Our last trip to Chad’s Gerewol in October 2025
Our last trips to the Wodaabe Gerewol in Chad this past October 2025 were a truly exceptional experience for the Kumakonda team and our travelers. We can assure you that they have been the best Gerewol of these 8 years of continuous work in Chad.
As every year we take two groups of travelers from 15 different nationalities to the remote pastures of the Sahel to live a magical encounter with the Wodaabe people and their Gerewol celebration. As all travelers who have accompanied us in recent years to the Gerewol of Chad know, reaching the nomadic camps is no easy task. Last year, in 2024, due to floods, it was a titanic task. This year, without rains, it has been easier but finding the nomads’ position has been again complicated.
The Gerewol Experience for Kumakonda
At Kumakonda we know that arriving and searching for nomads is part of the game and the journey and we continue to bet on it. It is not the destination but the way to get there. We are still old school. It is not about arriving in Chad and taking some pictures with some made-up Wodaabe and flying to the next destination, but to live together and within the context of the nomads, to live the experience of the Gerewol ceremony. Each year different, each year with nuances but always interesting and memorable. Recently we see how other agencies take a small group to the outskirts of N’Djamena to perform a small show out of context. We will never bet on that.
Incredible Gerewol 2025
Why do we say that this year 2025 has been our best trip to the Gerewol? For several reasons. Most of all, in our second group we had a connection with the nomads that we had never experienced before, having access to normally hidden ceremonies and three days of NON STOP dancing, women’s to men’s elections and perfectly crafted makeovers.
- Number of participants much higher than in previous years
- Powerful dances and in the second group, they did not stop for three days.
- Many young women chose the most handsome boys during the day and night.
- Access to rituals normally forbidden to tourists during the second group
- Elaborate make-up
- A lot of girls
- A truly festive atmosphere
- Women with colorful face make-up, something quite unusual too
Days of coexistence with the Wodaabe
During these days of travel we shared intense moments full of discoveries in the heart of the Sahel. From the very first moment, a magnificent atmosphere reigned among the travelers, marked by curiosity, respect and the joy of living this unique celebration.
As we have already told you, this year’s Gerewol festival exceeded all expectations: considered by us as the best in recent years. The two great Wodaabe clans,
The satisfaction of having witnessed one of the most authentic and fascinating celebrations in Africa.
Wodaabe beauty during the Gerewol
As most of you know, the Wodaabe nomads, belonging to the Fulani universe, gather every year at the end of the rainy season to celebrate the Gerewol, a rite of beauty, desire and pride. Men with elongated faces and intense gazes spend hours making themselves up with ocher, charcoal and white powder; they adorn their hair with ostrich feathers and wear tunics embroidered with colors that defy the monotony of the landscape.
When evening falls, they line up and begin to sing, to smile exaggeratedly, showing their white teeth in a gesture of ritual seduction. Their tall, lithe bodies sway to the hypnotic rhythm of mantras repeated a thousand times “we are happy, we are together”, while the women watch them with a mixture of judgment and desire.
To be there is to feel like a witness of a world that refuses to disappear. There are no stages or official cameras: only the dust raised by dancing feet and the echo of chants in the hot air. The nights are long, full of music, laughter and furtive glances under the stars of the Sahel.
Those trips to Gerewol were more than a geographical displacement: they were a return to the essential, to beauty understood as a celebration of life. And with the perseverance of years of work, they opened the door to new scenarios and rituals to which very few have access.
Gerewol 2026
Next year 2026 as always we hope to return to that beautiful scenery of the Sahel, where the Wodaabe make their long transhumance to witness again the cult of beauty and a unique way of life that tends to disappear.
The Gerewol 2026 will be guided by our partner Francesca Giustini again and we will offer two continuous departures with the possibility of continuing to the Ennedi in the north. See you on the Chadian roads.
