Over millions of years, wind and water carved the soft sandstone rock into incredible shapes — bridges, arches, mushroom-shaped towers and long corridors. The famous Aloba Arch is thought to be one of the largest natural rock arches in the world. Standing underneath it, the arch stretches high above you like the entrance to a giants' castle.
The rock paintings inside Ennedi's caves and shelters are thousands of years old. They show cattle, horses, giraffes, people dancing, and even crocodiles — which tells us that this area was once much wetter and greener than it is today. Ancient artists mixed minerals with animal fat to make paints that have lasted all this time.
Even now, tucked away in the shaded gorges of Ennedi, you can find small pools of water and patches of plants. Nile crocodiles live in a few of these hidden pools, and they have been there so long, cut off from other crocodiles, that they are considered a unique desert population — crocodiles living in the Sahara!