Kalimari Desert



The Kalahari Desert is a semi-desert covering a lot of Botswana, along with a few other African countries. One thing it doesn't have however, is a trai....wait..what? it does? Apparently there's a train that travels through the Kalahari Desert. Also cactuses, cacti, cactopuses. You know..the prickly green things. The other thing the Kalahari desert has are giant signs with "Yoshi", "Shot", and "Koopa Air" on them. The similarities between the game and real life are eerie.


Kalahari, Kalimari. See? I'm not making this stuff up! It's eerily similar.


But William, I hear you say. The train is a cartoon train out of cartoon town. It may as well be driven by Mickey Mouse. And yes, you're right...but even here we can see some small resemblences to the actual train that travels the actual kalahari desert.


Round shape in front, grill at the bottom, and a little light at the top


A little less surprising is that there are cacti in the desert. I guess they could have made my search a little more difficult if KD had some sort of ski-lodge.


No big surprise here. Genuine kalahari desert cactus pictured though.


I lied about the signs.

If there's one thing you can rely on in the world, it's that trains everywhere always run exactly on time. There are never any annoying issues with a slight breeze causing a few leaves to fall over onto the track, causing massive delays. This is why the developers of this track made the trains always run perfectly on time. The only really problem is that they never stop to let anyone on or off. I have a feeling that everyone has long since jumped from the train, including the driver. The inescapable conclusion is that the trains on kalimari desert are the world's first perpetual motion machines, powered solely by the tears and obsessions of time trialling karters.

The first thing you should notice about this track is that you start on a road, and the road stretches off into the unknown over the horizon. For the purposes of this strat page though, you should assume that the road beyond the horizon does not exist. That beyond the first few meters of this patch of road lie fierce prowling tigers, snakes the size of elephants, and wild prairie dogs. The general message I'm trying to give you is to forget about this road, at least for now. You can rejoin it again at the first train crossing, but for now it's time to turn your attention to the hills on the left.

The hill-hopping strat is an ancient strategy, first popularized by prospecting karters back in the 20th century. They found no gold in dem there hills, but they did find a nugget of shiny speed. Here's how they went about it. Firstly stay on the road for almost your entire start-shroom, releasing an MT from the road into the sand on the left. At this point you should be aiming slightly to the left of the edge of the hill.


You can aim slightly more to the left of here.


As you approach the incline, start hopping and time the hopping so that you hop at the highest point of the hill, right at the corner. You initially aim a little to the left, because the slope of the hill will gradually push your kart to the right as you hop up the hill.


Hop at the top of the hill,just as you reach this corner


With this hop, you have to arc a little around to the left and land in a slide, work up an MT, release it, and then hop a further 3 times, again timing your run up (or hop up) so that you perform the final hop at the corner


Use those hopping skills


This time you arc even more to the left, but instead of landing in a left-facing slide, you immediately jump into a right-facing slide. The angle you get this slide at can be important. When racing against ghosts, you can see how one angle can be significantly faster than another. I always try to get a nice parallel high-ish line near the mountain wall. Once completed, quickly descend towards the road by the train tracks and MT back onto the road. Anywhere close to the crossing is fine.


Here we talk about some alternatives to the strategy above. In total there are 3 other ways to approach lap 1.

The Good: The Shroom

Many karters now subscribe to the hill-shroom philosophy of first lap Kalimari Desert Kartonomics. This is noticeably better than the Road approach, and only slightly slower than the standard hill-hopping. It also has the side-product of being able to swap to a fastest lap attempt (which should be done on lap 1 anyway), if you hit a particularly nice first half of the lap. To do this, you must use your starting shroom to immediately cut across into the sand to the right of the cactus there, and release the MT aiming just to the right of first corner on the hill. When you start to drive up the hill, jump into a left-facing slide and immediately shroom. Hold the shroom around in an arc, working up an MT as you go, and hold it around the final hill corner. You will notice you will get some air off this final part. Release the MT upon landing and jump into a right-facing slide as per the normal hill-hopping strat. Because of the shroomslide MT, you'll have a little more momentum than usual here.

The Bad: The Road

A long time ago - you can just scroll up - I told you to ignore this road, and warned about the elephant snakes. Unfortunately many of you will completely ignore this advice and decide to always use the road up until you retire from karting. Two things about this. 1) You can't retire from kart. 2) Staying on the road is so unadventurous. Nevertheless, here's how to do it.

Perform a shroomslide MT with your opening shroom, and release the MT along the left side of the road. After gliding for a short while, perform another MT, this time releasing the glide down the little dip in the road. When you reach the bottom of this dip, start another MT, this time releasing the glide up the hill. Just before you reach the top of this hill, jump into another MT. All of these MTs are incredibly easy to perform. Beyond accidentally veering into the sand, you should never have any problems with them. You should be able to perform one last SSMT before the train track crossroads.

