El Chott Rally, Tunisia.  November 2002.

by Charlie Rauseo

Do you ever daydream a bit when dirt riding?  Sometimes, when I am riding in the desert, I become Stephane Peterhansel or Fabrizio Meoni, or even Jimmy Lewis screaming across the endless dunes of the Sahara, miles from nowhere, leading the incredible Paris to Dakar rally.  Last time I checked, the entry fee alone for the P-D was about $10,000, well over my vacation budget.  Since KTM hasn’t returned my calls about sponsorship and a new 950 Rally, I thought dreaming was as close to a Sahara desert rally as I could get. 

Last Summer, my wife Julia (aka Jing) and I were touring Europe on motorcycles. (Check out our trip story.)  We had planned this for years, and in May shipped our bikes to London from San Francisco.  Things went swimmingly for the first three weeks.  We rode in the pouring rain to the Isle of Man, the Dingle Penninsula in Ireland, and back to London planning to look for some sunshine on the Continent.  Unfortunately, some curious London brats nicked Julia’s Yamaha TTR250 from inside a locked courtyard one night as we slept.  Damn.  A few days later, as we were looking through the classifieds of the British magazine "Trail Bike Monthly" for a replacement, I saw a tiny editorial describing the El Chott Rally.  Geared towards serious amateurs and costing only $1125 to enter, it sounded great to me.  And the November date was perfect, could be a fitting finale to our tour. 

The El Chott Rally takes place in Tunisia, one of the only truly tourist-friendly countries in North Africa.  2002 was the 18th running of the El Chott and the first year a significant number of Brits were planning to participate.  Traditionally, the competitors were mostly Germans, with some Dutch, Austrians, Italians, and others mixed in.   Like the Paris to Dakar, the El Chott has classes for motorcycles, cars (mostly what we would think of as SUVs) and trucks (desert behemoths you don’t want right behind you.)  The rally’s route is about one third sandy graded road, one third desert piste, and one third big sand dunes in the Sahara desert.  I hoped that my limited desert racing experience in the US and many off-road vacation rides in Baja would give me an advantage over the desert-novice Europeans.  I was also depending on my 1997 KTM Adventure R.  Sure, it was tired after lots of abuse back home and a 12,000-mile tour of Europe and Turkey, and it was weeping a bit of oil after a questionable crank rebuild in Istanbul, but it was basically the same model that had dominated desert rallies for years, wasn’t it? 

A few hard-sell emails to shops and businesses back home reveal that there are people who feel my entry in the El Chott is amusing enough to warrant sponsorship.  Thanks to Scuderia West in San Francisco and Enemy LLP, a company owned by Gary Stevens, a desert-racing fan and riding buddy from LA, most of my needed spare parts and will be mailed free to me from the US.  I also find a group of Brits willing to give Julia and my spares some space in their support truck.  That settles it.  In August I call the organizers and tell them to reserve an entry spot for me. 

Julia and I continue our tour.  When we get to Genoa three weeks before the rally, we leave the KTM at the local dealer with a list of things to do to prep it for the African race.  We drive in a rented Fiat to Spain, planning to return and pick the bike up, retrieve the spares and gear mailed from home, and board the ferry for Tunisia.  We get back to Genoa on a Wednesday night. The ferry is due to leave early Saturday morning for Tunis.  Surprise, the Genoa KTM dealer has done nothing but leave the bike out in the rain.  Instead of new tires, a service, new chain and sprockets, it is rusty and covered in dust.  But, they promise that it could be ready by the following Tuesday.  Great.  Better yet, none of the parts have been ordered, they have nothing in stock, and most of my spares and gear have not yet arrived from the US.  Our mad scramble to prep the bike starts just as it begins to rain.  Perfect.  But wait, Friday is an Italian national holiday, so two days prep time turns into one.  After touring for 6 months, Julia and I are used to this.  Everything does not get done, but we are at the dock at 7 am on Saturday with a reasonably well-prepared bike. 

