---
title: "Chad travel guide: the Ennedi, the Ounianga lakes and Zakouma | Wimup"
description: "Chad on Wimup: what the Ennedi massif and the Ounianga lakes actually involve, how Zakouma works, what the travel advisories say before you book, and the food to order in N'Djamena."
url: https://wimup.com/country/chad
type: Country guide
updated: 2026-10-05
publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com)
---

# Chad, the Sahara at its strangest and the advisories that come with it

Chad holds two of the most extraordinary landscapes in the Sahara, the **Ennedi** sandstone massif and the **Ounianga** lakes, and one of the great conservation recoveries in Africa at **Zakouma**. It also carries some of the heaviest travel advisories on the continent, and that belongs at the top of a plan rather than in a footnote.

## Quick answer

Read the advisory first. The FCDO advises against all travel to **Borkou**, **Ennedi**, **Tibesti**, the **Lake Chad** region and the border areas, and against all but essential travel elsewhere. The US says Level 4, Do Not Travel. Within that, the **Ennedi** is the draw, with the **Guelta d'Archei** and the **Lakes of Ounianga** to the north, reached by escorted convoy. **Zakouma** is the savanna park, reached by charter. **N'Djamena** takes a day. Go November to April.

## Quick facts

- **Best months:** Nov · Dec · Jan
- **Ideal length:** 12–16 days
- **Budget per day:** $150–400
- **Language:** French and Arabic officially, Chadian Arabic in daily use, Sara languages across the south
- **Getting around:** An escorted 4x4 convoy with an operator for the desert, charter flights for Zakouma, shared and motorbike taxis in town

- **21,003,705** People
- **2** UNESCO sites

Chad is the fifth-largest country in Africa and it does not travel as one country, so the advisories come first. The FCDO advises against all travel to Borkou, Ennedi Ouest, Ennedi Est and Tibesti, to the Lake Chad region and to within thirty kilometres of every land border, and against all but essential travel to the rest of the country including N’Djamena. The US State Department holds Chad at Level 4, Do Not Travel. Travelling against that advice normally invalidates travel insurance, which is the practical consequence rather than the moral one. Read the current text from your own government before anything else, because the two landscapes Chad is best known for sit inside the provinces that carry the strongest wording, and the expeditions that reach them run as escorted convoys arranged by a handful of specialist operators. What follows is what the country holds, and the decision is yours to make with the advisory open in the other window. The geography sorts into three bands. The north is Sahara and almost nothing else: the Tibesti volcanoes on the Libyan border, with Emi Koussi at about 3,400 metres the highest mountain in the desert, and east of them the Ennedi, a sandstone plateau eroded into arches, towers and slot canyons that UNESCO inscribed in 2016 for its landscape and its rock art together. The Guelta d’Archei, a permanent pool in a canyon southeast of Fada, holds one of the last colonies of Saharan crocodile alongside the camel herds that come down to drink. Northwest of Ennedi, the Lakes of Ounianga are eighteen lakes sitting in the driest place on earth to hold open water, fed by a fossil aquifer and split between the salt lakes at Ounianga Kebir and the reed-covered fresh ones at Ounianga Serir; they were listed by UNESCO in 2012. The middle band is Sahel. N’Djamena sits on the Chari river looking across at Cameroon, with the national museum, the grand mosque and the Dembe and Grand Marche markets, and it is the arrival point for everything else. Northwest of it, Lake Chad has lost most of its surface since the 1960s and now reads as a maze of channels, sandbanks and islands around Bol. East, Abeche was the capital of the Ouaddai sultanate and is the old caravan town on the road to Sudan. At the end of the rains, the Wodaabe hold the Gerewol in the Sahel, the courtship gathering where the men dance in line for days and the women judge them. The south is Sudanian savanna and where most Chadians live: Moundou, Sarh, Doba and the cotton and oil belt, and, in the southeast, Zakouma National Park, managed by African Parks with the government since 2010. Poaching had taken Zakouma from roughly four thousand elephants to about four hundred and fifty by then, and the herd has been growing again since; the park also holds one of the world’s largest populations of Kordofan giraffe. Practicalities shape a Chadian trip more than the map does. French and Arabic are official and Chadian Arabic is what the country actually speaks, the money is CFA francs in cash, a visa is applied for online in advance, and the season that makes any of this possible runs from November to April.

