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Baylene: Oh my goodness. It looks like a very long walk.
Eema: And hot! If you smell something sizzling, could be me!

On his neverending quest to find the MacGuffin, Hero Bob must cross a desert wasteland. Expect there to be scorpions, cacti, a few Ribcage Ridges, and maybe even a Sand Worm or two. A sandstorm is also likely. For whatever reason, rather than travel during the night, Bob will nearly always travel starting at high noon, though this can be justified by the planet having multiple suns, or the desert having some kind of curse, or what have you. If Bob's travelling with Alice, Carol, and Dave, expect at least one of them to suffer from heat stroke, and another to see a Hollywood Mirage.

May be a Thirsty Desert. Watch out if so. In times of war, Desert Warfare can often overlap with this for any belligerent faction trying to cross through here. Contrast Braving the Blizzard in temperature.

In Video Games, the setting itself will have some or all the traits of the Shifting Sand Land, and there'll usually be some aversion of Gameplay and Story Segregation, either by way of taking damage due to the extreme heat, or getting lost easily due to each screen looking nearly, if not completely, identical.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Afro Samurai crosses a desert in Resurrection, with Ninja Ninja complaining the whole time. Kotaro follows, and nearly dies in the desert as a result.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's has Vita and Signum looking for monster souls in a desert planet.
  • Due to the nature of the Digital World, the heroes often find themselves crossing deserts. Seldom do they have a known destination in mind.
  • The world of One Piece has the entire country of Alabasta, where Crocodile takes advantage of the climate to cause an entire war. The Straw Hats and Vivi themselves end up having to cross the desert on they way to the town of Alubarna; fortunately Vivi is the princess of Alabasta, so she's used to the dangers of the desert and helps the rest of the group along.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • It isn't exactly seen, but both Ling and May Chang cross a desert.
    • A downplayed example in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), when Ed and Al have to slog through some desert to get to Liore. Ed's hungry, and complains about the sand, since if there was at least some grass he could transmute it to bread. They reach civilization soon enough, however, and Ed is able to stop at a street cafe for refreshment.
  • In the Ranma ½ anime (but not manga) Genma once had to cross a desert (somewhere) with baby Ranma on his back. When he ran out of water he traded Ranma to a (well fed) stranger for a bowl of rice and some fish to eat (after the stranger fed Ranma Genma stole him back). And thus Ranma gained another fiancée.
  • Gaara has done this in Naruto in order to get to the Leaf Village.
  • Happens early on in Dragon Ball when Bulma, Goku, and Oolong are on the trail of one of the titular MacGuffins. They are soon attacked by Yamcha, the desert bandit.
  • Played with in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in the third arc, where the group has to cross the Arabian peninsula on foot. Joseph, an experienced traveler, is smart enough to have purchased some camels to ride, plenty of extra water provisions, and has the sense to travel in the evening rather than the middle of the day. Unfortunately, an enemy Stand user has a Stand that acts like a super-intense sun, meaning they get the full blast of desert heat even in the middle of the night.

    Comic Books 
  • The "traveling by day" bit is averted in an early ElfQuest, where after travelling through the troll caverns the Wolfriders get thrown out into the desert (although initially they're not sure whether the desert sun is the same one they had at home, or whether it will set or not).
  • Mechanika and Winifred have to trek across the Sahara Desrt after being stranded by a zeppelin crash in Lady Mechanika: The Tablet of Destinies.
  • At the end of Marvel Feature #11, the Thing is stranded in the desert and must walk back home. The following issue begins with him still stranded in the desert and coming across Iron Man, who ignores the Fantastic Four member because he's too busy hunting Thanos. After a fight with the Blood Brothers, the Thing asks Ol' Shellhead if he can help him reach New York, but the fight drained the majority of Iron Man's power, preventing him from helping Ben. The first issue of Marvel Two-in-One has the Thing finally reach a bus stop, but he decides to pay a visit to Man-Thing in order to complain about ripping off his name before going back to New York.
  • Parodied in Mortadelo y Filemón. Many histories end with the duo -often accompanied by other characters- crossing the desert, typically escaping either after one of their screw-ups or after beating to Hell and back someone who either messed up things or said something slightly unconvenient.

    Fan Works 
  • Two instances in The Lion King Adventures.
    • In Drought, Nala and Haiba have to cross a desert in order to find Simba.
    • Simba, Nala and Haiba have to cross another desert in The Curse of Death. In the middle of a sandstorm, no less.
  • In the Starsky & Hutch fanfic Mojave Crossing, Starsky, Hutch, and the Original Character Maggie Landis are forced to flee into the Mojave Desert on foot with a limited supply of water.

