continued walking. Later that day, he identified signs of fresh goat droppings. Following the trail of animal egestion led him towards human footprints. Prosperi then noticed a young Tuareg girl tending to the trip of goats. By running towards her and begging for help he scared her. The girl ran away screaming and disappeared over a dune. In an interview, Prosperi said: "She looked at me aghast, screaming in terror. I beseeched her to stop, but she disappeared over a dune. I must be a hideous sight, I thought. I took out my signal mirror and turned it toward my face. I was appalled. I was a skeleton. My eyes had sunk so far back into my skull, I couldn't see them." Rescue and recovery The young girl returned with her grandmother, who led him towards a Berber Tent in the Tuareg Camp. After being tended to by a group of Tuareg women who served him mint tea and a cup of goat's milk, Prosperi was offered food, yet he was unable to digest it and threw up. He was first loaded onto a camel for several hours by the camp's Tuareg men who took him to the nearest village. There, Prosperi was turned over to a patrol of military police who blindfolded him, in suspicion he may have been a Moroccan spy. Once transported to a military base and interrogated, Prosperi was identified and taken to a hospital in Tindouf. Prosperi had wandered off-course from the marathon track, traversing the Jebel Bani Mountain range and unknowingly across the Moroccan border into Algeria. He remained at the infirmary in Algeria for seven days, during which he called his wife who presumed he was dead. During his disappearance, Prosperi's brother and brother-in-law had flown from Italy to join marathon organisers, the Moroccan Military and Bedouin trackers in search of him. Coordinators of the Marathon des Sables were dispatched to search the race trail with Land Rovers, while pilots conducted a fly-over in an ultralight craft. While they discovered traces of Prosperi's route that he had intentionally left behind, they were unable to find him. Searchers also reached the Marabout, identifying signs of Prosperi's time in the shrine. Despite these traces, searchers presumed Prosperi's death, convinced they were in search of his corpse. Aftermath and return Doctors reported a weight loss of for Prosperi, and that 16 litres of intravenous fluids were