{"id":452612,"date":"2026-03-01T21:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452612\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T21:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:45:07","slug":"desert-dash-turns-locust-inferno-massive-swarms-delay-budapest-bamako-rally-in-western-sahara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452612\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert Dash Turns Locust Inferno: Massive Swarms Delay Budapest\u2013Bamako Rally in Western Sahara |"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/p2_ss_bion-lead.jpg\" alt=\"Desert, but not deserted: Who let the swarm out\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/> What began as an adventurous desert rally quickly veered into disaster-movie territory. On February 24, near Boujdour in Western Sahara, drivers participating in the Budapest\u2013Bamako Rally found themselves ploughing through enormous swarms of desert locusts, as a now-viral video captured by driver Salah Abdelhadi shows windshields splattered and skies thick with insects.Swarm at full throttleThe footage captures thousands of locusts colliding with speeding vehicles, briefly clouding visibility as drivers pushed forward through what looked like a moving wall of wings. Within seconds, windshields were plastered over in a relentless, fluttering assault.\u201cWe went through a few intense locust swarms and happened to catch the worst one on my camera,\u201d Abdelhadi said, describing the most chaotic stretch of the drive.The official Budapest\u2013Bamako Rally Instagram page also acknowledged the surreal moment: \u201cAs we crossed the Sahara from Tadachacht to Bojdour, teams encountered massive swarms of locusts along the way. Swarms of this size haven\u2019t appeared in the region for the past 20 years! As the motto of the Budapest Bamako goes, \u2018Expect the unexpected.\u2019\u201dNature hits the accelerator \u2014 and the internet respondsDesert locust swarms are notorious for their sheer density and unpredictability. For rally participants, however, the phenomenon was more of an immediate hazard \u2014 a crunchy, winged obstacle course unfolding at highway speed.On social media, memes likened the drive to a post-apocalyptic road saga. One user quipped about farmers \u201ccrying in advance,\u201d while another reminisced about eating locusts like ducks as a child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What began as an adventurous desert rally quickly veered into disaster-movie territory. On February 24, near Boujdour in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[163626,163623,163624,90,56,54,55,163625,4407,163627],"class_list":["post-452612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-boujdour-locust-swarm","tag-budapest-bamako-rally","tag-desert-locust-swarms","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-western-sahara-rally","tag-wildlife","tag-windshield-damage-locusts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}