    Gamebooks 
  • More than one installment of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks:
    • Temple of Terror: The titular Temple is located in the ruins of the destroyed city of Vatos, which is located in the heart of the Desert of Skulls. Your quest entails you to cross said desert - filled with giant Sand Worms, sandstorms, and all kinds of hazards.
    • Master of Chaos have you traversing a desert in order to reach the city of Ashkyos, but luckily you can purchase a camel as your transport if you have enough gold.
    • Curse of the Mummy have you searching for the tomb of Ankharis, located in the Djarat Desert, which is infested with all sorts of monsters and poisonous insects.
    • Battleblade Warrior has a very short scene at the beginning of your quest, where you and your partner, a tracker named Katya, will have to bypass a desert to find the Temple of Telak.

    Film — Animated 
  • The second act of Disney's Dinosaur resembled the final act of the "Rite of Spring" segment from Fantasia. In fact, the soundtrack played during this scene is even called "Across the Desert!"
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: After crashing on Tatooine, Anakin, Ahsoka and R2-D2 have to walk from the crash site to Jabba's Palace. Nightfall makes things easier.
  • Beavis And Butthead Do America; the duo ends up lost in the Mojave Desert, surrounded by vultures and far from civilization. Beavis eats some cactus to try and stay alive, only to end up tripping out when it turns out it's peyote.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Capricorn One: The three astronauts, after escaping the compound they were transported to when The Conspiracy to fake their Mars landing ran into some complications (and they would surely be killed to avoid exposing The Conspiracy and keep the hoax alive), make their way through the Southwestern desert with practically no supplies after the plane they stole ran out of fuel. Harsh enough, but then cue the Black Helicopters...
  • Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica do this in 1984's Dune, as does Liet-Kynes.
  • Paul and Jessica again in 2021's Dune in order to reach the Fremen. They try to use the Fremen "dance" walk to avoid attracting Sand Worms, but it's to little effect. Liet-Kynes is stabbed by the Sardaukar before she can ride a worm to do that. In Dune: Part Two, Paul learns the ways of the Fremen, which includes riding said sand worms.
  • The characters in A Far Off Place trek through the Kalahari desert.
  • Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Tuco and Blondie go on "walks" through the desert, in attempts to kill each other before reaching the nearest town.
  • The first part of early documentary film Grass involves the filmmakers going on a rather arduous trip across Turkey and the "salt deserts of Anatolia." They manage to fight their way through some epic sandstorms.
  • In Kangaroo Jack, Charlie and Louis have to cross the Outback after their bush pilot crashes.
  • Happens at least once in Lawrence of Arabia, naturally, first when joining Prince Faisal with the guide, then crossing the Nefud with the rest of Faisal's squad, then going back in Nefud to find his lost servant. Also doubles as a Thirsty Desert.
  • For the first part of Pitch Black, the survivors of the crash must endure this to find water, on a planet with three suns. In an interesting turn of events, once the sun(s) and heat are no longer a problem due to an eclipse, things get significantly worse for them.
  • She: The first part of Leo, Holly, and Job's trek to the lost city. Made more difficult by tribesmen who steal their camels and water.
  • This happens in Spaceballs, and coupled with a parody of Thirsty Desert. Things are further complicated when Lone Star and Barf discover that they'd been carrying Princess Vespa's oversized hairdryder all along.
  • in The Spy Who Loved Me, James Bond and Anya Amasova walk and walk and walk throughout the Egyptian desert after their getaway car breaks down, eventually reaching a dock.
  • Star Wars:
    • C-3PO and R2-D2 in A New Hope after their Escape Pod lands on Tatooine. They split up because Threepio believes that R2 is going the wrong way.
    • In The Force Awakens, Finn migrates across the Jakku desert until he finds Niima Outpost.
  • Moses does this after he's thrown out of Egypt in The Ten Commandments (1956). Ramses only gives him one day's rations, figuring he'll die that way, but he manages to make it to Midian.
  • A large chunk of The Way Back (2010) involves trying to cross the Gobi desert. It's played out brutally, and two of them die of heat stroke/dehydration.

