Chad: Seven Attractions and Natural Wonders

A note on getting there

Chad is a huge, arid, landlocked country, and one of the least-visited on Earth. Most of its finest scenery is in the far north — the Ennedi and the Tibesti — which means very long overland journeys across the Sahara, permits, armed escorts in places, and organised expeditions rather than independent travel. Parts of the country (the Lake Chad basin, the borders with Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic) have serious security problems; check current advice. The seven below are what there is to see, weighted toward the north and the capital.

The northern sites are dry-season (November–March) expeditions of a week or more; Zakouma, in the south, has a defined visitor season from around December to April.

1. The Ennedi Massif

The Ennedi is a sandstone plateau in the northeast, roughly the size of Switzerland, that erosion has carved into a maze of canyons, towers, mushroom rocks, and natural arches — the 120-metre Aloba Arch among the largest anywhere. Its sheltered gorges also hold thousands of years of rock art and small pockets of greenery. It is a UNESCO mixed World Heritage Site.

Reaching it is a multi-day 4x4 crossing from N'Djamena or Abéché. Once there, you camp among the rocks and drive between the landmarks; there is no infrastructure.

2. The Guelta d'Archei

The Guelta d'Archei is the most famous single spot in the Ennedi: a permanent pool of water at the bottom of a narrow, high-walled canyon, stained black by the droppings of the camels that are watered here in their hundreds. It also shelters a tiny relict population of West African crocodiles — survivors from a time when the Sahara was green, cut off here for thousands of years.

You walk in through the sand of the canyon floor; the view from the rim above, with camel trains threading toward the water, is the classic image.

3. The Lakes of Ounianga

In the Sahara north of the Ennedi, in a region that gets almost no rain, sit 18 interconnected lakes of startling blue and green, separated by dunes and rocky ridges. They are sustained by "fossil water" seeping in from a vast underground aquifer, and some stay fresh because a constant flow-through and a floating mat of reeds keep the salt from concentrating. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The lakes are usually combined with the Ennedi on the same long expedition; the two are a few hundred kilometres apart across open desert.

4. Zakouma National Park

In the southeast, Zakouma is a floodplain park that was nearly emptied by ivory poachers in the 2000s — its elephant herd fell from around 4,000 to a few hundred. Since African Parks took over management in 2010, poaching has been almost stopped, the elephants are recovering and breeding again, and the park teems in the dry season with buffalo, giraffe, lion, and enormous flocks of birds around the shrinking pans.

It has a comfortable camp and airstrip and is Chad's one genuinely accessible wildlife destination, on a fly-in basis from N'Djamena.

5. The Tibesti Mountains

The Tibesti, straddling the Libyan border, is a volcanic massif rising to 3,445 metres at Emi Koussi — the highest point in the Sahara — with vast calderas, hot springs, and the strange fumarole terraces of the Trou au Natron, a 1,000-metre-deep crater with a white salt floor. It is home to the Toubou people.

It is one of the most remote and least-visited mountain ranges on Earth, and has been largely closed to travellers for decades due to conflict, banditry, and landmines; a handful of specialist expeditions have reached it in recent years.

6. N'Djamena

Chad's capital, on the Chari river across from Cameroon, is a low, hot, spread-out city. Its sights are few: the King Faisal Mosque, the Catholic cathedral, the lively Grand Marché, and the Chad National Museum — worth visiting for the cast of "Toumaï", a roughly seven-million-year-old hominin skull found in the Djurab desert, one of the oldest known.

It is the starting point for every northern expedition, and the place to arrange permits and vehicles.

7. Gaoui

Ten kilometres from the capital, Gaoui is a village of the Kotoko people, once the capital of the Sao — an ancient culture whose terracotta figures and pottery are displayed in a small museum in the former sultan's palace here. The houses are built of mud brick and painted and moulded with bold geometric patterns, made by the village's women.

It is the easiest cultural half-day from N'Djamena, and a rare chance to see this distinctive earth architecture up close.

Chad is expedition travel: a serious, expensive, permit-heavy trip to the north for the Ennedi and Ounianga, or a fly-in safari to Zakouma. It rewards the effort with landscapes almost no one else has seen.