Across the Sahara

In 1929, Bertil Hult set off on a journey from Stockholm to Cape Town, across the Sahara desert. An expedition of incredible tenacity where Hult battled extreme weather conditions, numerous obstacles and even bullets to become one of the first motorcyclists to cross the Sahara solo.

March 1929, Stockholm, Sweden. Four young men – Bertil Hult, Oscar Gustavsson, Kaj Thorenfeldt and Ake Bergström – had spent months preparing for an expedition. Their chosen transport were two 976cc Royal Enfield Model 182 V-twins, one with a passenger sidecar, the other with a box sidecar. Both were grossly overladen with equipment for their proposed journey.

Their goal was to travel to Cape Town, crossing the life-threatening voids of the Sahara Desert.

They departed from Stockholm filled with optimism. As Bertil later recalled in his book, Through the Land of Adventure, ‘Our journey began so well, all the worries were forgotten. Now there was nothing but joy, and going forward.’

Family and friends waved them off and crowds cheered them in every Swedish village and town they passed through. From Sweden’s dirt roads, which were among some of the worst in Europe, they crossed onto the smooth tarmac of Denmark then south across the Kiel Canal to Hamburg.

Germany’s cobbled roads were real boneshakers and almost stopped the expedition in its tracks as their equipment was all but shaken to pieces.

Then onto Holland, riding alongside, ‘ten thousand cyclists. Not a single pedestrian, just cyclists’. Here it was too cold to camp and they were forced to ride through Easter snowstorms.

Crossing between Belgium and France, Bergström, who had been riding pillion, got off to search for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Unfortunately, that bike’s rider, Thorenfeldt, was unaware of his absent passenger and carried on. It was only later that Hult and Gustavsson spotted the empty pillion saddle and alerted Thorenfeldt. They turned around and eventually found Bergström asking a bemused French farmer directions for the road to Cape Town!

And Then There Were Three

They reached England and, after visiting London, headed for the Royal Enfield factory in Redditch where they were wined and dined, and had their motorcycles thoroughly serviced. However, by the time they returned to London, there was trouble in the ranks. Thorenfeldt, disillusioned with the hardships of motorcycle travel, left the party and went home.

Heading south through France, the trio rode through Rouen, Paris and Orleans, where they relished camping in the warm spring weather and eating fried snails for breakfast washed down with a bottle of wine.

But hard times returned when they attempted to cross The Pyrenees into Andorra. A shepherd warned them that the pass was blocked by snow that was five metres deep and no vehicle had crossed since the previous year. This failed to deter them and after hours of pushing through long drifts they finally reached the frontier and a shocked French border guard.

The Andorran guards were even more surprised, firing their rifles into the air to make the gung-ho party of Swedes stop their charge down the El Pas de la Casa. The three travellers were the first Swedes to have visited Andorra in living memory and had great difficulty describing their homeland to officials as well as the general public.

‘Every day we found that Sweden was a match factory, a steel factory, a city in Germany, England or any other country,’ Hult reported.

Travel was hard and there were long delays with paperwork, especially visas, and having money transferred from home. In Spain, riding from Montserrat to Barcelona on unpaved roads, the axle of the box sidecar broke. This was repaired while they enjoyed a long stay near the city where their motorcycles were displayed in the 1929 Universal Exposition.

A highlight of their sojourn in Barcelona was seeing the Graf Zeppelin airship, which passed directly over their camp.

‘We waved our shirts and handkerchiefs. They greeted us back and the beautiful air giant proudly sailed away, out to sea,’ Hult recalled.

Riding Solo

However, weeks of freezing by day and by night in the Pyrenees had taken its toll on Gustavsson and Bergström. Both decided that the Sahara would be too difficult to cross and elected to return home. A young German volunteered to ride their outfit to Gibraltar, after which it was shipped home to Sweden. Hult, made of sterner stuff, was undeterred. He set sail for Africa riding the box-sidecar Enfield solo.

Hult landed in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta where, while sleeping on the steps of a small railway station, he spent the night fighting off mosquitoes. Heading south from Tangiers he followed the Atlantic coast to Casablanca then Agadir.

At this point, in what was the Spanish Sahara, conditions deteriorated and by the time he reached Cape Juby, 900 miles south of Tangiers, it was impossible to continue. Only a camel could have got him across this challenging part of the Sahara and the risks of banditry were too high. It was time to put plan B into effect: to cross the Sahara in Algeria and head for Niger.

This meant he had to backtrack for hundreds of miles before heading east towards Meknes. Here, running out of daylight, he sought directions from an Arab who asked for a lift. It didn’t turn out well. The extra weight on the outfit caused the rear tyre to puncture for the first time on the journey. Then it happened again…. and again!

