The story of how Antoine de Saint-Exupéry survived being marooned in the desert after a plane crash.
On December 30, 1935, Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic-navigator, André Prévot, were attempting to break a Paris-to-Saigon air speed record in a Caudron C.630 Simoun, a small, four-seat monoplane. The record-breaking flight had a 150,000-franc prize, but over Libya, something went terribly wrong. While flying over the vast Libyan Desert, part of the larger Sahara, their plane suffered mechanical failure and crash-landed. They survived the impact but were stranded with scant provisions. With no way to call for help and a limited water supply, they faced a terrifying fate.
They wandered through the scorching desert with heat reaching 100* F during the day and hunkering down for freezing nights. Dehydration quickly set in, causing them to hallucinate and lose strength.
Saint-Exupéry later wrote about the phantom mirages he experienced—seeing nonexistent lakes, villages, and people. He described the mental and physical agony of extreme thirst in his memoir Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939). By the third day, they were on the brink of death, barely able to move, their skin burning and cracked.
“I could feel the sun burning my bones. The sand weighed heavily on my lids. I was aware of my mouth, a cavity filled with dried-up gums.”
On the fourth day, January 3, 1936, a Bedouin on a camel miraculously stumbled upon them. He revived them with goat’s milk and guided them to safety. This encounter undoubtedly inspired the scene in The Little Prince where the narrator, lost in the desert, meets the mysterious prince.
There are limited direct accounts of Saint-Exupéry’s encounter with the Bedouin, but he briefly recounts the experience in his memoir Wind, Sand, and Stars (Terre des hommes, 1939).
“Our thirst was so bad that we stopped talking. The night before, we had started to feel giddy, and now hallucinations were taking hold. Mirages drifted before our eyes, lakes shimmered in the distance, yet we knew they were not real. We were becoming ghosts of the desert, fading into the heat and silence.”
Saint-Exupéry and Prévot had been wandering for four days, growing weaker by the hour. The landscape was desolate, and they had given up hope of encountering another human being.
“And then, out of the vast nothingness, he came. A man in flowing robes, atop a camel, silent and certain as the stars. He did not rush. He did not hesitate. He had seen us long before we had seen him, and in that moment, I knew that we were saved.”
A local Bedouin had rescued him and Prévot, reviving them with goat’s milk before guiding them to safety. Feeding them goats milk- not water at first, to avoid shock- is a traditional desert survival method.
Details about the Bedouin himself—his identity, tribe, or further interactions—are sparse.
Saint-Exupéry continued flying despite many near-death experiences. In 1944, during World War II, he disappeared while flying a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean. His plane was not found until 1998, off the coast of France.
His Sahara crash was a pivotal moment in his life, reinforcing his belief in adventure, the fragility of human existence, and the importance of imagination—a philosophy that shaped The Little Prince and his legacy.
