The Frenchman Steven Le Hyaric took only 18 days to cross the Namibian desert by bike. Back on this extreme adventure of the ultra cyclist.
In June 2022, Steven Le Hyaric sets his bike down in Namibia and gets ready to live the first adventure of his 666 project. This project is supposed to take him through six of the hardest deserts in the world, on six continents. The objective for this first stage is to cover 4,200 km in Namibia. The cyclo adventurer (who published his first book "En Namibie" last January, published by Editions de la Phénicie), can count on a career rich in exploits, he who comes from professional cycling.
After his professional career as a consultant for sports brands and then communication manager for the French Triathlon Federation, he decided in 2016 to leave everything behind, to spend 120 days in Nepal to follow his dreams. Several other adventures of this kind will follow: Crossing the Himalayas by mountain bike, Paris-Dakar in 20 days by bike, crossing Lake Baikal by bike, Lhasa - Kathmandu record, Kilimanjaro record by bike, Iran, Tibet, Lofoten in Norway, several summits in Nepal, Double Ironman, various victories in Ultra Endurance events.
In Namibia, he finally succeeded in his challenge, at a pace of 250 km per day, that is to say almost 10 hours spent on the bike every day, facing temperatures ranging from 0 degrees to 45 in the north of the Namib. "The end of the journey was more difficult" says the adventurer. "One morning, I woke up with a mist and 5°C while I had to climb to 2200 meters of altitude starting from 70 m. In an hour and a half, the thermometer rose to 37°C. This thermal shock hurt and I was going a bit crazy on my bike. On top of that, I didn't have any villages to refuel."
In Namibia, the objective was sporting, but also social. The Gravel Man wishes to raise awareness and draw attention to the changes taking place and to come, to the consequences on nature and the effects on the human body. The goal is to show the richness and fragility of the world and to raise awareness about climate change and especially about the desertification of territories.
For this crossing of the Namib desert, Stéven had to face many challenges: the adaptation to the lack of water and to the heat. The encounters with the local populations and the animals were rich in sharing and teaching. "This Namibia Desert Project would not have been the same without the wildlife that has always fascinated me and that I was able to observe. On the roads, I met hundreds of "stupid birds", as many jackals, dik-dik, antelopes, wild horses, kudus, oryx, squirrels, meerkats, warthogs... I also crossed the road of many baboons, encounters that were not always reassuring especially when I was alone.
In the next few months, it will be the turn of other deserts, if the sanitary situation allows it: the Simpson desert in Australia, the Atacama in Chile, the Gobi desert between Mongolia and China, and then the biggest chunks: Antarctica and the Arctic.
Photo credits: © Florent Schneider