Ennedi andTibesti The Sahara before the desert.
Philippe Lafond
Turner & Turner pour Géo
In the very heart of the Sahara, there is a weird and fantastic place which is a reminder that the desert was not always an arid and barren land: this is the Ennedi Massif which, like a long-forgotten water tower, conceals in its gorges pools of water called “gueltas”.
The mountain range is echoed in the North by the mythical Tibesti Massif which boasts the Emikoussi volcano, a veritable beacon in the Sahara that used to light up the waters of a huge inland sea of which the only remnant today is Lake Tchad.
Fed by underground springs, the gueltas are the last refuge for animals and plants that the desert, it was thought, had buried under the sand. The Sahara’s entire past can be discovered here, as well as the traces of a “tropical golden age”.
Preview
Made impenetrable for 25 years as a result of war, the gueltas are now accessible, and confirm the existence of miraculous survivors of prehistory, a dozen or so crocodiles that have remained trapped in the receding waters of Lake Tchad, crocodiles with smaller skeletons that speak of abstinence and solitude, and are unaware of the lakes and rivers their ancestors swam in, or of the miracle by which they have survived four thousand years of drought.
Nowhere else on earth can one find two arches like those of Aloba: they are at once grandiose and slender, powerful and elegant beyond belief. The rocky range appears as a succession of brown sandstone walls, made chaotic in appearance under the spectacular effect of erosion: the result is a labyrinth of canyons, plateaux, faults, arches, peaks and columns. Watering holes are a place where man (the Bideyat cattle farmers) and nature must coexist, must respect or fear each other and share the instinct to survive.
Philippe Lafond
