This week’s dream: haunting rock art in the remote Sahara

Rising from the sands at the heart of the Sahara, the Tibesti and Ennedi mountain ranges of northern Chad are fantastically remote and quite “magnificent”, with their volcanic craters and spectacular dunes. They are also home to a dazzling array of ancient rock art, much of it still undocumented, says Lucia van der Post in the FT – making an expedition here, in the hands of the right guides, a fascinating and haunting experience. Depicting warriors, livestock and even boats on lakes, the paintings and engravings date back to the so-called pastoral period, around 5,000BC, before desertification set in. Carved on huge cliffs and in “airy” caves, they are a poignant reminder of a vanished world.

A recent expedition to the area was organised by Tara (the Trust for African Rock Art) and the Italian travel company Spazi d’avventura. Be sure to call on such expert help in planning your own trip: the distances are vast, the terrain harsh, and here and there are landmines, left behind by Colonel Gaddafi’s “ill-fated” invasion in the 1970s. You will need to camp, and the lack of washing facilities can be “trying”. From the capital, N’djamena, it’s a four-day drive to the Ennedi massif, a 44,000 sq km wilderness. En route you pass nomadic people in scenes that seem “almost biblical”.

The rock art in the Ennedi range features cows and dancing people. In the Tibesti mountains (which rise to 3,445 metres, the highest point in the Sahara), it is more varied. The horizons here are huge, the landscape “endlessly shifting” – and the art is superb, including decorated human figures, a life-size elephant engraving, and a “vast” panorama of 18 cows and a bull spread across a single rock. Tara (00 254 20 3884467, www.africanrockart.org) has planned rock art expeditions elsewhere in Africa in 2018. For trips to Chad, try Spazi d’avventura (00 39 02 7063 7138, www.spazidavventura.com).