Cycling Across the World's Largest Desert (Sudanese Sahara)

The Sahara desert is the largest hot desert in the world. The whole northern region of Sudan is a part of it. It's a harsh place to live in, yet alone to cycle across, and my expectations were pretty low. The first question I asked myself was "how boring will this desert crossing be?". Little did I know, this was the wrong question to ask. I was about to explore an extremely underrated, rich, and fascinating zone of our planet, that rarely had any light shed on it...

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Big thanks to Dylan for the amazing map animations. Check out his YouTube channel: ‪@DylanBoynukalin‬
Additional Animation by the awesome Rayan Haddad.

Tim's Instagram:   / dreamtim___  
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Thanks to ‪@Lostshmi‬ for the unreal drone footage she shot the day the war started.
Thanks to Mazin Urso for some of the drone footage: https://instagram.com/mazinurso?igshi...
Thank you Niels Jansen for some the drone footage: https://instagram.com/cycling_around_...
Old footage of the road in Northern Sudan by Lars Bengtsson: https://instagram.com/lostcyclist?igs...

Music by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au


Chapters in the Videos:
0:00 Intro
1:37 A Brief History of Sudan
2:36 Day 1 in the desert
4:12 Our friend Tim!
5:03 A lot of cash
6:05 Gold in the desert
8:19 The Gold Diggers
10:01 The food is FOUL
10:53 The rocky desert plateaus
12:13 Camping in the sands
12:54 The Mighty Nile
14:16 The ancient mudbrick structures
15:39 A forbidden drink: Araqi
18:34 The civil war and the story of Araqi
20:14 A new lifestyle
21:17 Forced hospitality
22:38 How people drink in the desert
23:40 Nubian Music
25:08 A hospitable scout
26:04 Expanding my perspective
27:25 The Great Desert stretch
28:35 The Pyramids of Jabal Barkal
30:16 Food poisoning and editing
31:40 Karima the generous
32:25 The Camel Market
33:09 Sand's secret
33:48 Why are Sudanese hospitable?
36:01 The last desert crossing
37:33 Arrival in Khartoum
38:15 War?