## Know before you go

- **Population:** 21,003,705
- **Area:** 1,284,000 km²
- **Density:** 16.4 / km²
- **Capital:** N'Djamena
- **Major cities:** N'Djamena, Moundou, Sarh, Abéché, Kélo, Koumra
- **Tourism board:** Official site
- **Travel advice:** Read your own government's advisory before you plan anything The FCDO advises against all travel to Borkou, Ennedi, Tibesti, Lake Chad and within thirty kilometres of any land border, and all but essential travel elsewhere. The US says Level 4.
- **Visa:** An e-visa applied for online before travel; the paper route is gone Since 2026 visas are issued only online through the government e-visa platform. Some African nationals enter visa-free. Rules change, so check with a Chadian mission and apply early.
- **Health:** Yellow fever certificate required; malaria across the south and the Sahel A yellow fever certificate is required from nine months of age and is checked. Malaria prophylaxis is standard. Care outside N'Djamena is thin, so get evacuation cover valid under the advisory.
- **Currency:** Central African CFA franc (XAF), and this is a cash country The Central African CFA franc, which is not interchangeable with the West African one. Cards work in a few N'Djamena hotels and ATMs stay in the capital. Bring euros and carry small notes.
- **Language:** French and Arabic are official; Chadian Arabic is what people speak French runs administration and Modern Standard Arabic is co-official. Daily life runs in Chadian Arabic, the south in Sara languages, the north in Toubou tongues. French will not carry a market.
- **Getting there:** N'Djamena International Airport, with a short list of carriers Most arrivals fly into N'Djamena from Paris, Istanbul, Addis Ababa or Casablanca. Schedules are thin and a missed connection costs days, so build in slack. Overland borders fall under the advisory.
- **Getting around:** A 4x4 convoy with an operator for the desert, charter flights for Zakouma No self-drive. The Ennedi and Ounianga are reached by escorted convoys carrying fuel, water and spares, booked months ahead with permits. Zakouma is a charter flight. Towns run on shared taxis.
- **Photography:** Ask people first, and do not photograph anything official Airports, bridges, government and military sites and anyone in uniform are off limits. Ask before portraits, especially in the north. Some sites need a permit, which your operator arranges.
- **Tipping:** Not obligatory, modest, and in cash No fixed rule. Round up for drivers, guides, cooks and camp crew. On an expedition the operator usually suggests a figure for the team.
- **Power:** 220 V, 50 Hz, sockets C, E and F European two-pin plugs fit. Supply is patchy even in N'Djamena and absent in the desert, where vehicles and solar charge everything. Bring a large power bank and a head torch.
- **Calling code:** +235
- **Emergency:** 17 for police, 18 for fire Response is limited, especially outside the capital. On expedition the chain is the operator's satellite phone, your insurer's assistance line, then your embassy. Write all three down.
- **Time zone:** West Africa Time, UTC+1, with no daylight saving
- **Religion:** A Muslim majority with a large Christian minority The north and the Sahel are mostly Muslim, the south mostly Christian with traditional practice, and N'Djamena is mixed. Ramadan shifts hours everywhere, and both calendars bring holidays.

## When to visit

- **Jan** (best): The best month of the year. Cool nights in the desert, dry and firm ground everywhere, and Zakouma at its most rewarding as the wildlife concentrates on the shrinking water. Harmattan haze off the Sahara can flatten the light
- **Feb** (best): Dry and reliable, warming through the month. The haze usually thins, the Ennedi is still comfortable to camp in, and the southern parks are at their peak
- **Mar** (good): Hot and getting hotter, with daytime temperatures in the capital regularly past 38 degrees. Still workable in the north if you accept early starts, and the game viewing in the south is at its most concentrated
- **Apr** (good): The end of the season. Seasonal camps in the south close through the month, desert days become genuinely punishing, and the first storms build in the far south
- **May**: The hottest stretch of the year and the start of the rains in the south. Expedition operators have stopped running, and the southern parks close
- **Jun**: Rains established in the south and moving up into the Sahel. Unsurfaced roads begin to go, which in this country is almost all of them
- **Jul**: Peak rains through the south and the Sahel band. The landscape is green and the ground is impassable, and nothing inland should be planned to a timetable
- **Aug**: The wettest month across the populated half of the country. The desert stays dry and unbearably hot, so there is no half of Chad that works
- **Sep**: The rains ease late in the month, and the Wodaabe hold the Gerewol in the Sahel as the grazing peaks. The gathering is the one reason to be here now, and it is a specialist trip on bad roads
- **Oct** (good): Transition, and the ground firms up behind the rains. A gamble early, a fair bet late, with the first desert departures usually going out at the end of the month
- **Nov** (best): The season opens properly. Dry, cooling, the Sahel still green from the rains, and the southern parks reopening. One of the two best months to be here
- **Dec** (peak): Dry, cool and the busiest the small expedition market gets. Desert nights drop close to freezing, seasonal camps in the south open, and departures book out well ahead

## Fun fact

The oldest fossil widely proposed as a hominin came from Chad. Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye found the Toumai skull in the Djurab desert on 19 July 2001. About seven million years old, it sits near the split between the human and chimpanzee lines, and it moved the search far to the west.

