Photograph by Joerg Modrow, laif/Redux
The world’s great sea of sand, the Sahara Desert, stretches 3.3 million square miles (8.5 million square kilometers) across North Africa, nearly 3,000 miles (4,838 kilometers) long from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. A great challenge, it has lured many explorers, who have braved dust storms, hostile tribes, thirst, and intolerable heat to experience a frontier of epic proportions. Nowadays, the bravest of adventurers cross it on foot, camel, or 4-by-4 vehicles, outfitted with plenty of emergency survival gear, but there is still little help out there if something goes wrong. Only a handful of outposts and nomads punctuate the dunes, and explorers can go days without seeing anyone or anything but desert.
