Business Weekly / The Ultimate Adventure on Earth

By Lin Fei-Fei

The deserts of inland Africa, home to venomous scorpions, searing heat, and desolate wilderness — some of the most remote places on the planet. For the past thirty years, every January, the silence of the wilderness is shattered as the world’s top drivers and adventurers gather here to compete in the Dakar Rally, which ends in Senegal. Known as “the toughest race on Earth,” almost every year someone dies during the competition.

Taiwan has had only one “madman” take part so far — Chen He-Huang, a middle-aged Taiwanese man from Taichung whose family runs a building materials company. On opposite sides of the world from the African continent and Dakar, he and the race had no connection whatsoever. But his passion for racing carried him across oceans, driving a truck dubbed the “Taiwan Mazu,” and over the past ten years, he has taken part in this four-wheeled adventure race four times, even coming close to losing his life.

Just how difficult is this race? A rally (Rally) is the oldest form of motorsport in Europe, where the goal is to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Most rallies take place on roads, but the Dakar Rally has no actual roads between start and finish — only deadly quicksand, swamps, and endless steep slopes. Each day of the race, competitors must cover 600 to 700 kilometers over the course of fifteen days. Rather than just a race, it’s more like a small-scale war. It’s not just about driving skill or physical endurance, but also logistics, scheduling, and teamwork.

The only information racers have is a roadbook that outlines the terrain features between the start and end points. Competitors must follow the roadbook to locate checkpoints scattered across the desert. When a vehicle approaches a checkpoint within a few hundred meters, detection equipment deployed by the organizers logs the racer’s presence — only by finding every checkpoint can a section be completed.

“It’s harder than Formula 1 racing,” explains veteran travel journalist Chu Chia-Ying. F1 is a track-based competition, where drivers can fully assess track conditions and rely on a well-prepared pit crew before the race. In the Dakar Rally, everything is unknown before hitting the road.

Chen He-Huang uses photos to explain: when descending a near-80-degree sandy slope, the vehicle plummets just like a roller coaster. Some choose to go straight down because it’s the shortest route, but if there’s an obstacle ahead and you swerve the wrong way, you could easily roll the vehicle. Even the calm desert hides quicksand beneath what looks like stone-hard ground that can crack at any moment. Physical endurance is also a huge challenge — Zhu Jia-Ying, who covered the event, once saw a motorcyclist continue riding 300 kilometers on just the wheel rim after a tire blowout at the 100-kilometer mark. “Here, sleeping only three or four hours a day is normal.” That’s manageable for one day, but enduring that level of physical exhaustion for fifteen consecutive days is hellish.

Logistics are another major hurdle. Most teams bring one or two support vehicles alongside their race cars, but in such extreme environments, even those often break down en route. Zhu Jia-Ying observed that at their peak, Japanese teams like Mitsubishi had up to a dozen mechanics, essentially bringing a garage to the middle of the desert. Some teams even had their own airplanes for on-demand resupply.

But Chen He-Huang is different. He’s been putting in a decade of effort, all on his own, without funding or fear of death. Despite failing four times and never finishing the race, he still hasn’t given up. The Dakar Rally has become inseparable from his life. Before taking on this challenge, he was into off-road motorbikes. At age 26, he saw a TV report about the Dakar Rally and excitedly signed up for the motorcycle category. That trip opened his eyes. “In Taiwan, we see such a small world,” he says. “The biggest off-road motorcycles in Taiwan are only 600cc, but to ride through the Sahara Desert, you need at least 750cc. ‘Our Asian physique just can’t handle it.’” He gave up off-road biking but fell in love with rallying for life.

Why does off-road racing fascinate him so much? “It’s a true test of oneself,” says Chen He-Huang. For fifteen days, you sleep only three or four hours a day, but the desert doesn’t care how much you’ve rested. One wrong judgment, and you could be out of the race. “You never know what challenge is coming next.” This unpredictability is the source of his “addiction.”

He says, “Exploring the unknown is human nature. The only real failure is when we stop exploring.”

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