## Stereotypes, sorted out

- **Myth:** Chad is one big desert. **Reality:** The Sahara is the northern third, and most people do not live in it. The middle band is Sahel grazing country that greens after the rains, and the south is savanna with cotton, cereals, oil and enough water for a game park. Each band has its own languages, religion, food and seasons.
- **Myth:** There is nothing there to see. **Reality:** There are two UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Ennedi Massif, inscribed in 2016 for its sandstone and rock art, and the Lakes of Ounianga, in 2012, permanent lakes in the driest place on earth that holds open water. Add Zakouma and the Guelta d'Archei. Chad lacks infrastructure, not sights.
- **Myth:** Human origins are an East African story. **Reality:** Toumai says otherwise. The Sahelanthropus tchadensis skull came out of the Djurab desert in July 2001, dates to around seven million years ago and sits close to the human and chimpanzee split. It was found two and a half thousand kilometres west of the Rift Valley, and it widened the map.
- **Myth:** Lake Chad has dried up. **Reality:** It has lost most of its surface since the 1960s, a real collapse, but it has not gone. Channels, marsh and islands still support fishing, herding and farming for millions across four countries. Travellers stay away because the basin is a conflict zone, and every foreign ministry says so.
- **Myth:** You can turn up and improvise, like anywhere else in Africa. **Reality:** Not here. Desert routes need permits, escorts and convoys with their own fuel and water, arranged months ahead by a few operators. The visa is applied for online, never at the border. The famous landscapes lie in provinces under advice against all travel, which limits insurance and consular help.

- Greet before you ask. Opening with a question reads as rude across the whole country. Salaam alaikum and a moment on how the family is will change an exchange, and in the south a French bonjour and the same patience does the same work.
- Use the right hand for eating, giving and receiving, and eat from the part of the communal dish in front of you without reaching across it.
- Do not photograph airports, bridges, government or military buildings, checkpoints or anyone in uniform, and ask before photographing people. Cameras have been confiscated for less, and the argument afterwards is slow.
- Dress covered. Long trousers or a long skirt and covered shoulders are the norm for both men and women almost everywhere, and it matters more in the Muslim north and the Sahel than in the southern towns.
- Expect checkpoints and keep passport, visa and any permits to hand, with photocopies. Your operator or driver will do the talking. Patience and a greeting are the whole technique.
- Ramadan reorders the day across most of the country. Eating, drinking or smoking in public during daylight is inconsiderate at best, hours shift, and the evening is when everything happens.

## Famous Chadian faces

- **Mahamat-Saleh Haroun**: Filmmaker whose A Screaming Man won the 2010 Cannes Jury Prize. Later minister of culture.
- **Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye**: Researcher who found the Toumai skull in the Djurab desert on 19 July 2001.
- **Japhet N'Doram**: Chad's most successful footballer, French champion with Nantes in 1995, then at Monaco.
- **Kaltouma Nadjina**: Sprinter who held the national 200 and 400 metre records and ran at Sydney and Athens.
- **Mounira Mitchala**: Singer who won the Prix Decouvertes RFI in 2007 and took Chadian music across Africa.
- **Joseph Brahim Seid**: Justice minister and a founder of Chadian literature in French, with Un enfant du Tchad.
- **AfrotroniX**: Caleb Rimtobaye's project, Chadian rhythms in electronic music, played in a welder's mask.
- **Idriss Déby Itno**: Career soldier who took power in 1990 and ruled until his death in April 2021.
- **François Tombalbaye**: First president from 1960, killed in a 1975 coup. He renamed Fort-Lamy as N'Djamena.
- **Hissène Habré**: President from 1982 to 1990, convicted in Senegal in 2016 of crimes against humanity.
- **Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno**: Led the transition after his father's death in 2021, elected president in May 2024.
- **Marie-Christine Koundja**: Diplomat and the first Chadian woman to publish a novel, in 2001.
- **Baba Moustapha**: Playwright who died in 1982 at thirty. Commandant Chaka, on dictatorship, is his best.
- **Clément Masdongar**: Singer based in France who set Sara-language lyrics against a horn-driven band.
- **Youssouf Djaoro**: Actor in Haroun's films, best actor at Chicago in 2010 for A Screaming Man.

