Chad

The national museum of Chad, located in the capital N'Djamena, houses the country's most important archaeological and ethnographic collections including the celebrated rock art of the Sahara, dinosaur fossils from the Sahel, and traditional musical instruments and crafts from across Chad's many cultures.

A dramatic sandstone formation in the Sahara where erosion over millennia has carved arches, bridges and towers that glow red and orange at sunset, sheltering prehistoric rock art and relict flora found nowhere else on Earth.

A dramatic natural oasis where a permanent pool of water sits at the bottom of a deep sandstone gorge in the Ennedi desert, famous for the population of desert crocodiles that have survived here for millennia and for the rock art panels that line the gorge walls.

A vast shallow endorheic lake at the southern edge of the Sahara that has been shrinking for decades, yet still supports millions of people and wildlife across four countries, and remains one of the most consequential bodies of water in Africa despite its diminished state.

A chain of lakes in the heart of the Sahara that should not exist: fresh and salt water sitting side by side in an environment where rain is measured in millimetres per year, sustained by a deep fossil aquifer that has been discharging for millennia.

Chad's premier wildlife sanctuary, a vast savanna and forest landscape in the southeast where elephants gather in exceptional numbers, predators patrol the grassland, and a decades-long anti-poaching programme has produced one of central Africa's most compelling conservation success stories.