Travelling in Chad: desert lakes behind a permit from the capital

What a visitor needs before landing in Chad

Chad issues its visas online. The e-Visa portal of the Chadian immigration service states that entry to the national territory depends on holding a visa, and that the application is made through the site. It recommends applying at least seven days before arrival and accepts nothing lodged more than ninety days ahead. Issue is automated, so a visa cannot be amended once granted, and the fee is not refunded. A visitor whose visa runs out during the stay extends it with the Direction de l'Emigration et de l'Immigration, whose e-Visa office sits in Commissariat Central N°2, in the 8th arrondissement of N'Djamena.

The governments that advise their own citizens add conditions of their own. American guidance dated 30 April 2026 says the Government of Chad is not routinely issuing visas to US citizens and that none is available on arrival. Canada's advice of 14 October 2026 asks for a return or onward ticket. All three sets of advice want six months left on the passport, counted from the day of arrival by the British and American governments and from the planned day of departure by Canada.

The yellow fever rule is written two ways. The British and Canadian pages ask for a vaccination certificate from travellers arriving from a country with a risk of transmission, and the American guidance says every traveller to Chad must carry a valid yellow fever card. Canada adds that Chad lies inside the African meningitis belt and falls under the World Health Organization's temporary recommendations on polio, under which a visitor staying longer than four weeks may need a dose of vaccine before leaving.

Arrival then starts a clock. Canada says every visitor must check in with the national police and obtain a registration stamp within 72 hours. The British advice applies the same rule to any stay beyond 72 hours, sends the visitor to the Commissariat Central on Avenue General Kerim Nassour, formerly Boulevard de Strasbourg, and asks for a passport photograph. The American guidance ties the stamp to the document: once a passport has been registered, later visits on it need no new stamp. The British advice also asks visitors to carry a certified copy of the passport at all times, since the police can detain anyone who cannot show identification.

Why leaving N'Djamena takes a ministry permit

N'Djamena stands on the east bank of the Chari where the Logone joins it, on the frontier with Cameroon, and Britannica puts it almost 1,600 km by road from the West African coastal ports. It held 1,092,066 people at the 2012 count. N'Djamena International Airport has regular direct flights to Paris and to several African cities.

Any trip beyond the city needs an authorisation from the Ministry of the Interior. The British advice says the requirement covers all travel outside N'Djamena, that it is normally granted without difficulty after a few days, and that many businesses arrange escorts when their Western staff leave the capital for any reason. Canada's advice describes the same document as a permit that may take several days to issue. The American guidance adds a separate permit for the border zones near Libya and Sudan, and says its own government employees need special authorisation to travel outside the capital at all.

A second permit covers the camera. Canada's advice says a government permit is required for all photography, names airports, military establishments and government buildings as places where photographs are prohibited, and warns that film and cameras may be confiscated without notice. The British page sets the line more narrowly, at military sites, government buildings and airports photographed without a permit. Both governments therefore agree on those three categories, and Canada reaches further.

Communications carry their own rule. A Thuraya satellite telephone has to be registered with the Chadian authorities, and Canada describes the telecommunication systems outside N'Djamena as very unreliable. The British advice, writing for anyone who does leave the capital, lists a police or military escort, communications equipment, the right permits and professional security advice taken beforehand.

How foreign governments divide the map of Chad

Three governments publish advice on Chad and they draw the country differently. The United States sets one level for the whole territory: Level 4, Do not travel, issued on 28 April 2026, citing crime, terrorism, unrest, health infrastructure, kidnapping and landmines. The United Kingdom advises against all travel to parts of Chad. Canada sets the whole country at avoiding non-essential travel and then lists the regions where it advises against all travel, and its list is the one that falls across the places a visitor would come for.

The landmine record explains much of the northern line. The American guidance names Tibesti, Borkou, Ennedi-Est and Ennedi-Ouest provinces as the areas of greatest risk, along with Sila in the east and Moyen-Chari in the south, and says not every minefield is marked. Canada places landmines along the Libyan border and records that the land border with Libya is closed until further notice. The American guidance lists national parks among the places terrorist groups have targeted, and the British page lists them among the places an attack could fall.

This catalogue reports what each government has published and the date it was published. It does not grade the country, and the advice changes faster than an article is rebuilt.