    Literature 
  • Happens twice to the company of heroes in The Belgariad and The Malloreon, once in each saga. Both events take place in the hostile lands of the Murgos.
  • The first chapter of The Bloody Road to Death by Sven Hassel has 2 Section doing this as the only way to escape being encircled by guerillas in the Balkans. Even the Old Un has to kill two of his men to stop them stealing water from the others.
  • In Traitor Queen when Lara's plans go awry, she and her husband have no choice but to cross the Red Desert, without any proper preparation to boot. It almost kills them. At least they are sensible enough to travel mostly at night.
  • Dany takes her followers across the Red Waste in A Clash of Kings as hostile forces lurk in every other direction. They quickly run out of food and water, horses die, and many of her followers, including Doreah, do not survive.
  • The very first adventure in Cold Obsidian.
  • Briefly in Count and Countess when the Turkish army sets up camp in Syria. A young Vlad Dracula, who has been taken hostage by the Ottomans and forced into the Janissaries, complains unendingly of the heat.
  • The Dark Tower series begins with the mysterious, cowboy-like protagonist chasing an equally mysterious man in black across a desert.
  • In the beginning of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, Bishop Latour must cross the New Mexico desert to Santa Fe.
    Narrator: The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.
  • An odd example, from Laurence Yep’s Dragon Series - In Dragon of the Lost Sea, the dragon Shimmer injures her wing, and she and the boy Thorn have to cross a dried out sea on foot. Since all the water was removed from the sea instantaneously via magic, the dry seabed is a desert plain of blindingly white salt flats, with periodic stinging salt winds.
  • In the Dreamblood Duology, Ehiru, Nijiri and Sunandi have to join a caravan to cross the desert outside Gujaareh so they can safely reach Kisua.
  • Flyaway by Desmond Bagley. The protagonists are stranded in the Sahara when the villains come across their 4WD, emptying the fuel and water tanks. Their only recourse is to walk across the desert to a camel track in the hope of getting picked up. Even when they reach their goal they can't rest, as it's nighttime and the camel train could easily go past without seeing them, so they have to spend all night walking backwards and forwards across the track until they blunder into a camel.
  • In Tribesman of Gor, Tarl Cabot must make a long trek through the Tahari Desert to stop a Doomsday Device from destroying the planet.
  • Done separately by The Jaff and Tesla Bombeck in Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show; the desert is in New Mexico and the destination is Trinity.
  • In the third book of Heralds Of Rhimn, most of Meparik and Ainzel’s chapters involve them traveling across Edah Fyr’s dry desertscape on their diplomatic mission to request wartime aid from the Matrius.
  • The Illustrated Star Wars Universe: In the Tatooine chapter, Senior Anthropologist Hoole eventually gives up on learning about the desert from moisture farmers and water prospectors, and simply walks off into the Dune Sea. Astonishingly enough, he survives unassisted, observing the animals of the surrounding desert until he finds shelter at Jabba's palace. Of course, as a Shi'ido shapeshifter, Hoole has the ability to assume a wide variety of forms adapted for life in the desert, so he has the advantage over most travelers.
  • In the first book of the Inheritance Cycle, Eragon, Murtagh, and Saphira have to cross the Hadarac Desert to reach the Varden.
  • Played for Laughs in the sci-fi novel Kiln People when Albert has to walk across a desert, and assumes his grandfather would have laughed as such a dangerous task, given that he risked his life every day driving to work (he lives in a future where people use expendable clones for anything involving the slightest risk).
  • In King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, Allan Quatermain and his crew had to spend a long time suffering while trying to cross a desert to get to the land of the Kukuanas.
  • The Longest Joke in the World begins with a character wandering lost in the desert, losing health and hope.
  • Frodo and Sam cross a very Thirsty Desert of northern Mordor on the last leg of their journey to destroy the One Ring. The narration explains this part of Mordor is pretty much uninhabited because of the lack of water, and the hobbits only manage to survive thanks to the cisterns Sauron has had built for his troops.
  • In Robert E. Howard's The Slithering Shadow, Conan the Barbarian and a girl are crossing the desert away from a disastrous battle.
  • Brutha crossed the desert from Ephebe to Om with Vorbis on his back in Small Gods. Om continually insists on dumping Vorbis, because it's what Vorbis would do and also what he deserves. Brutha refuses, "because I'm me." There is also the metaphysical crossing of the desert; dead souls are taken to the black desert by Death, and they then must cross it and they then go to the afterlife they believed in. And Vorbis's disproving of the concept that no army could cross the desert: they could, if you do it in stages, don't care how many people die in the process, and start long before your pretext for war is in place.
  • In Stephen King's The Stand, Trashcan Man spends a lot of time gathering old weaponry from various bases and test ranges in the Nevada desert for Flagg. After weeks wandering the desert like that in an open ATV with trailer, he ends up described as severely sunburnt with skin blistering and peeling off, as well as somewhat irradiated from the materials he's transporting.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Aquabats in The Aquabats! Super Show! episode "Cowboy Android!" have to trek through a flat desert after their Battletram runs out of gas.
  • Game of Thrones: Daenerys leads her people across the Red Waste to escape her enemies and reach Qarth in Season 2.
  • The opening and closing credits for the first two seasons of Kung Fu (1972) show Caine walking across a desert.
  • Star Trek
  • One of the sequences in the Top Gear Middle East special has them doing this is Syria. The main obstacles in this case are mostly rocks and rough terrain.