For the rally, my KTM gets:  A new chain and sprockets and a spare rear sprocket, a borrowed Touratech roadbook holder with electric scrolling motors and handlebar switch, A borrowed Garmin GPS V that I put in my Cycoactive forearm mapcase, spare oil and oil filters, removal of directionals and mirrors, an oil change, new fuel filters, new Michelin Desert front tire and Dunlop D606 rear tire.  I loved the D606 in Baja, but it is the wrong tire for soft sand dunes because the knobs are too close together and the tire is too narrow, making it dig rather than float.  A Michelin Desert rear would have been better.  Spares: an extra D606 rear tire, front and rear tubes, a rear sprocket, oil and oil filters, 2 clutch cables, a master link, a spark plug, basic tools, and some little things like safety wire, zip ties, tape, bolts, JB-Weld and fuses.  I am unable to find spare air filters in Genoa so I have only the one in the bike.  The longest stages require a range of about 200km, easy for the Adventure’s stock 7.5-gallon tank.  My boots and knee braces arrive from San Francisco, but not much else, so I will be racing in my Aerostich jacket, Shift baggies, and Arai Dualsport helmet, and a great UFO armored mesh vest I buy in Genoa just before we get on the ferry.  I am required to carry flares, a beacon light, a space blanket, snacks and 5 liters of water, so my Camelbak is plenty heavy.  May sound like a lot, but this is the bare minimum.  Many racers have obviously spent big bucks (euros really) on fuel tanks, custom water tanks, navigation systems, lights, motors and suspension.  I’m sure they are a bit annoyed when my stock touring bike shows up at the start line and arrives at the finish line every day. 

7am Saturday November 2; Julia and I unload our spares from a taxi in the parking lot of the Genoa-Tunis ferry terminal.  Even without my usual cup of coffee, I can feel the excitement.  A few hundred vehicles have already arrived and are lined up, waiting for the ship.  Half of the vehicles are from our rally.  Huge support trucks, four and six wheel drive MANs, Mercedes, and Ivecos on four-foot high balloon tires.  Rally cars, mostly modified Land Rovers, Land Cruisers, and Nissans.  Some surprisingly stock and some very serious, like one green and blue V8 Mercedes SUV.  Bad ass.  Most of the bikes are on trucks and trailers, but I ride to the front with a few other unsupported riders who know breaking down means not only dropping out of the rally, but also finding another way home.  The bikes come in all types.  There are 2 factory-supported Touratech BMW F650s with a huge Iveco support truck and team of mechanics and crew, some very well-prepped KTM 640 and 660 Adventures and LC4s, a serious-looking Husaberg, KTM 520 EXCs with big tanks, and interesting bikes like an early 㥘s vintage BMW R100 Paris-Dakar bike, a bone stock Yamaha XT350, and a monster quad based on a Honda 750 Africa Twin.  In all, there are just under 200 competitors.  This is going to be fun!

After checking out the competition we meet Cynthia, Bryn, and Karen, just arriving from Great Britain.  They are supporting six British rally riders in their Mitsubishi pickup and trailer and will also be carrying Julia and our spares.  Great people. 

The ferry gets into Tunis late in the afternoon on Sunday.  We stumble through customs, immigration and changing money.  I get a few dirty looks and comments because I am an American.  Tunisia is, on paper, a US ally, but it is also a Muslim and Arab country.  Just after dark, we assemble for a ceremonial start down the main street of Tunis.  Pull some good wheelies for the crowd, but the Germans and British have not yet embraced the diplomatic importance of wheelies in foreign countries.  That night, we ride a 3-hour pavement-only Liason section, set up our tents, and try to get some sleep.  Racing in earnest will start tomorrow. 

The race is run by Germans, so all the information about meeting times, race routes, rules and procedures is given in German briefings.  We have supplemental English briefings, but mostly the Brits and I got our information by rumor and innuendo and doing whatever the Germans are doing.  Pretty quickly I find out that rally racing is mostly waiting around being confused, with bits of going insanely fast being confused thrown in.  But the fast part sure is fun! 

The rally has untimed "Liason" sections where we just ride on easy roads or tracks from one point to another, and "Special" sections where we start one or two each minute and follow roadbook directions with compass bearings and GPS points through a route to the timed finish.  Racers get time penalties for exceeding the maximum time limit for Liason sections, for missing start times, and for a host of other infractions spelled out in German in our rulebook.  Our Special section times and penalties are added up as the rally goes on.  In the end, the winner will be the one with the lowest total time.  The first Special (the "Prologue") early Monday morning is a short 10 KM blast straight through a desert olive orchard on a sandy track.  My Baja experience helps here, and even though I stop once because I think I was lost, I finish 11th.  Next we have a Liason section where crazy Welshman Yoshi Adams on his yellow CCM and I make the mistake of confusing a journalist’s Land Rover for a checkpoint.  Unfortunately, the press vehicle is on top of a 400-foot high, steep pile of stones, all bigger than cinder blocks.  Yoshi trials-rides his CCM up to the top and I flounder on the KTM, making it to within 20 yards of the truck before they tell me I did not need to go up at all.  One hour and lots of fuel wasted, so I have to buy some "essence" out of a shack in the next small village and miss the start of the next Special, incurring an hour and a half penalty.  Dumb. 