What the lakes of Ounianga hold

The Lakes of Ounianga are eighteen lakes in two groups about 40 km apart, inside a property of 62,808 ha with a buffer zone of 4,869 ha, as UNESCO recorded them at inscription in 2012. Less than 10,000 years ago the basin held one much larger lake. What remains is fed from an aquifer, and the inscription credits the groundwater with keeping the water level stable apart from a slight seasonal change, because it replaces what the desert air evaporates.

Ounianga Kebir is four lakes. Lake Yoan covers 358 ha and is 27 m deep, and its water is so saline that it supports only algae and a few micro-organisms. The village of Ounianga Kebir stands beside it, inside the buffer zone, and UNESCO's statement records that pressure on the site is now concentrated mainly on Yoan.

Ounianga Serir is fourteen lakes separated by sand dunes. Lake Teli is 436 ha in area and less than 10 m deep, and its fresh water holds fish. Floating mats of reed cover a large part of the surface: almost half in UNESCO's short description and about a third in its statement of value. Either way the reeds cut evaporation, and the wind moving them across the open water produces what the inscription calls the impression of waves of water flowing in the desert. The village of Ounianga Serir, about 1,000 people in 2012, stands beside Lake Teli inside the protected boundary.

The colours are the reason the lakes were listed under the criterion for natural beauty. The water runs blue, green or reddish according to its chemistry, set against palms, brown dunes and sandstone landforms, with rock outcrops above the water that overlook every lake. The property boundary follows the 450 m contour around the lakes' own catchment.

The lakes answer to the Ministry of Culture. A decree of 15 December 2010 designated them a natural site and forbade mining and any other activity that could threaten them, and UNESCO's statement explains that Chad's protected-area law of 2008 is written around fauna and flora and does not fit the lakes on its own. Decree No. 095 keeps farming inside the property to traditional practice.

What the Ennedi Massif keeps in its canyons

UNESCO inscribed the Ennedi Massif in 2016 as a mixed site, natural and cultural at once. Water and wind have cut the sandstone plateau into canyons and valleys, with cliffs, natural arches and free-standing pitons. In the largest canyons the water is permanent, and it sustains plants, animals and the people who live there. Thousands of images have been painted and carved into the rock of caves, canyons and shelters. Chad had placed the engravings and paintings of the Ennedi and Tibesti on its tentative list in 2005, eleven years before the massif itself was inscribed.

The Ennedi is the north-eastern rim of the Chad Basin. In the north-west the basin rises to the Tibesti Mountains, whose summit, the dormant volcano Emi Koussi, stands at 3,445 m. The basin's lowest ground is the Bodélé Depression in the north-centre, at 155 m, and the neighbouring Djourab is on the tentative list as a site of early hominids.

Faya Largeau, the one northern town Canada exempts from its advice against all travel, gives the measure of the climate. Rainfall there averages less than 12 mm a year, the town sees nearly 3,800 hours of sunshine annually, and on 22 June 2010 it reached 47.6 °C, breaking a record set at the same place in 1961. Faya Largeau lies 1,550 km from the Mediterranean. Across much of the north the average daily maximum runs at about 32 °C in January and about 45 °C in May, and northeasterly winds raise violent sandstorms.

Where Zakouma counts its visitors

Zakouma National Park covers more than 3,054 km² of south-eastern Chad, at the centre of a Greater Zakouma Ecosystem of 28,162 km² that takes in Siniaka Minia National Park, the Bahr Salamat Faunal Reserve and the corridors between them. The government and the European Union approached African Parks in 2010 to manage the park. The partnership was extended to the wider ecosystem in 2017 and renewed in 2022.

The park publishes its own figures. African Parks reports that the elephant population has grown by about 40% since 2010, that half of the world's Kordofan giraffes live in Zakouma, and that more than 6,300 visitors explored the park in 2025, with the number coming from inside Chad rising in recent years. A separate environmental education centre, Camp Dari, receives more than 6,500 local visitors a year by the same account, published in 2026.

The recovery followed a long period of loss. Wikipedia's article on Chad records elephants massacred in herds in and around the parks by organised poachers, and wardens murdered in Zakouma. Chad placed the park on its World Heritage tentative list in 2005.