    Music 
  • Oleta Adams' "Get Here":
    You can reach me by caravan, cross the desert like an Arab man...
  • The song "A Horse With No Name" by America.
  • Neo-Progressive Rock band Galahad reference Lawrence of Arabia in their song "Aqaba (A Matter of Going)".
  • The hero of Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" must do this after getting exiled by the sheriff.
  • Two songs by the Blue Öyster Cult: Then Came The Last Days of May, in which a clandestine trip into Mexico goes badly wrong in a "cold and barren plain". And Death Valley Nights, which is self-explanatory.
  • Maria Maldaur's whimsical song Midnight at the Oasis.
  • The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's Ali Baba's Camel.
  • Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" is an almost hypnotic narrative of wandering the desert:
    All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
    And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
  • Meat Puppets: "Coming Down" (though it may be metaphoric of another kind of trip):
    Going down to the desert, to that dirty filthy desert
    I'll be crawling through the sand for at least a couple days
    Going down to the desert, there are things there worth avoiding
    And it always makes me cross when them things get in my way

    Tabletop Games 
  • Long journeys through the Desert of Desolation occur in the Dungeons & Dragons module series of the same name.
  • Adventures on Mars in Rocket Age nearly always have segments of travel through the desert and it is entirely possible to run an entire campaign based around crossing the desert.
  • Exalted: Cecelyne the Endless Desert is an infinite Genius Loci expanse of silver sand that encircles Malfeas. For people traveling To Hell and Back, it always takes exactly five days to cross, no matter the method used. For the Yozis trapped in Malfeas, it has no far side.

