In Morocco, an Off-Road Rally for Women Only

It is for women only, speed is not the point and no prizes are awarded.

The competitors aim to reach the five to seven daily tiffany silver earrings, marked by red flags in the sandy landscape, while covering the shortest distance. The teams of two -- traveling in four-wheel-drive vehicles and trucks, as well as crossovers, motorbikes and all-terrain vehicles -- have only maps from the 1950s and compasses to guide them. Global positioning systems and cellphones are prohibited.

Last Wednesday, 104 teams that had paid up to 14,350 euros (about $19,500) to register embarked on the roughly 2,500-kilometer trek (about 1,550 miles) from Nejjakh to Foum-Zguid. The competitive part of the rally, which includes parts of the High Atlas mountains and the Sahara, ends Thursday.

The field is open to any woman who wants to test her endurance and navigational skills. Clementine Charles, a 26-year-old Frenchwoman who works in fashion and is competing for the third time, did not even have a driver's license in 2008.

"If it were a professional rally, I wouldn't have any participants," said Dominique Serra, the rally's founder, who is based in Paris.

Serra, 54, never took part in a motor event and has no desire to. She said she started the female rally because "I think women are important."

She added: "I thought, if you put them in a context that isn't their habitual context, I'm sure they'll figure it out and get something out of it. And that's what happens."

The teams search for checkpoints from sunrise to sunset. They eat dinner and sleep at a traveling bivouac. The competitors cannot skip a checkpoint, but they can skip the bivouac, sleep in the desert and try to find the previous day's remaining checkpoints in the morning.

At the bivouac, they are given coordinates for each day's first checkpoint, where they receive the rest of the coordinates for the day. Each team pinpoints locations using topographic 1:100,000 scale maps that are distributed on Day 1. (Two of the legs require two straight days of hunting for flags in the desert.)

"There are some days when girls search 10 hours for Checkpoint 2," Charles said. "You spend one day searching for a flag. You're disgusted."

The lone American team this year comprises Wendy Fisher, 38, a former Olympic skier, and Emily Miller, 43, a professional driver who won her classification in last year's Baja 1,000, an off-road endurance event in Mexico.

"The Baja 1,000 is famous as a very hard race, and it is one of the most known races in the world," Miller said. "But I can tell you that I've never done anything as hard as the Rallye des Gazelles."

Drivers must watch out for traps like melting dunes, in which cars can easily flip over, and witch's eyes, depressions filled with soft sand and bushes from which it is nearly impossible to escape. On rocky terrain, they have to keep a steady grasp on the wheel.

Navigators also need to be physically and mentally sharp. Some days, they spend more time out of the car than in it, running along sandy ridges to direct their drivers. Then they have to stop, take out their compasses and calculate where in the world they tiffany silver keyrings.

"It's a race that you want to do with your brain," said Corentine Quiniou, 27, a professional driver who has competed in the rally seven times and won it for the third time last year. She alternates driving and navigating with Florence Migraine-Bourgnon, 37, who works in communication.

Although most of the rally is conducted in French and receives little attention in the United States, it is covered daily in Europe and North Africa. Teams receive financing from sponsors, like women's magazines, that are foreign to motor sports. Seeing images of Penelope Cruz and Vanessa Paradis zipping around on the sides of 4x4s can be as disorienting as spotting tree-climbing goats in Essaouira.

Only nine teams participated in the inaugural rally in 1990. As the field has grown, it has become more international, with 18 countries -- including Germany, Congo and Cambodia -- now represented.

Competitors have included a top European model, college students and a 65-year-old grandmother. Annick Denoncin of France is participating for the 14th time. But about 70 percent of the competitors are first-timers who come for the adventure and challenge.

"The rally is a trigger," Serra said. "There are women who get divorced when they go home, who get married, who change jobs."

She added: "Completing the rally each day demands a little more force, a little more courage, a little more know-how, and they advance. They totally change their points of reference."

The teams exemplify the rally's slogan, Sharing True Values, by giving one another a hand -- towing a vehicle lodged in a dune or lending fuel and parts -- in a bid to win good karma and allies. Mechanics are available on the course, but calling one tacks on penalty kilometers.

The rally, which offsets all of its carbon dioxide emissions, ends with a formal dinner.

"I brought a really beautiful dress and heels and put them in Ziploc bags and packed them in the tiffany silver notes of my suitcase," Miller said. "They go in the truck with me. I mean, where else can you do a race where you're traveling with a formal dress? This rally takes you from some of the finest events to some of the toughest situations."

She added, "It pushes you to the extremes."