Enter Sandman

We have a long standing (four years and counting) tradition of entering Team BSM in the toughest motorsport event in the country.

The Raid de Himalaya throws open the Himalayas to daredevils who race through its high-altitude plains and over the lethal mountain passes, braving weather, terrain and the perpetual lack of oxygen. You've read about it on this page and in the magazine, right?

That event, format-wise, is called a rally-raid. But the Raid de Himalaya looks tiny, even inconsequential in front of the king of the raids, the Dakar.

The biggest, most unforgiving raid on the face of this planet, the legendary event starts off in Europe, screams through Africa, before coming to a relieved, tired halt in the city of Dakar, in Senegal.

In the middle lie almost 10,000 km of sheer hardship, with almost half of them classified as competitive stages. That's no holds barred, as hard as you can go. And there's no tarmac either. You get sand, gravel, water, trees, dunes, rock and about three million other ways to not finish.

A few hundred enthusiast "� mainly amateurs "�come from all over the world to start the Dakar. Knowing that finishing is a fifty per cent shot. That injuries are almost certain. And that the Dakar has claimed 25 lives in its 28 year history. This is not a fun event, it's a test.

Of machines, of men and of sheer, single-minded commitment. This year, only twenty-five per cent of those who started would reach the end of the race, each one would be an automatic hero. To put it in perspective, the Dakar is the equivalent of doing the Raid de Himalaya in a Mumbai cab, backwards and blind folded.

While the original Dakar (then called the Paris-Dakar) began in Paris (in 1977), the 2006 event began in Lisbon in Portugal, racing to Malaga, Spain before crossing the Mediterranean on a ferry and landing in Nador, Morocco. The first two stages, in Europe are easy. They're meant for the competitors to get used to their vehicles before the headlong plunge into Africa.

The Dakar has three basic categories, cars, bikes and trucks. In the cars, the Volkswagen Touareg team were hot property, although the traditional dominance of the Mitsubishi Pajero Evos was expected.

The Race Touaregs left Wolfsburg in Germany in a convoy that would put George Bush's motorcade to shame. Driving them would be WRC ace Carlos Sainz, Dakar winner Jutta Kleinschmidt and Dakar-regular Bruno Saby. In the Mitsubishis were favourite Luc Alphand, Dakar winner Stephane Peterhansel among a galaxy of stars.

The bikes were almost an all-KTM battle, with the Austrian bike maker fielding two factory teams, in Gauloises (blue) and Repsol (orange) colours. The blue team would have Cyril Despres as the favourite, while the orange boys had a bunch of regulars like Carlo de Gavardo and Marc Coma.

The trucks were a lot simpler with four (consecutive) time Dakar winner Vladimir Chagin/Tchaquine (depending on where you look him up, aka The Tsar) taking up the favourite slot in his usual, formidable Russian Kamaz truck. Usual rival Firdaus Kabirov was also entered.

The Tsar was the expected star of the truck show. He simply blew the competition away, racking up a record three hour lead at one point. That, despite stopping to pull out stuck cars along the way and smiling at cameras all the time. His fifth win was welcome, of course, and it was Kamaz' seventh.

A few drivers like that in India, and we'd have safer highways, eh?

In the cars, the going was tough. The Touaregs blazed into the early lead, but by stage eight, the fourth day in Africa, Sainz ran into mechanical trouble, snapping his title chances into bits and taking the bite out of his two European stage wins.

Saby's Touareg also lost seven hours on the same stage. The Volkswagen challenge ended a few days later, when Kleinschmidt drove smack into a tree and ended her race.

While the Mitsubishis didn't have it a lot easier (losing highly rated Hiroshi Masuoka quite early), Peterhansel and Alphand took over the lead and kept it.

Peterhansel took a solid 40 minute lead into Mali and was almost sure of the win when he hit a tree with three stages to go. The time lost gave Alphand the win. The Touareg of Giniel de Villiers was challenging his towards the end, but the Pajero won.

The greatest respect among the racers themselves in the Dakar is reserved for the motorcyclists. After losing Dakar legends Fabrizio Meoni and Richard Sainct over the past couple of years in rally-raids, the organisers had tightened up the rules.

Top speeds and average speeds were lower, bikes were required to refuel more often. But the Dakar claimed Andrew Caldecott of the KTM team on stage nine. The news cast a deep shadow on the race, and on the new safety regulations.

Cyril Despres was in the lead early on before falling heavily and dislocating his collar bone on stage six. He continued, but by the end Repsol KTM's Marc Coma was the clear leader.

The final stage was untimed, when two more fatalities rocked the Dakar. Two young spectators died and the celebrations at the end of the race were muted.

But even as the race teams prepared for the flights back home, the real stories of the Dakar were the grit of the privateers.

Dakar regular, Jean-Louis Schlesser and team mate Thierry Magnaldi took two stage wins along their way to a welcome sixth and tenth places in their Ford-powered Schlesser buggies.

Bob Ten Harkel and Herman Vaanholt took nineteenth place on their Dakar debut "� an impressive achievement "� in their Land Rover. Charlie Boorman (of 'Long Way Round' fame) astride his BMW pulled out after breaking his hand.

A few extremely skilled and very lucky individuals notched up the 2006 Dakar on their 'been there done that' lists. However, once more, the Dakar ended with three deaths on the roster. After a year's worth of debate, new rules and regulations, the world's toughest motorsport event, once more is in the eye of a storm.