Kara is one of the most important cities in Togo. In fact, we could say that it is the most important city in the central and northern part of the country. With a population of around 100,000, it is a city where mostly people of Kabyé origin live. This is one of the most important ethnic groups in Togo, where about 12% of the total population belongs to this tribe that moved from the south to seek refuge in the central region of the country, the Kara region.

The main celebration of Kara’s majority ethnic group, the Kabye population, is the evala, a fight between two people whose goal is to knock the opponent to the ground. During the month of July, the city is preparing to host this event that brings together many young kabyé who want to pass into adulthood and, for this reason, must participate in the fight of the evala. Apart from the Kabyé ethnic group, around Kara we find one of the most special ethnic groups on the African continent, the Pays Tamberma or Pays Betammaribé. It is an ethnic group dedicated mainly to agriculture and livestock that stands out for its houses in the forms of fortifications built with mud. It is a group that lives in both Togo and Benin, and where you can be impressed by the beauty of its architecture as well as its traditions, if you are lucky enough to attend a ritual during your stay in this land.

Kara is a city that is located between mountains and, therefore, is surrounded by small villages where you can find different trades such as people who cloth clothes, those who work with forging or those who work with ceramics. These ancestral trades have been maintained until today as Kara is a city full of commerce, with a new market and a lot of movement of people and goods. Consider that this city is located on the main road linking Lomé, in the south of the country, with the border of Burkina Faso, in the north; and for this reason, a stopping point for many traders who stop in Kara and Sokodé to visit their markets and do business.

Further north from Kara, we find another region where Dapaong City is located. Although it is currently a conflict zone due to the presence of jihaddist groups in the area, in that agricultural and rural land we can find some of the shelters that local people used to escape from the enemy tribal groups that wanted to capture them to sell, later, as slaves. The Nok caves, located in the village of Nano, are a clear example of a people who hid and built more than 100 granaries among the rocks of a cliff that dominates the entire plateau of this northern area of Togo.

The Kara region is a discoverable area of Togo. A region that is not as crowded as Kpalimé (if you want to see our experience, click here) or Lomé (to see what we experienced in Lomé, click here); but where you can discover a much more rural and much less known Africa where you will surely enjoy its mountains, its agricultural landscapes and the different ethnic groups that inhabit this region of Togo.

How to get there?

The city of Kara is a city that is very well connected to the south and north of Togo. It is located in the middle of the N1 and is a good base camp to visit the different attractions of this region. It even has an airport that has regular flights from Lomé and is located about 30 kilometers north, right next to the N1.

If you want to get to Kara by public transport, you will have to use buses or also those known as taxi brousse and which are vans that you share with other travelers and that take you from one place to another. The main stations of these vehicles are located at the entrances and exits of the city, depending on the destination where you are going. For example, to go south, you will find the station next to the SHELL petrol station that you find at the junction of the N1 with the N16. If you want to go north, you will have to go to the N1 right at the height of the new Kara market and where you will find taxis and vans that will take you to the north of the country.

55 kilometers north of Kara, driving along the N1 you will reach the town of Kandé, which is the starting point to discover the Koutammakou region and the Pays Tamberma, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. We took a taxi brousse and it cost us 1,000 CFA in June 2022 on a journey that took an hour.

If you want to discover the traditional Kabyè villages to see blacksmiths working with forging or women making pottery, we recommend that you head towards the mountains outside Kara. We did a circular route. First, we headed towards Ketao on the N16 and just before Lassa we entered a dirt road that winded through the Kabyè mountains. We ended up going out on the main road that runs from Lassa to Tchare and Pya. There we turned off along different paths in order to get to know the traditional trades of the area. We did this trip with Kamue, a very nice taxi driver from Kara who you can call on the following phone (he does not have WhatsApp) +228 90 25 08 96; or contact Leopold directly who is a local city guide and you can write by WhatsApp at +228 90 29 34 26.