    Video Games 
  • In Breath of Fire III, you must cross a desert to get to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Just before you finish, Nina suffers from heat stroke. Notably, you're strongly encouraged to only travel during the night, using the stars as guidance...because if you stay out in the day too much you'll receive permanent HP penalties.
  • In Boktai 2, shortly after you get vampirized, Sabata drags you through the desert in a coffin. Somewhat touching, considering Sabata burns in the sunlight.
  • The entire second half of Final Fantasy VI may qualify, since the face of the planet has become a barren wasteland due to the actions of an Axe-Crazy power mad lunatic. Applies most literally when the heroes have to make their way to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Fortunately, they are able to procure a Cool Airship fairly quickly, significantly reducing the usual headaches associated with this trope.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, you have to wander around in a desert to find "The Boss" after you're imprisoned at Gold Saucer. Every screen is identical.
  • In King's Quest V you must enter the desert to get some Mac Guffins. The sun's frozen in the sky, but you must drink water note  every x screens or you will die. Oddly, you only need water in the desert areas, never in the more temperate zones.
  • King's Quest VII: Valenice will be just fine as long as she stays within the few screens where most of the action takes place, but when she has to venture out into the greater parts of the desert, where all the screens look the same, then she has a chance of dying of thirst.
  • Quest for Glory II took place in the desert land of Shapeir, and the hero could easily die of thirst if he ran out of water while traveling through the desert. Sierra likes using deserts.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has the Gerudo Desert which you must cross in order to get to the last temple, the Spirit Temple. If you get lost, you have to start over.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the Gerudo Mesa, a large and treacherous desert that Link and Midna must cross to reach the Arbiter's Grounds.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, most of the Gerudo region is a huge, dangerous desert that Link must brave to reach Gerudo Town, and eventually the Sacred Beast Vah Naboris. Local dangers include sandstorms which block your view and disables the map, various enemies, and scorching heat that damages Link if he's not prepared for it with proper equipment or meals.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Gerudo region, as portrayed in Breath of the Wild, makes a return. Due to the influence of the monster that lurks within the Lightning Temple, the desert is experiencing a strong sandstorm that is covering it entirely, which forces Link to traverse it without the help of his tablet's map as he aims to unearth the aforementioned temple by solving a large-scale Light and Mirrors Puzzle.
  • Mother:
    • EarthBound (1994) features both the Dusty Dunes Desert and the desert of Scaraba. Crossing either will eventually inflict Sunstroke.
    • The third "chapter" of Mother 3 starts off with a trek through the desert.
  • Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age require crossing a desert three times across two games, corresponding to the real-world Taklamakan, Sahara, and Australian deserts. The first one requires you to use the Reveal Psynergy to find hidden oases or risk taking massive damage. The second just has tornadoes that will send you back to the start of the level if you don't know how to reveal the giant lizard causing them (and one tornado hides the path to the game's Superboss). The third time has lots of jumping around and steppes.
  • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Teehee Valley, through which Mario And Luigi must guide Peach to get to a Mushroom Kingdom city.
  • ''Secret of Mana': The characters must cross a desert in order to reach one of their objective destinations. An interesting variant in that the desert takes on some aspects of The Lost Woods, in that you will frequently be recycled to the same location you started in until you find the correct path.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: You need to cross a (very small) desert to get to some ruins. You quickly dehydrate and have to stand in the water from an oasis in order to recover, making the gameplay in this section exploring as quickly as possible to find the next oasis before you keel over. No, we don't know how standing in water rehydrates you. Don't think about it so hard.
  • Tales of Vesperia has a desert mission that behaves like the first Golden Sun example above. It actually does have a night setting where you die a little slower.
  • In Abe's Oddysee, Abe must cross the desert of Scrabania on elum-back to reach a temple.
  • In Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, there's a chapter where you do nothing else. Unusually for a shooter game, the chapter contains no enemies at all - the only danger Nathan Drake faces is being hopelessly, pathetically lost in one of the world's largest deserts, the Rub' Al Khali, with no supplies, no help, no company and no idea where he's headed, weakening from dehydration and sunstroke. As days pass, Nate is reduced to staggering and then crawling before he begins hallucinating. He does try to navigate by the stars, but he just never learned how.
  • The beginning chapters of Journey (2012) consist of a desert landscape - one that simply places the player in the middle of nowhere, pointed toward a distant mountain split by a crevice full of light. Your objective, whole and entire, is to reach the mountain. The player characters are completely swathed in robes and don't seem to need supplies, fortunately.
  • In Gatling Gears, to reach The Empire's city, you have to pass through the fourth area called the Drylands. This place actually used to be an ocean until the Empire drained it dry. Thankfully, you don't suffer from heat or thirst- you're piloting safely in a Mini-Mecha.
  • Although several Pokémon games have desert areas, crossing the desert starts being plot-critical in Pokémon Black and White and Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. In the first one, you have to go to the Desert Resort to battle Team Plasma and meet Professor Juniper, and in both games, the Desert Resort area is home to Volcarona (although in the sequels, it's only accessible via underground tunnels). Although you aren't harmed by the constant sandstorm, any battles will involve any non-immune mons being hit by the sandstorm and losing a little HP each turn.
    • It also becomes mandatory in Pokémon X and Y to get from Coumarine to Lumiose. You'll deal with Pokémon that attack you from underground, intermittent gusts that disrupt your ability to move, and a power plant under attack by Team Flare.
  • In the original Dune (the Adventure Game), any attempt to do this will ultimately end in death, even when wearing a stillsuit. However, you are required to venture out at least once, for a short time, in order to gain telepathic powers.
  • In Dragonsphere adventure you need to travel to a certain location in the desert and back. If you make a wrong turn, you run out of water and die. There is a local inhabitant — Soptusnote  — willing to give directions, but he doesn't speak your language, and your understanding of his is rudimentary. The biggest problem: he may mistake you for suicidal and give you directions to a volcano that kills you instantly (Soptus version of a suicide booth).
  • Fire Hotlands in DROD: The Second Sky. It's so hot that, for once, Beethro has to manage without his sword.
  • In Jak 3: Wastelander Jak and Daxter along with Pecker had to do this because they were exiled from Haven City into the Wasteland Desert. Luckily they got rescued later.
  • In Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, the desert of Kerona is inhabited by sand worms that swallow whole those who try to travel on foot, so the only way to reach the settlement of Ulence Flats is via skimmer.
  • In the final route of YU-NO, Takuya arrives to a small habitable area separated by a huge desert, which he attempts to cross twice. The first time he fails: Sayless tries to stop him, he spills all his water due to an earthquake, and he eventually decides to stay with her. On the second time, years later, he is accompanied by Yu-no, and they run out of supplies but manage to find an oasis.
  • In the zone Tanaris in World of Warcraft, one can find the scattered remnants of a caravan.The evidence suggests a long, drawn out and grisly end for the caravan members. This implies that the zone very much is this trope, although it averts Shifting Sand Land. NPC dialog confirms this idea: including talk about carrying water and the local trolls threatening to drink your blood a la Dune.

