Two men have died after becoming lost in a desert in Saudi Arabia so large it is called the “Empty Quarter.”

The sand area of ​​Rub al-Khali extends over 600,000 square kilometers, the largest contiguous sand area on earth, with dunes up to 600 meters high.

Despite huge underground oil fields, the world’s largest sandy desert is almost completely uninhabited and largely unexplored.

Access is mainly via the longest straight road in the world – the 256 km long Highway 10 in Saudi Arabia. GPS is indispensable for off-road navigation.

But 27-year-old telecommunications worker Mohammad Shehzad Khan and a colleague lost the signal while driving through the desert a week ago, reported Indian television program NDTV.

The situation was bad enough as there was no way out of the desert, where temperatures rise above 40°C during the day.

But then Khan’s phone battery ran out, and when the car ran out of gas, they couldn’t call for help.

They were stranded without food or water.

Both bodies were found covered in sand next to their vehicle on Thursday, four days after they were last seen.

Indian citizen Khan and his unnamed Sudanese colleague both died of dehydration and exhaustion.

Khan moved to Saudi Arabia from the southern Indian state of Telangana three years ago.

With a diameter of 650 km, Rub’ al-Khali is the largest sand desert in the world. Although the Sahara is the largest hot desert, it consists of numerous smaller sand deserts interrupted by mountains and bushland.

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