If you want to get even further north of Kara, in the Savannah region, you will have to drive along the N1 and past Kandé, continue driving through the Kéran National Park until you reach Mango, the first city in this region. Afterwards, you can continue advancing to Tandjouaré and Dapaong before arriving at the border with Burkina Faso. When we went there, this area was in an important situation of instability due to the presence of small jihaddist groups that had attacked different militaries and villages in this area of Togo that was totally controlled by the military to face this terrorist threat. We took all measures to make a round trip to the Nok caves that are located in the town of Nano, west of Tandjouaré and are one of the most beautiful refuges that we can find in the north of Togo. To check safety in that area, we recommend that you contact Koulbême, the official guide of the caves who lives in the region and will be able to warn you about how the whole region is and how to access the Nok caves safely. His phone is +228 92 51 15 86. From Kara to Tandjouaré you have to count about 2 and a half hours of travel where you will have to pass different military checkpoints managed by the government of Togo. 

If you want to go south of Kara, there you can discover the towns of Bafilo, Aledjo and Sokodé. Bafilo is located only about 23 kilometers south following the N1. The Aledjo Wildlife Reserve with its fault lies between the populations of Kpewa and Aleheridè. To get there, you will have to turn off in a small ring road that goes out to the west of the country and passes through the middle of this reserve. Finally, to get to Sokodé you can take a taxi brousse from Kara that for a price of 1,500 CFA will take you to the Kotokoli village in a journey of 72 kilometers that you will do in approximately one hour. From Sokodé, you will find different buses that will take you to Lomé such as the Nagode Bus that for a price of 5,500 CFA and in a journey of 6-7 hours will take you to the capital of the country, located next to the Atlantic Ocean.

Kara is a city that is very well connected to get there, although you will have to watch out for truck traffic driving on the N1 from Lomé to the north of Togo and Burkina Faso; as well as finding the best way to access the different points of interest that we will highlight below.

What to do in Kara?

In the surroundings of the city of Kara, you can do the following activities:

– Discover the Otamari village and one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the Pays Tamberma and its particular constructions

North of Kara, just at the height of Kandé, you will find the beginning of the Koutammakou region, better known as Pays Tamberma and which is the home of the Otamari people. This town, which we also find in Benin and is known as Pays Betammaribè, stands out for being a village of farmers who live in very special mud constructions: the tekyete. These miniature castles are wonderful architectural examples that you can discover if you visit this region, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To get to the otamari village, you will have to drive along the N1 to Kandé, which is 55 kilometers from Kara; and from there go into the mountains to discover the curiosities of this ancestral town. Think that at the beginning of the road you will find a hut where they charge a tourist tax to visit this region and that costs 1,500 CFA per person. The best way to visit this town will be to do it with a local guide like David who can be located by WhatsApp at the following phone +228 91 83 39 90.

Apart from its homes and its magnificent surroundings, the Pays Tamberma also stands out for being a place of ancestral rituals and traditions, such as the dance des fouets that we had the opportunity to see in Quaterma, where teenagers make the step to adult life in a ceremony in front of the entire town where they fight to flagella themselves with whips. If you want to know more information about this whole region, you can see it in the following link.

– Take a circular tour through Tcharé, Pya and Mount Kabyé to discover the traditional blacksmiths, the women making pottery and the Kabyè villages

Just outside Kara, we find different rural populations located in the mountains known as Mount Kabyé. If there, suddenly, you hear the noise of stone knocking, it means that you will be near some traditional workshop that works with wrought iron. A very interesting experience to know in order to see the harsh conditions with which they work and the whole process of how they manage to make this type of iron. These traditional workshops are mainly found in the towns of Pya and Tcharé.

We were lucky enough to see a traditional wrought iron workshop. There, a few young and forced boys used different tools such as a stone to act as a hammer, an air fan to rekindle the fire, or tongs to turn the iron; and with their hands they worked to make wrought iron and different iron objects, such as shovels.

After putting the iron on the fire, one of the boys would take a large stone and begin to chop the iron itself in order to give it the desired shape. He lifted the stone to the top and, with all his might, lowered the stone to the ground to strike the hot iron. The noise of the stone-throwing was heard from a distance, and this ritual was performed until the young man got tired, and then replaced by another boy. Seeing this process was one of the best experiences of our tour of Kara in order to discover ancestral trades that are still put into practice today in order to manufacture iron objects and then sell them in the market.

