Nine Days Lost in the Sahara Desert Inside a Shrine

A visual reconstruction of Mauro Prosperi seeking shelter at an abandoned shrine after becoming lost in the Sahara. (Digital Illustration: GoBeyondLocal)

Nine Days Lost in the Sahara Desert Inside a Shrine

The building had no one inside.

Mauro Prosperi had been looking for shade and water after losing the route during a desert race when he came across it. He had already spent hours alone in the Sahara, carrying a compass, a small amount of food and very little water.

The structure was a marabout, a Muslim shrine used by people crossing the desert. Prosperi went inside and found an empty place where he could get out of the sun.

Prosperi had entered the 1994 Marathon des Sables in Morocco as a 38-year-old Italian police officer and pentathlete. The race covered hundreds of kilometres through desert terrain, with runners carrying their own food and equipment.

For the first three days, he covered about 96 kilometres across salt beds, rocks and sand dunes. The fourth stage was longer, and Prosperi was still competing near the front when the weather turned against him.

A sandstorm swept across the runners. Sand struck his face and filled the air around him until visibility disappeared. Prosperi kept moving for hours because he feared being buried if he stopped in the open.

By the time the storm passed, the landmarks he had been using were gone. He had a map and compass, but the dunes around him no longer matched the route he remembered.

He slept in the desert and expected daylight to give him a better view of the route. Morning offered no checkpoint and no familiar marker. Prosperi was alone with a half-empty water bottle, dehydrated food, a sleeping bag, a knife and a few other items packed for the race.

Searchers were already looking for him. Race organisers sent vehicles and aircraft across the desert, while Moroccan military personnel and Bedouin trackers joined the search.

Prosperi heard a helicopter while sitting on a high dune. He fired his only flare and watched the aircraft pass without seeing him.

That night, he saved urine in his water bottle. He ate some of his food and kept the bottle for a point when he might have no other liquid available.

The following day, two vultures appeared overhead. Prosperi began moving again, searching the empty landscape for shade, water or signs of people.

A structure appeared in the distance. He reached it and discovered the abandoned marabout.

The shrine offered shade but no person to ask for help. Prosperi climbed around the structure and saw bird eggs in a nest. He also noticed bats hanging inside the building.

His food supply was running down. He caught bats and consumed them raw, using them as a source of food and moisture while he waited for help that did not arrive.

Prosperi spent several days using the shrine for shelter. He placed an Italian flag where an aircraft might see it and tried to attract attention from above.

A plane passed without spotting him. Prosperi later described the aircraft disappearing from view while he was still alone beside the shrine.

His physical condition had deteriorated badly by that point. Water was almost gone, food had run out and the desert offered no obvious route towards the race checkpoints.

Inside the shrine, Prosperi wrote a message for his wife on the wall. He had reached a point where he believed death was close and attempted to end his life with the knife he had carried during the race.

The attempt failed. Severe dehydration had affected his body, and the wound did not produce the result he expected.

Prosperi left the shrine and returned to the open desert.

He began searching for small sources of moisture. He licked dew from rocks in the morning and used moisture from plants. He also ate insects and reptiles he could catch in the desert.

At night, he buried himself partly in sand to protect his body from the cold.

On the eighth day, Prosperi reached a small pool of water in a wadi. He drank carefully because his throat and body had become so dehydrated that large amounts of water were difficult to take at once.

The water gave him enough strength to keep moving.

Animal droppings appeared in the sand. Prosperi followed them and later saw human footprints.

A young girl appeared near a group of goats. Her family belonged to a Tuareg caravan travelling through the region, and the people around her saw the exhausted runner approaching.

The nomadic family gave Prosperi goat milk and mint tea and took him into their care.

He had crossed far beyond the race route and was eventually located in Algeria, hundreds of kilometres from the place where the sandstorm had separated him from the course.

Prosperi was taken to medical care in a severely weakened condition. His weight had fallen to about 44 kilograms, and doctors treated him with large amounts of intravenous fluid while his body recovered.

A year later, a documentary crew returned to the abandoned shrine. They found belongings associated with Prosperi and bat skeletons at the site where he had spent several days.

Two years after the disappearance, Prosperi returned to endurance running. He entered the Marathon des Sables again and went on to complete the race several times.