The next special that day is a long blast across terrain that looked like Baja or the southern California desert, but with less rocks and a bit more sand.  The KTM is really in its element, so even though I get lost a few times, I eventually team up with a German rider on a purple KTM 520 to finish that stage in the top 10.  One day down, and were it not for the time penalty, I would be near the top.  Good news the next morning: they promise to remove the time penalties caused by the confusing press truck.  Mine is never removed, though.  Oh well, by the end it does not really matter. 

The next few days were much like the first, with fast sections and sand mixed.  We got to ride through the set of the first Star Wars movie and saw the buildings used as the bar where Luke and Obi Wan meet Han Solo and all those strange aliens.  Riding next to Rod from Scotland on his 640 Adventure, we crest a 20-foot broken dune in third gear.  A dune is "broken" when one side slides because the sand cannot hold itself up.  The broken side is always very soft and steep.  At the crest, I am able to peel to one side and slide my bike down on its wheels, but going sideways.  Rod is not so lucky, he dives straight to the bottom, where his front wheel stops and he smacks his GPS with his nose.  Lots of blood in the sand.  Rod is shaken but OK, so I climb the dune to put his helmet there as a marker.  Wouldn’t want someone following to land on him.  Luckily, an ambulance arrives and I continue.  I got lost some, but on day 4 I am still in the hunt.   

Then we hit the dunes.  We had ridden through dunes before, but when we got to the southern part of Tunisia, we were definitely in the Sahara.  Very soft talcum powder dunes called "fesh fesh" by the locals.  No reference points, sand as far as you can see.  Quite beautiful, but easy to get lost, stuck, overheated, and exhausted.  Fun. 

Here is a typical dune rallying day for me:  I start about 20th.  The first section is gravel and sand fire road and I hold the KTM just about wide open in 5th gear for about a half hour, passing 6 people.  So far so good.  Then we get into a sand wash track through some camel grass and I pick off another 3.  Since we started one every minute and no one has passed me, I am feeling pretty good about now.  Then we enter some soft dunes.  Up to this point I had been basically following other people’s tracks, using the roadbook and GPS only to check myself.  The GPS has a nasty habit of shutting itself off anyway.  (PS, when I got back to the US, we sent the GPS back to Garmin and they replaced it free since it just didn’t work!  Minor vindication.)  But, in the dunes and with only a few bikes and one or two cars ahead of me, there is no pronounced track.  Also, the sand was soft and most of my concentration is used up trying to keep up momentum up to avoid burying the big KTM or sinking the front wheel and going over the handlebars.  So, I switch to survival mode in the dunes and stop often to check the GPS.  I stop even more often when the sand suddenly sucks the bike to a stop, but I make it to the checkpoint on the far side of the dunes with no one else passing me. 

From there it is 19 kilometers to the finish on easy track.  But I don’t know this and, stupid me, I turn around and head right back into the dunes.  I don’t know why, probably just get too amped up by the racing and excited about doing so well.  This time in the dunes I am not so lucky and get stuck more, crash more, and get tired.  The bike gets hot but I push on.  In one particularly nasty section of 50 foot high soft dunes there is an El Chott cameraman.  Bastard.  He sees me get stuck and dig the thing out about 5 times.  At one point I am stuck in the bottom of huge sand bowl and have to ride around its sides in gradually increasing arcs until I have enough momentum to carry me over the rim.  By this time the clutch is starting to slip.  I recover, find my bearings, and make it back to the finish, but the clutch is completely burned and I lose about 3 hours.  That night, Julia carries one of my fried clutch plates around asking if anyone has spares.  She has no trouble explaining what we need to the German-speakers since the plate is nearly bare of friction material and smells like a coffee pot left on all day from ten feet away.  We buy a used set from a Swiss guy, push the bike onto its side, swap plates and oil and are ready to race the next morning. 

