Three friends from Howrah scripted a remarkable adventure — crossing the vast Sahara Desert in just four-and-a-half days.

Along the way, they bonded with locals during their stay at countryside homestays, regaling them with Bollywood songs featuring Amitabh Bachchan, before finally reaching Lake Nasser in southern Egypt.

The team, led by Everester Malay Mukherjee and comprising Debasish Chakraborty and Partha Pratim Hazra, hired bicycles from an agency in Cairo.

Back home, they trained for several months to build endurance before undertaking the nine-day expedition starting from Alexandria, Egypt’s Mediterranean port city, on December 19.

They survived sandstorms, strong winds and extreme cold to cover nearly 1,500 kilometres on cycles.

“Cycling through the Sahara Desert was a challenge we wanted to take. There would be no trace of humanity for kilometres at a stretch. Heavy trucks, moving at nearly 150kmph
along the highway, would kick up sand, and the cold weather meant we had to reach
a night shelter by early evening,” Chakraborty said.

Night stays were mostly at homestays in the countryside, where food was served without salt — usually boiled or roasted — and without the conventional Indian curry.

Cycling along endless kilometres of
yellow sand, what struck the team most was
the presence of large tracts of farmland,
almost out of nowhere, where tomatoes are cultivated.

A mesh of pipelines kept the land hydrated with water channelled from the Nile.

“It was difficult to communicate. No one would speak English or understand the language. But most of them were curious to know about India, spotting the Tricolour on us. India meant Amitabh Bachchan’s songs to many,” Chakraborty said.

“In the countryside, people would come together to listen and dance to Bollywood hits featuring him and then offer us tea and food in appreciation.”

The trip from Alexandria to Cairo by cycle lasted two days.

Faced with multiple cycling restrictions, the trio hired a cab to move out of the city and reach Sohag, along the Nile valley, over
500km away from the Egyptian capital, before starting on their cycles.

Over the next few days, the team covered multiple key destinations, including Asyut and Luxor.

Asyut is known for its ancient tombs and has one of the highest concentrations of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

Luxor is a tourist destination in upper Egypt on the Nile river.

“We crossed the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, Unesco World Heritage sites along the Nile, on cycles and finally reached Lake Nasser, one of the world’s largest artificial lakes in southern Egypt,” Chakraborty said.

They called the expedition Cycle-e-Sahara.