Episode 2

Total distance travelled: 395 miles

The Sahara Desert

In week two the nine remaining adventurers travelled for eight hours along the winding main road, which cuts through the Atlas Mountains. Their destination was the Sahara Desert – one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

Episode 2 was filmed in a region of the desert called the Erg Chebbi, with 'Erg' meaning a 'sea of shifting sand dunes' in Arabic. The Erg Chebbi can shift some 17 miles from north to south, depending on the prevailing winds.

According to Arabic legend, this part of the Sahara was a lush and fertile garden thousands of years ago, until God started dropping one grain of sand at a time on the floor as a punishment (either for someone lying, or for someone turning away a traveller from the desert, depending on your interpretation).