"Chad" a Chad Travel Page by sachara

In January 2004 I visited Chad for 10 days. We stayed in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, and made a tour of 4 days north of N'Djamena to Douguia and Lake Chad.

Because of the dangerous situation in the west of Sudan, we couldn't enter Sudan overland, so we did'n't travel to the east of Chad either. We had to stay a longer time in N'Djamena to arrange our flight to Ethiopia. At the end we had only 4 days left to travel around.

It's a pity because I was very anxious to see more of this country with 7,5 million inhabitants at the crossroads of the northern Arab and southern black Africa.The north is a part of the Sahara Desert and the south is tropical.

N'Djamena is one of the pleasants cities in the Sahel. For me N'Djamena was an easygoing city. When I walked, I saw people of the north and south, forming a mosaic of divers ethnic groups.

The area around Lake Chad and N'djamena is in the centre of the country, which has a Sahelian blend of scrub and desert.

Lake Chad was once one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world, before it started to dry up. In the dry season it has still a surface of 10.000 sq. KM, allthough it dried up totally during the worst of the Sahel drought in 1984. In the rainy season the surface of the Lake Chad can grow to 25.000 sq. KM.