## Must-try Chadian food

- **Boule**: The national staple: stiff millet, sorghum or maize porridge, torn by hand to scoop sauce.
- **Esh**: The northern version: boiled millet flour under moulah, eaten by hand from a shared dish.
- **Daraba**: Okra stewed with sweet potato, tomato and greens, often finished with groundnut.
- **Moulah**: The all-purpose sauce of onion, tomato, fish or meat and greens, over esh and boule.
- **Groundnut sauce**: Peanut paste cooked with tomato, onion and chilli. The mildest sauce and an easy start.
- **Jarret de boeuf**: Beef shank slow-cooked with garlic, tomato and roots. A French colonial dish, kept.
- **Grilled capitaine**: Nile perch from the Chari or Logone, grilled whole. The best meal in the country.
- **Brochettes**: Beef, goat or chicken skewers grilled at the roadside, with chilli and salt. Evening food.
- **Beignets**: Fried dough balls sold hot in the morning, eaten standing with tea. Cheap and good.
- **Karkanji**: Cold hibiscus with ginger and spices, deep red and sharp. The Sahel afternoon drink.
- **Bili-bili**: Cloudy, lightly sour millet beer brewed by women in the south and drunk from a calabash.
- **Gala**: The lager brewed at Moundou, cold and unremarkable, handed over anywhere in the south.

## FAQs

### Is Chad safe to travel in?

It carries some of the strongest travel advice on the continent and that has to be the starting point. The FCDO advises against all travel to Borkou, Ennedi Ouest, Ennedi Est and Tibesti, to the Lake Chad region and to within thirty kilometres of every land border, and against all but essential travel to the rest of the country including N'Djamena. The US State Department holds Chad at Level 4, Do Not Travel. The concerns behind that wording are armed groups and banditry in the border zones and the north, the aftermath of the war in neighbouring Sudan, crime in the capital, and emergency services that in most of the country do not exist. Travelling against your government's advice normally invalidates travel insurance and narrows what consular help can do. Read the live text yourself, decide with it open, and if you go, go with an established operator.

### Do you need a visa for Chad?

Almost certainly yes, and it is applied for online before you travel. Chad moved visa issuance entirely onto its own e-visa platform in 2026, ending the paper and on-arrival routes for ordinary travellers, and a visa obtained outside that official channel is not valid at the border. Nationals of a number of African states enter without one. A yellow fever vaccination certificate is a separate entry requirement for anyone aged nine months and over and is checked on arrival. Fees and eligibility change, so confirm the current position with a Chadian mission or your own government's advice, and leave time: the application is not something to start the week you fly.

### When is the best time to visit Chad?

November to February, and January is the pick of them. Those months bring dry ground, nights cool enough to camp comfortably in the desert, and wildlife concentrated on the last water in the southern parks. March and April still work but the heat becomes the whole story, with the capital regularly past 38 degrees. From May to September there is no good half of the country: the rains take the roads across the south and the Sahel while the Sahara becomes unbearable, expedition operators stop running and the seasonal camps close. The one exception is the Gerewol, the Wodaabe gathering held in the Sahel at the end of the rains around late September, which is a specialist trip taken on bad roads for one reason.

### How do you actually reach the Ennedi and the Ounianga lakes?

As an escorted 4x4 expedition, arranged months in advance, and not otherwise. A small number of operators run convoys of several vehicles out of N'Djamena, sometimes flying or driving the first leg to Abeche or Faya-Largeau, carrying their own fuel, water, food, spares and mechanics because there is nothing to buy along the route. Two weeks is a realistic length for the Ennedi with the Ounianga lakes added, and a week gets you the massif and not much else. Permits and escorts come with the arrangement. All of it sits inside provinces your government very probably advises against all travel to, and going is a decision to take deliberately.

### What is there to see in Chad besides the desert?

Zakouma National Park in the southeast is the other headline. African Parks has managed it with the government since 2010, poaching had cut its elephants from roughly four thousand to about four hundred and fifty before that partnership began, and the herd has been growing since; it also holds one of the world's largest populations of Kordofan giraffe, alongside lions, buffalo and enormous dry-season bird concentrations. Beyond it, N'Djamena is worth a day for the national museum, the grand mosque and the markets, the Chari and Logone rivers carry the fish that make the best meal in the country, Abeche keeps the fabric of the old Ouaddai sultanate, and the Sahel is where the Wodaabe hold the Gerewol at the end of the rains.

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Part of [Africa](https://wimup.com/africa.md)

## Sources

- [Tourism board](http://tourisme.gouv.td/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral)
- [Visa](https://evisa.td/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral)
- Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.