On another day, I am also doing well on some fast tracks with rolling, rocky crests; the kind that launch your front wheel into hundred-yard wheelies in top gear.  One LC4 rider gets a shock when I startle him with the front axle at about his ear level.  Great fun until I realize that I have not passed anyone in a while.  Also, the track is not so visible as earlier.  I shut the motor off and listen for the sound of motors.  Nothing.  Trouble.  I find a small Bedouin village and poked my head into tents and cinder-block houses asking in French whether anyone had seen bikes or cars.  Blank stares and shrugs.  Big Trouble.  Later all the experienced British rally riders tell me I just need to slow down and concentrate on navigation.  Maybe next time.  On the top of a big dune nearby I try to get the GPS to work as a military Land Rover turns up.  One of the soldiers speaks perfect English and tells me that he is there for my protection and that this is not a rally route.  It is, however, very close to the Algerian border.  "Great," I say, "but where IS the rally route?"  They are no help, but I eventually get some clues from the GPS and tear off across the desert.  Later I get stuck in some dunes and pack my airbox so full of sand that my bike cannot breathe.  No spare air filter.  Oh well, I make it to the finish limping at idle, but I lose at least 2 hours that day. 

On the rest day in Douz, on the edge of the Sahara in southern Tunisia, a few of us whose bikes don’t need much attention decide to try a Hammam, or Turkish Bath.  Douz is a popular jumping-off point for trans-Sahara travelers, so the shops on its dusty streets sell a mixture of used 4X4 parts, crafts for tourists, and local necessities.  All afternoon the streets are buzzing with ancient mopeds, goats (pulling carts, tied into the back of pickups, or being led by children), bicycles, people, and off-road vehicles.  By 5pm, the locals are a bit edgy because it is Ramadan, and they haven’t eaten since sunrise.  At about 5:15, however, we hear what sounds like rifle shots from the minarets of the many mosques around.  It is sunset and the streets empty immediately.  Everyone heads to the mosque to pray and then home to eat.  We Westerners sit and chat in the middle of the main street.  At 6, the Hammam opens.  This is not a tourist attraction, just an old building lined on the inside with tiles.  There are 3 rooms.  One for changing, one with a large, hot, earthen furnace, and a middle room.  The furnace room is frighteningly hot.  Most of us can stand it for only a few minutes.  The middle room is also hot, but bearable.  For an extra 5 Dinars, we get "massages."  Actually this is not a massage as you know it but a pummeling, scrubbing with a sandpaper sponge, and dousings with alternating buckets of icy and scalding water, all performed by a sadistic stocky arab guy wearing shorts.  My back, shoulders and legs ached a bit before, but now they really hurt. 

By the ninth or tenth day, I am starting to get the hang of the sand.  Sometimes you can ride in others’ tracks, but usually virgin sand is more substantial.  The biggest problem is very soft sand.  Even with a good head of steam, leaning back and on the gas, this stuff sucks the front down like quicksand.  Lots of endos.  I try weighting the pegs heavily just before the really soft sections and coasting, light as possible over them.  This helps, but it is still nearly impossible to tell bottomless soft sand from harder dunes, and I get caught out often.  Several times, the bike lands on top of me and I am too exhausted to move it, pinned.  So, I just lay there, sipping from my camelbak, until I gather enough energy to dig myself out. 

Others are having a hard time too.  Gary Holden brings his red Citroen 2CV6, but constantly suffers mechanical problems and bows out of most of the Specials.  Matt Baker’s vintage XT350 is too underpowered and softly sprung to compete seriously, but, being the only one in the under-350cc class, he takes home one of the biggest trophies of all.  Christian Bieri (Yamaha WR) and Reiner Fink (Husaberg) are in a class by themselves and tie for the overall win.  The fastest of our little English-speaking clique is Yoshi Adams, fourth on his CCM.  I finish 15th after a late-rally duel with Dr. John Ross on his DR400.  Taped the trophy right on the front fender just like Marlon Brando. 

I met some great people and found out that I love rally racing and can’t wait to do it again.  One of the best people Julia and I met was Tom Foege, a BMW employee who was there supporting his son Tim on his trick Touratech F650.  Tom drove the BMW service truck and was happy to share his abundance of spares and tools.  He was also excited about maybe coming to race in Baja soon.  Tragically, Tom was run over and killed by one of the rally’s huge Mercedes Unimog trucks as we unloaded in Genoa after the rally.  Very Sad.  That night a rare storm hits Genoa, carrying the fine red of sand of the Sahara.  In the morning, the streets of the Italian city are lightly covered in the same sand in my boots, helmet, and every crevice of my bike. 

Check out some Pictures. 

Ó Charlie Rauseo, 2003