Posted on 01/27/2006 11:33:56 PM PST by Tyche
INSPIRED by the legend of a Persian king and his lost army, Stefano Miglietti, an Italian adventurer, completed a 340-mile hike through the most isolated and arid part of the western Sahara yesterday.
The route that Signor Miglietti followed through the so-called Great Sand Sea — from the Farafra oasis in southern Egypt to the Siwa oasis in the north — has always been considered impossible for a man carrying his own food and water.
According to legend, Cambyses II, the Persian king, foolishly tried to take the same route in 523 BC, setting off with a 50,000-strong army.
Herodotus, the Greek author, writes that Cambyses and his men were swallowed up in sandstorms and never seen again.
Signor Miglietti, 38, who runs an electrical components business, was so fascinated by the king’s ill-fated journey that he decided to try it.
Before setting off a week ago, pulling a 200lb cart loaded with supplies, he was warned by Tuareg desert nomads that his plan was madness.
Five days, 23 hours later, with blistered feet and severe stomach cramps, he arrived at Siwa.
A man of few words, he said simply: “I’m satisfied. I’m quite well and I went faster than I expected.”
Needless to say, he found no trace of Cambyses’s army.
The legend, as well as inspiring archaeologists to mount many fruitless searches in the desert, has come to symbolise the perils of the Great Sand Sea.
The region in the western Sahara is a massive expanse of dunes, continually beaten by wind and sand storms.
Even the Tuaregs avoid it because of the lack of water and its utter isolation.
Temperatures at this time of year vary between 0C (32F) during the night and 35C (95F) in the day.
Signor Miglietti, who covered between 50 and 56 miles a day, kept up his energy with dates, condensed milk and Parmesan cheese.
Marco Rosa, the doctor who prepared him for the adventure, said that the Brescia-based adventurer was in good shape considering what he had just been through. “Sure, he’s a bit tired. He’s had serious problems with blisters on his feet and his abdomen is scarred by the belt he used to pull the cart,” he said.
Signor Miglietti’s exploit was sponsored by Brescia businesses and had no goal other than to prove that it could be done.
The former skier and mountaineer is no stranger to adventures of this kind.
In 2003 he became the first man to cross the Murzuq desert in Libya alone and in 2005 he set a record for the Yukon Arctic Ultra, a 330-mile race across Canadian icefields.
Anyway, Who Dares Wins
Not to detract from his feat, which is remarkable, and well beyond anything I could do, but he had a GPS so he took the shortest & best route.
I bet those boys back in 523 B.C. wandered around for a while before they gave up & died.
No doubt. Walking in a mall sucks. Walking, lost in a desert as you slowly die, sucks too.
I shudder to think of the last moments those guys back in 523BC had before they succumbed to the desert.
intense condition = intense conditioning
intense condition = intense conditioning == air conditioning
agree with you, there is nothing anyone can say that can take anything away from this mans accomplishment. people familiar with a dessert environment know what i mean. this dude is tough.
Agree - this dude is definitely tough as an old boot. He is also as crazy as a s**thouse rat.
The power of high fat content and potassium and water wins the day, yet again.
Wop-ping
Wop = guappo(handsome and/or intelligent.) Sicilian derivative from spanish guapo
Italians emigrated to US legally not W/O Papers.
Freepers are now enlightened as to the real meaning of WOP
mayonaisse couldnt do it bump
Did he run across Moses out there ?
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From the title, I thought this thread might have been about Alexander the Great.
Signor Miglietti, who covered between 50 and 56 miles a day, kept up his energy with dates, condensed milk and Parmesan cheese.
I'm just saying, put 2 and 2 together.
Except that Alexander the Great was never conquered by "sands."
But the Siwa reference is absolutely connected to Alexander's exploits. The oasis at Siwa was home to the world renowned Oracle of the god Amun (Ammon) described in Herodotus' Histories.
At the beginning of his campaigns Alexander took a side trip there and legend (Herodotus) says was saved by a rare thunderstorm.
Two years after the incident at Gordium, Alexander would head south into the Saharan desert in today's Egypt and Libya in search of the oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwah. Greeks and Egyptians both venerated the temple of Zeus-Ammon, and Siwah, an oasis surrounded by the Libyan Desert, was believed to be the abode of the Egyptian gods....
....it was an arduous, two-hundred-mile journey from the vast tract of sand where Alexander would soon found Alexandria-in-Egypt through the inhospitable desert. By day four of their eight-day journey they had run out of water, only to be saved by a sudden rainstorm. They lost their way, only to be saved by the flight of two crows that had been spotted. When they reached Siwah...Alexander...was taken directly to visit with the oracle. The high priest...is alleged to have greeted him as the "son of Zeus-Ammon." Historians have again debated whether the priest said "my son," or "son of Zeus-Ammon," or "son of God," or if it was just a slip in translation. We shall never know. Suffice it to say, Alexander used it to full effect, and from that day on Macedonian spinmeisters stressed his divine roots.
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