Two Africans, employed by a Somali mastermind, abduct Asha and Luigi Di Santini's fifteen-year-old daughter from near their hotel on the shores of northern Kenya's Lake Turkana. She is held captive in a desert cave with ancient rock paintings, from where her kidnappers await the payment of their ransom demands. While flying north from their lodge in the Maasai Mara, the Baxters aircraft crash lands in the Chalbi, Equatorial Africa's only true desert. Their teenaged son, Robbie, is confronted by two hyenas. Using his psychic powers, honed by a Maasai medicine man, Robbie befriends the female, which leads him into a concealed crater. While struggling to survive their days and nights in the desert, the teenagers enjoy the mesmerising beauty of the unforgiving wasteland with its endless landscapes; rolling sand dunes interspersed with ancient lava flows; a carpet of multi-coloured blossoms due to the recent rains; and the vivid colours of the dawning and evening skies. Despite this apparent tranquility, the desert also has its uncompromising, hidden dangers, where the two youths suffer from everything nature, and humanity, has to throw at them during their quest for survival.