at all.
Driving across the Sahara demanded total concentration. The route was nothing but desert, an endless road that wasn’t really a road.
The competing cars that started at the same time as us scattered, each vanishing off into the far distance.
Just when I think it’s all soft desert, suddenly hard, uneven ground appears, and I keep pushing on, alternating between watching the GPS direction
and paying close attention to the road surface.
… and then, off in the distance! Camels, of all things (laughs). Wild camels, running free.
Let your guard down for even a second and the car sinks deep into the sand.
Several cars got stuck in the sand, and the cars that stopped to help them got stuck too, but
beyond the language barrier, there was real mutual help among fellow competitors, all fighting the same thing together.
There’s video footage reporting on this moment, so do take a look if you’d like.
A rally isn’t only about reaching the finish, about ranking, winning or losing — every bit of it is a drama, I really felt that deeply during this warm-up.
Sand, sweat, and tears … I think every single car built its own drama out there.
I didn’t have much room to take photos while driving across that desert, but there’s plenty
captured on video, so please do take a look on YouTube too.
When we got stuck in the sand, one man stopped to help us.
I heard afterwards that among the competing cars, some local children who’d pretended to help had actually made off with
all the luggage left outside one car — but we were helped by a genuinely kind young man.
Drive and drive and it’s still desert … that kind of day. Even so, getting past all sorts of obstacles and safely
reaching today’s lodging on schedule was, on day five, actually a first.
Even the cars that usually arrive early were scattered out of order today.
Wishing every competing car a safe return, from the heart, and that’s the finish.
Tonight’s lodging in the desert — a tent, for once! As we arrived and were sorting our things, someone appeared out of nowhere,
this man laying out goods as if to say “buy something, come on!”
But honestly … I really don’t have money. Me, basically begging back at a beggar.
Even so, when I pulled out the loose change in my pocket, he looked at it like “there’s nothing here worth selling for this” — but that’s where my — the classic Japanese negotiating style — came in.
“Look … this is literally all I have, really! But I want this! Please! Please!”
However you looked at it, I’d basically turned into a street peddler myself … even the local guy was clearly thrown off. In the end, worn down, he just went “ugh, fine, take it” — and that’s how I ended up with this camel.
We’d come in dead last every single day so far, but today, finally, no trouble, and a satisfying finish!
Time for a celebratory toast right away!
First, I wanted something cold to drink, so — lemon juice!
A shower of water and I finally felt human again after so long!
Being a test run for the warm-up, I genuinely had no idea what to wear, so I’d grabbed
these trousers, about 1,000 yen, in Spain in a rush, and they turned out to be surprisingly good!
The cars kept trickling back in one after another, straight into maintenance with no rest at all. Some had lost their windscreens driving through the desert, both cars and people utterly worn out.
So many cars had trouble that the route changed and the lodging changed with it, so
even though it’s called a tent stay, tonight it was less a pup tent and more one with proper bedding.
Beer bottles sat beside the cars mid-repair and maintenance, everyone easing their exhaustion with a drink
before tomorrow’s start again. Somehow it made for a perfect photo!
As the sun began to set, the desert tents lit up by lamps for the first time, and a dreamlike scene spread out.
All the exhaustion and fever from the days before completely forgotten, I was on this kind of high (laughs).
So — tonight, we celebrate! I even got to enjoy the dinner the organizer had prepared.
The Frenchman I’d first become friends with.
No English, no Japanese either, no shared language at all, and yet somehow we were always joking around together. Communication isn’t about words!
By day five, everyone had become properly familiar faces. Everyone started calling me
“komo~”! Even greetings, in Japanese: “konbanwa,” “arigatou,” and then “kanpai”
everyone seemed to have picked up quite a bit of Japanese from my lessons.
Traditional dancing started up too!
Me? Dancing’s nice, but really, you’ve got to join in, right!
I made a direct plea to these traditional dancers, whose language I didn’t even understand, and got to join the performance — footage of that, coming soon!
As the night wore on, I found myself wishing time could just stop right there, but that moment was brief.
Tomorrow, day six, past the halfway point of the challenge, waits again.
Even so, that night I slept deeply, ate my fill, and the early morning air
tasted wonderful!
Good morning!!
And off we go again, day six, the turning point.