    Visual Novels 
  • At the end of Daughter for Dessert, Lily, when she finally leaves the diner, goes into the desert on foot.

    Webcomics 
  • The Maltak arc of Dominic Deegan consists of trekking through a vast, featureless wasteland, without pack animals, in the daytime, and without apparent protection from the sun or supplies.
  • In Kiss Wood Mua, the Big Bad, creates a huge desert between Sul and the Gate in an attempt to stop him escaping. After an ambiguous number of days Jubahm collapses and Sul then has to carry him. Then the snow storm starts.
  • The entire Blood is In the Family story arc of The Order of the Stick takes place in a vast trackless desert on the western continent. The main characters spend a full third of the arc wandering the wastes as they search for Girard's Gate.
  • Champions of Far'aus: When Daryl and Skye are dropped off in Gar'el, they have to cross a Thirsty Desert portion of the country to get to the nearest town. Thanks to the supplies Popari Swiftwind dropped off, they do so without much trouble, and thanks to the Lemony Narrator, it doesn't last long.
    Narrator: What say we skip the walking?
  • Any journey in Suihira, since it's desert world.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Part of the Time Abyss Jones' Exposition of Immortality is a flashback to them crossing the Gobi desert alone and barefoot. Subsequent strips show that, rather than it being any sort of grand endeavor, it's just one scene out of half a billion years spent Walking the Earth.

    Western Animation 
  • In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Gaang tries to escape a desert after Appa is kidnapped. And yes, Sokka and Momo get high on peyote. With the group's main method of transportation gone, Aang despondent over the loss of Appa, Sokka and Momo getting high, and Toph being unable to see on the loose sand, Katara struggles to keep the group moving.
  • In an episode of Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben wanders the desert with a Highbreed, Reinrassig III, in order to get to a teleporter. The two eventually share a "Not So Different" Remark moment, causing the latter to stay behind in self-imposed exile.
  • In the Futurama episode "My Three Suns", Fry crosses a desert to make a delivery on the planet Trisol. Just as the sun goes down, a larger one rises.
  • An episode of Recess does this trope with a hot playground in place of a desert.
  • Rugrats does this with the babies crossing a basketball court to find a water fountain on a hot summer day. Thanks to the babies' imaginations, it seems as grueling a journey as Fantasia or Dinosaur.
  • Star Wars Rebels: Most of "Twin Suns" consists of Ezra and Maul wandering the desert wastes of Tatooine looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
  • A Thousand and One... Americas:
    • In the eleventh episode, Chris and his pet dog long traverse the Sechura Desert to deliver a message to a decoder in the city of Moche. They do travel across a man-made road that takes them to the city, so at least they won't get lost. However, later in the episode, they and a friendly Incan who is giving them a tour do traverse into the desert off-road so they can see some harvest fields, and on the way back during the sunset they're caught by a severe sandstorm. To make matters worse, a group of enemy soldiers they were alerted about early on end up intercepting them; while Lon and the Incan put a fight, Chris is easily outmatched, leading him to wake up (it is All Just a Dream).
    • In the twenty-fourth episode, Chris and Lon are told about the Nazca city of Cahuachi, which is located well within the desert so it's necessary to make a long trip across the sands to reach it. The two characters spend the rest of the day traversing the desert, but they still don't manage to reach ther destination; Chris even suspects that the Nazca warrior who told them about the city lied to them. It gets hot in the day and cold in the night, and during the latter's time they're chased by hungry coyotes. They finally find the city by following the stars in the skies, but even then they don't reach until sunrise.
  • Yam Roll: Tamago and Yam Roll cross the desert of Tempura's lost and found in order to find Tamago's umbrella.

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