Zakouma sits inside a wider system. Protected Planet counted 23 protected areas in Chad as published in October 2026, covering 266,099 km², or 20.96% of the land, from national data last updated in 2024. African Parks describes the Greater Zakouma Ecosystem as country of seasonal wildlife migrations, perennial rivers and floodplains, lying between the Sahara and the forests of Central Africa.

What Lake Chad looks like from the Chadian shore

The lake that named the country has shrunk by about 90% since the 1960s, according to Britannica, through climate variation and water drawn off for irrigation. Britannica gives its area as about 17,800 km² when the surface stands near 280 m. Seven thousand years ago, by Wikipedia's account, a far larger lake covered 330,000 km² of the basin.

The lake swells and contracts each year. It peaks in late October or early November and shrinks by more than half by late April or early May, and in low years its islands join into larger stretches of land. The Chari, which rises in the Central African Republic and passes N'Djamena on the way, brings about 95% of its water.

Chad put the cultural landscape of Lake Chad on its tentative list in 2018. The Lac region on the Chadian side is under a state of emergency, along with Kanem, according to the British advice, which records at least 30 soldiers killed near Baga Sola in 2022 and at least 40 at Barkaram in October 2024. Canada adds that goods smuggled across the Chari from Cameroon draw armed responses from the Chadian customs and river police.

When the rains close the southern roads

Chad has one rainy season, and its length depends on latitude. Britannica records 800 to 1,200 mm falling at Moundou and Sarh in the south between May and October, 300 to 800 mm in the Sahel around N'Djamena between June and September, and less than one inch, about 25 mm, a year at Faya Largeau in the north. Canada's advice gives the same two windows for the south and the centre. The British advice warns that roads are poor and often impassable from July to October, especially in the south, and that heavy rain floods large areas of the south and east.

The dry season from December to February is the cool one everywhere. Britannica puts daytime temperatures in the upper 20s to mid-30s °C and nights in the low to mid-10s. From March the heat builds until the first heavy rain, and N'Djamena averages more than 38 °C by day from March to June. When the rains arrive in July the capital's days fall to the mid-30s, while its nights stay in the 20s until the cool season returns in November.

Two further calendars matter. Canada expects Ramadan to begin on or around 7 February 2027, and the British advice asks visitors not to eat, drink or smoke in public by day during the month. Canada also records El Niño conditions expected to strengthen through the second half of 2026 and into 2027, raising the likelihood of drought, flood and severe storms.

How people and money move inside Chad

Chad has no railway. Canada's advice adds that there is no operational bus network either, and that the trucks and minibuses running between towns are not recommended for intercity travel. Civil war left Chad with 30 km of paved road in 1987, and rehabilitation had raised that to 550 km by 2004, according to Wikipedia's article on Chad, which notes that many roads are unusable for several months of the year. Three trans-African routes cross the country: Tripoli to Cape Town, Dakar to N'Djamena and N'Djamena to Djibouti. Chad had an estimated 59 airports in 2013, nine of them with paved runways.

Driving is on the right. Canada asks for an International Driving Permit, while the British advice says a UK licence must be converted to a Chadian one, so the requirement depends on whose advice a driver reads. Both advise convoys, daylight driving and spare fuel, because fuel is not always on sale in the towns and is scarce in the countryside. Canada adds a spare tyre and recommends hiring a local driver.

The currency is the Central African CFA franc. Canada says cash machines are rare and that credit cards are accepted only at major hotels in N'Djamena. Canada says money brought in must be declared on arrival, and the American guidance sets the declaration threshold at 10,000,000 CFA francs. The two describe the exit rule differently. Canada says local currency may not be exported at all, and the American guidance gives an exit maximum of 10,000,000 CFA francs.

Arabic and French are the official languages, and Britannica describes a simplified Arabic used in the towns and markets. The power supply runs at 220 V through Europlug and Schuko sockets, and the country calling code is +235. Medical facilities outside N'Djamena are described by Canada as extremely limited, and the American guidance says all medical services are at the patient's expense. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal, with prison terms of three months to two years according to the British advice. Celebratory gunfire at weddings and after election results is illegal and common, and the British advice records deaths from it in May 2024.