Ennedi Massif: Africa's remote geological wonder

My eyes lifted up towards a rocky ledge carved into a sandstone cliff in the heart of Chad's Ennedi Massif. I saw a face, then, as my eyes adjusted to the gloam, another appeared. Painted in bright ochre and white, men were riding camels and giant cows danced over the entire surface of the rock.

Over millions of years, the wind and rain have sculpted the Ennedi Massif in Chad's remote north-eastern corner into a plateau of inselbergs, lonely spires and towering arches the colour of honeycomb. Meanwhile, primeval people have decorated this landscape, too, painting and carving thousands of images into the rock.

Reaching this region involves a bumpy 1,000km, four-day-drive from the capital N'Djamena through the Sahara. Because of its utter remoteness and the fact that Chad, until recently, has suffered years of fighting – including coups, ethnic bloodshed and a war against Libya – the Ennedi Massif remains largely unknown. So few scientists have been able to reach this inaccessible landscape that it's believed 75% of the massif has yet to be studied, leading some to characterise it as "less explored than the back of the Moon".

The Ennedi Massif has one of the world's biggest concentrations of prehistoric rock art (Credit: Kate Eshelby)

Ennedi's obscurity is heightened because the UK advises against travelling to much of Chad (the area around the Ennedi Massif is considered safe, however).

For those who do make the journey, Ennedi has one of the globe's biggest concentrations of prehistoric rock art. Paintings adorn the walls of almost every cave you step into. Although they are not as old as those in France's Lascaux or Indonesia's 45,500-year-old pig painting, many date to the 6th millennium BCE and reveal the shifting history of the world's largest hot desert.

"These paintings help us to reconnect with our identity, our culture and where we come from. Ennedi is an open book to the history of our ancestors," said Angèle Aloumbe, who works for African Parks and is based in N'Djamena. "I'm always crying when I go to Ennedi. It's such a beautiful landscape with very untouched people. No one can go there without feeling a connection. It has something really special."

Here, deep in the desert, I was alone with the ancient world. There were no buildings or roads for miles; whereas elsewhere, most early art is surrounded by the noise of tourism or shut to the public for protection.

The Ennedi Massif's utter remoteness has made it largely inaccessible to scientists (Credit: Hemis/Alamy)

In 2016, Ennedi – roughly the size of Switzerland – was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. Shortly afterwards, it was classified as a Natural and Cultural Reserve and taken under the protection of the renowned non-profit conservation organisation African Parks. And earlier this year, a long-term archaeological study began that will not only map all the rock art sites, but also investigate the surrounding ground for ancient ceramics, plant pollen and animal bones. "When an Italian archaeologist recently came for a brief visit, he found, within half an hour, a 7,000-year-old piece of pottery," said my Italian guide, Andrea Bonomo, who works for the company Spazi d'Avventura, which has been running trips to Chad for 30 years. "Imagine what they will find with more time."

Later, Bonomo explained how in 2001, a seven-million-year-old fossilised skull, nicknamed Toumaï, was discovered west of Ennedi. The remains were far older than Ethiopia's famous skeleton, "Lucy", leading some people to believe that Chad could be the origin of humanity, and not Ethiopia's Rift Valley. According to Dr Baba Mallaye, a team member involved in the discovery, not only has Toumaï's age been scientifically validated by radio chronological analysis, but the team also found many other fossilised remains of Toumaï's cousins in the same area, proving that this was not an isolated case.

To reach Ennedi, Bonomo and I drove through savannah with desert roses, yellow grasses and acacia trees gleaming gold. We passed nomadic Wodaabe and Oulad-Rachid people on the move. Women and children rode up on camels, seated inside colourful chariots decorated with vivid fabrics, carved calabashes and rows of bronze bowls. Men walked alongside, leather amulets strapped across their chests like small suitcases to protect them from evil. Then the tarmac road stopped, the land emptied of trees and entering Ennedi was like stepping through a portal into a place between worlds.