More bad luck followed as he rode through the testing terrain of the Atlas Mountains. ‘Right where the organic world seems to end, where life turns into a dead nothing, where even hawthorn and thistle refuse to flourish, the back axle of the sidecar burst under the weight of the packing and the strain of the hard road.’ He made a patched repair but progress was slowed until he could find a blacksmith that could make more substantial repairs.

Bandits remained a constant risk and it was imperative that Hult either camp in the wilderness, where nobody could find him, or within the protective walls of a village. At one such village he was greeted by an armed guard whom he did not trust. Taken inside, he slept not a wink, fearing for his life so much he lay awake with a small dagger hidden in his hand, although how much use that would have been against rifles is questionable.

The Sahara was the domain of the French Foreign Legion. This proved to be a double-edged sword as the legionaries offered protection from bandits but also placed restrictions on where and when Hult could travel. At one fort near Gourrama, he faced two choices: to wait for days then travel south with a convoy or once more head north on his own before turning around to take an alternative trans-Saharan route. He chose the latter.

‘Later I received a message that the convoy with which I was to travel to Bou Denib had been ambushed by outlaws and had to return to Gourrama. Fate had been kind to me,’ he said.

Sandstorms And Rain

As if rocky trails through the high Atlas, meandering pistes and energy-sapping dunes were not enough to cope with, the embattled Hult also encountered sandstorms. Once, the sun was completely eclipsed by the airborne sand!

‘Everything was pierced by sand: my shoes, my hair, even my ears were filled with the fine flying grains. It was dark about me like dusk. My eardrums were strained by the storm's whizzing. It felt like a full hurricane.’

When it was finally over he discovered that sand had got everywhere, including in his Royal Enfield’s magneto. It took Hult a full day to get everything clear and working again.

In Midelt, it rained for the first time in 22 months and 12 days! Another morning, he took down his tent to discover he had slept on a nest of scorpions. ‘They were very angry when I disturbed them, and yes, killed half a dozen. The others sought their salvation by fleeing across the ground.’

Then, he himself came close to being killed. Leaving a village he spotted three men lying on the ground. Each had a rifle and they began firing at him. ‘I was soaked with the cold sweat of fear as the sand kicked up ahead of my front wheel.’ To escape, Hult rode at breakneck speed, a frantic dash that loosened the sidecar springs, shook off several nuts and bolts and smashed his headlight glass.

‘I was unharmed. However, it felt as if my intestines and stomach had been turned upside-down,’he recalled.

During this phase of the journey, villagers often mistook Hult as a petrol or oil salesman because his sidecar was so heavily laden with fuel for crossing the desert. Others, never having seen a motorcycle and sidecar before, asked him how his car could run on three wheels!

Games With Robbers

One day, while bathing in a stream, four locals arrived and began to go through his possessions, all while pointing a rifle at him! One opened a box and exposed several rolls of film, completely ruining his photographs.

Hult came up with a desperate plan for escape. ‘I asked them to help me put the motorcycle on the piste and promised to show them something fun. This was my last resort. Curious as they were, they did what I asked. Then I picked out a pair of underpants, a shirt and a jacket and explained they were a prize.’

The game Hult conceived was a race. He placed a stone in a handkerchief and threw it into the stream, saying the first to get it would claim all these clothes as his prize.

‘I sat up in the saddle and let the machine slowly roll down the slope. The last thing I saw of the Arabs was a fighting mass that was splashing around in the water, seeking to extract the stone from the hanky.’ However, when Hult fired up the engine, the game quickly ended and shots rang out, whizzing over his head as he sped away.

Plagued by mosquitoes at night, Hult smeared his face with engine oil in a vain attempt to ward them off. He went for days without seeing a living soul and, at one point, came perilously close to running out of water. In desperation he drank the oil from canned fish to moisten his lips and quench his thirst.

Throughout it all, his Royal Enfield ran strongly, except when he filled his tank with contaminated fuel which had to be drained and thrown away.

The End Of The Road

Finally he reached a milestone that made him shout with joy. The Niger River. He crossed it and headed to the town of Gao, Mali. Here he finally succumbed to exhaustion and malaria. Shifting sands, towering dunes, wandering pistes, freezing nights and scorching days, all he had overcome. But malaria was the straw that broke the camel's back. He was forced to end his quest.

The 1929 Swedish-English expedition from Stockholm to Cape Town may have failed to complete its journey but it was far from a failure. Hult showed true grit in crossing the Sahara solo and his motorcycle, which he frequently referred to as his ‘companion Royal’, proved to be the most loyal and steadfast vehicle he could have wished for, second best only to that true ship of the desert, the camel.

‘I often think of the desert out there and my faithful Royal Enfield companion,’ he wrote while recuperating in Sweden. ‘It was a great adventure.’