Have You Seen This? Rally participants encounter 'crunchy, winged obstacle course'

BOUJDOUR, Western Sahara — It's one thing to have to brush a few pesky mosquitoes or gnats away from your face.

But a thick swarm of desert locusts — thick enough that it looks like a humongous flock of bats or birds? That's what participants in the 2026 installment of the Budapest-Bamako auto rally encountered last month.

The race starts in Budapest, Hungary, travels through Europe to Gibraltar, crosses into West Africa, and traverses Morocco and Western Sahara before ending in Bamako, Mali. The race sounds hard enough, traversing some pretty unforgiving terrain, but on Feb. 24, the difficulty took on a new dimension when drivers encountered gigantic swarms of desert locusts, pretty big bugs that are part of the grasshopper family, near Boujdour in Western Sahara.

"Swarms of this size haven't appeared in the region for the past 20 years! As the motto of the Budapest-Bamako goes, 'Expect the unexpected,'" reads a post on the incident on the Budapest-Bamako Instagram page.

Video of the swarms shows masses of the bugs clouding the sky around a yellow rally vehicle and countless more flattened on the roadway. You can hear them too, though maybe that's just the sound of bugs getting hit by the car they're being filmed from.

"Desert locust swarms are notorious for their sheer density and unpredictability. For rally participants, however, the phenomenon was more of an immediate hazard — a crunchy, winged obstacle course unfolding at highway speed," the Times of India reported.

Desert locusts are apparently a significant issue in some areas, as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization monitors the insect and maintains a website with advisory information. The organization's Deseret Locust Bulletin for March 6 references issues with the insect in the area traversed by the Budapest-Bamako rally participants.

"Immature adult groups increased in Western Sahara, where some matured and bred and hopper groups were still present. Mature adult groups also increased and moved northward in Morocco, breeding in many locations, with some reaching north of Agadir," it reads.