Ennedi's rock art reveals the changes that have happened over millennia to this land. Like the whole of the Sahara, the area was once green and glittered with lakes. Many people once lived here, but now few do. As I wandered among the red monoliths, I saw images of elephants, rhinos, giraffes and ostriches – all common wild animals in Ennedi until relevantly recently. After the area became drier more than 6,000 years ago, these animals either moved south or died out. Yet, Ennedi remains known as the Eden of the Sahara because it receives more rain than the rest of the desert, creating wadis like green ribbons and permanent water sources fed by crystal-clear springs. Tropical plants bloom and relics of its more temperate times survive, like its desert crocodiles.

Reaching Ennedi involves taking a long camel caravan through the Sahara desert (Credit: Kate Eshelby)

Not long ago, red-necked ostriches, addax and scimitar-horned oryx roamed this land in abundance, before being hunted to extinction. However, African Parks is now reintroducing these animals back into the wild. Meanwhile Ennedi may seem devoid of life – much of its wildlife is nocturnal – yet this is not the case. I stopped to pick up porcupine quills, saw rock hyrax sunbathing and huge Arabian bustards lifted off into flight. I watched beetles tiptoe across the hot sand and dorcas gazelles bounced along like gold pogo sticks. A fennec fox held my gaze, its enormous ears pricked up, before fleeing fast.

Once in Ennedi, Bonomo and I left the car and walked for six days – using camels to carry our bags and accompanied by two nomadic herders named Ousmane Adoum and Kalli Youssouf. On foot I could appreciate the scale of the land and its end-of-the-Earth feeling. We made camp each night just before sunset, lighting a small fire which the herders held their hands over for warmth, before drinking tiny glasses of sweet tea. On the first night, we camped inside a natural amphitheatre of rock, which felt almost spiritual. There was utter silence and the stars glittered overhead.

I climbed high into the rocks every day to see the desert floor strewn with mesas and buttes. Ennedi is the Saharan equivalent of the US' Monument Valley, with rock silhouettes popping up on every horizon, yet it lacks the fame of its American cousin, despite being more than 200 times the size. We walked between rock columns that looked like lost ruins. Every so often we'd stumble across isolated villages where nomadic Toubou or Bideyat people made houses out of palm mats.

In one village, I met a woman named Maimouna Abdoulaye sitting on the sand outside her home. She beckoned me inside and explained that as a herder, she loved the many depictions of animals. "But why are the paintings sometimes so high and not on the ground like us? Perhaps they are made by desert djinns (spirits)?" she wondered.

Isolated villages and nomadic herders dot the landscape (Credit: Kate Eshelby)

In addition to animals, Ennedi is unique for its life-size engravings of intricately decorated men and women. And because of their far-flung locations, Bonomo believes we were the first foreigners to stumble upon some of the petroglyphs and pictograms we found.

There was a ubiquity of cows, drawn in all sizes, that portrayed the big herds that once lived here before desertification. The profusion of coat patterns was extraordinary. Some had concentric designs, chevron motifs or meandering lines. The ancient artists also painted warriors with shields, hunters in action and lines of dancers with tall, plumed headdresses and jewellery. Some of the people pictured had large, alien-like round heads. "Experts think the purpose of the paintings was mystical," Bonomo said. "To have more animals and better hunting."

On many of the rock surfaces, I spotted different styles of painting. When Bonomo and I later visited the regional office of African Parks in the frontier town of Fada, I met with local archaeologist Dr Guemona Djimet. "Unlike elsewhere in the Sahara, where places were abandoned, people have continuously lived here since the Neolithic times," he said. "This is shown by the diversity of art superimposed on top of each other and is what makes Ennedi so special."

Djimet said that African Parks is trying to educate local people about the paintings' historical importance and are pointing out correlations to life today to school children. "We show them details like the men wearing knives on their arms, just like their parents," he said. "And the dancing is similar to that of the Kereda people, who now live south in the Sahel."

In addition to depicting animals that once thrived in the Sahara, intricately decorated people are also depicted on the rocks (Credit: Kate Eshelby)

This is important because the caves are still used by local people for storage. "This is a reserve, not a park. People have lived here for thousands of years so we need to work alongside them," Djimet said.

This land certainly seemed anachronistic. We passed archaic ironworks, their stoves still sitting in the drifts, and uncovered Neolithic houses, tumuli and antique grinding stones.

As archaeological explorations get underway, the Ennedi Massif may finally reveal a few of its ancient secrets.

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