The Ugly: The Pure Hop

Back when most karters were still learning to count, Pure Hopping was hailed as the definitive strategy around the hills. The problem with Pure Hopping is that it's very difficult to do consistently, and when it goes bad, it's worse than the Road strat. Hab introduced the MT in the middle of the hopping which made the section a lot easier to hit time and time again, and was only fractionally slower. Still, if you want every last hundreth, you may want to experiment with the Pure Hop technique. There's not really much to it, except that instead of hopping into the left-facing MT halfway around the hill, you actually just keep hopping in a timed fashion very close to the edge of the mountain until you reach the final corner and merge with the usual strat. Of all of these alternatives, the Road is the easiest to do consistently. The shroom is the strat of choice by most people, and the Pure Hop is never even attempted.


Now we're back on the road and have the fresh desert wind blowing in our faces. As we cough out sand particles and wipe debris from our eyes it can be very easy to SSMT into that cactus just to the right of the road. Sometimes it's hard to imagine that the developers didn't place things like that deliberately, as if they knew ahead of time when we'd be all trying risky SSMTs. A lot of people leave out this SSMT, and you can do that too, but you're probably one of those Road people, and I try not to talk to you.

After this we have the corner before the 2nd train tracks. The key to this corner is to get an MT going into it very early, and then get a quick MT as you're exitting it. The exit MT will bring you very close to the left-side of the track, and occasionally you may graze up against the sand bank there. Don't worry too much about that. Withdraw some sand coins and be on your way.

Now you have a choice. If you're on a fastest lap attempt, the best strategy is to glide a little and then perform a left-facing MT so that you release it aiming directly to the right of the fence by far side of the train tracks. Just as you reach the fence, hop into a slide and perform a double shroom through the sand. The first shroom of this double should be tight against the fence, and the second shroom should gradually veer back to the road. You can get a feel for the timing of the second shroom by using the train as a visual aid.

If you're not on a lap attempt, simply glide straight on the road, and hop into a left-facing MT so that you release it from the road into the sand, right after you cross the train tracks. Now glide alongside the fence. This is the straightest part of the fence so using a single-shroom as per the fastest lap strat would be a little wasted here. Instead, we glide along this straight part, and then hop into a slideshroom just as it bends to the left. Hold this as close to the fence as you dare, and then release it aiming slightly to the right. Then as soon as you can, hop into an MT back onto the road. If you are on a 0-shroom strat, you should do around 4 equally spaced MTs across the sand after your initial MT from the road. So 5 MTs in total, with the first glide being the longest.

After this point, all possible laps you do will be more or less identical. It's all about quick MTs and nice glides. If you're playing on an NTSC machine, there can be quite noticable lag where the train appears, usually during lap 2. It can affect the rhythm of your MTing. To counteract this, just slow your movements slightly. Some people like to cut the glide a little shorter on this sequence of MTs so that they can fit in an extra one. Specifically, they try to fit in a right-facing SSMT just before you get to the little S bend to finish the race. Experiment with MTs and glides to see what you feel you can do here. The final section can be difficult. The right-facing MT when you approach this last kinkin in the road can feel awkward to perform after all the left-facing ones you've been doing so far, and it's easy to hit sand on this, or the following MT to the left. If you're on lap 3, or on a fastest lap attempt, just release the final MT just before you reach the top of the little incline and try to stay as far left as possible. You may want to adjust sharply to the left in order to reach the line sooner, but that depends on how far to the right you feel you're going. If it's lap 1 or 2 of a 3lap run, perform an SSMT just before the line.

And that's it! Of course, the real challenge of this track is something that's beyond your control. It's those 2 trains circling every lap. On lap 1 you should have no real problems unless you're extremely slow, and this isn't the strat page for you in that case. The major problems start to happen on lap 2 and continue into lap 3. In fact, there is no speed you can reach that can eliminate the problem of the trains from your life completely. It's advisable to use at least 1 shroom on lap 1 in order to beat the first train on lap 2 (Although the top players can just about beat it with none). A lot of players will need to use 2 shrooms, and some 3. Use as many as is necessary for you to pass by in front of this train. The 2nd train on lap 2 should not be a problem.

After that comes the real problem. Lap 3 is not kind to anyone. You can't beat the first train, so you must either wait for it to pass, or drive straight through it. There is a slight gap between carriages where this is possible, but it's not for the faint of heart. The key is to be driving slightly to the left as you're passing through. With a lucky passage going straight through the train, top players can make a 1-1-1 strat work for them. This is the absolute optimum strategy for the course. A slightly slower but one which I, and many top-level karters do is a 1-0-2 strat. This involves letting this first train pass, and then treating the rest of the lap like you were on a fastest lap attempt. Passing the first train at the extreme right of the road and just barely missing it, can give you the space with the 2nd train to cut across the tracks to the fence and use the double-shroom, but it's very tight and very difficult.


You need to think about avoiding action


Most of the time this 2nd train is going to be a major pain the butt, and you'll be anywhere from the left of the road to the extreme right, to veering off road to the right to avoid it. Still, the faster you get, the gain will be doubled on your last lap as you push that train more and more left. Don't be afraid to use all 3 shrooms before getting to this point on lap 3. Alternatively, if you're just not fast enough, you can save a shroom, and wait a little for this 2nd train to pass by.

Overall, this track is possibly the most interesting of any track in the game. The position of the trains makes the shroom strategy a constently evolving process from the moment you get the game, to the moment you hit the World Record. Don't worry about hitting the trains here. The people have long since abandoned it. And keep your eye out for Elephant Snakes.


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