Apart from craft workshops, around Tcharé and Mount Kabyé we will also find traditional Kabyé villages that stand out for being located in the mountains, the places where they once took refuge from other enemy tribes. Their houses are known as sokala and consist of circular houses made of mud and with thatched roofs located next to ancient trees and fields cultivated by the family itself. These houses are built adjacent to each other, resulting in a circular outdoor patio. Sokala can only be entered by one access point. At this access point, there is usually another circular mud house that serves as a lobby and from where the whole family enters and leaves to the outside.

In and around Pya, you can also discover different places that work with ceramics. This profession, where women predominate, is one of the other historical trades in this region. Women continue the tradition of making ceramics entirely by hand, without any lathe. They are usually placed in an outdoor place next to their house, and use an open cooking technique where they light a small fire on a base of dry branches and from there work with ceramics.  

Visiting the traditional blacksmiths of Tcharé, women making pottery or a traditional kabyé house is one of the activities you must do if you are in Kara, the most important city for this ethnic group. We were lucky enough to go with Leopold, a guide from Kara, who took us to different places in the mountains of Kara in order to know the architecture and characteristics of the Kabyé population, one of the most important tribal groups in Togo.

– Meet the weavers of Bafilo

Bafilo is a small village located next to the N1, about 23 kilometers south of Kara. In this quiet place, you can discover different weavers who work with weaving in a traditional way. These take very long bands of threads that they will then sew together with the help of a loom and a very fast synchrony of foot and hand movements. With these threads, they will form pieces with which to manufacture all kinds of things such as bags, clothes, tablecloths, etc …

The best known place is the cooperative of weavers of Bafilo located in the neighborhood of Didaourè, where you will find people of different ages who learn the traditional trade of weaver and also a shop where you can take home some souvenirs. If you want to know more, you can watch this short video in this link.

Visit the Sokodé market and meet the Kotokoli tribe

Sokodé is the second most important city in Togo, behind Lomé. With a similar number of inhabitants to Kara today, this village is located about 72 kilometers south of Kara on the N1. It is a mostly Muslim village where the Temba population, also known as kotokoli, lives.

The word kotokoli comes from Koto Kolim and means, etymologically, “those who give and receive”, since its population is mainly engaged in the livestock trade. However, the word kotokoli took on a pejorative connotation and for this reason, many people call them Temba people. As good traders, one of the main activities to do when visiting Sokodé is to walk through its lively markets, where you will find animals and many other things, such as food, clothes, appliances and hundreds of people who, in colorful suits, work as traders.

The city of Sokodé also stands out for the number of minarets that exist, since it is a mainly Muslim city governed by a representative system in which the municipal administration participates and also different chiefs of different clans that have historically ruled the city. During the third month of the Islamic lunar year, Sokodé celebrates a ritual known as the knife dance which is a traditional event not to be missed if you are in the city.

Sokodé is a very long city, where you can move with the different Zem that go with their motorcycles waiting to take new customers; and where you will find accommodation, restaurants and many services. Despite being the second largest city in the country, it is a quiet city with a large market to discover and different tribal groups such as the Kotokoli, Holi or Fulani.

– Visit the Nok Caves in the Dapaong Region

In an impressive landscape, behind spectacular cliffs 437 meters high, we find the Nok caves, a place that served as a refuge for local populations during the raids of different tribal groups that took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and where they sought slaves to sell to the European powers.

These caves, located in the village of Nano about 30 kilometers from Dapaong, the last city before reaching Burkina Faso, were located within the rock of the cliffs and are a testament to the ancestral ingenuity of the local populations where they established more than 130 centennial barns, built in the traditional style with local materials such as mud,  stone and straw, among others. There, food, tools, small statuettes were kept as protective divinities and women, children and elderly people who took refuge from attacks also slept, while many men fought against enemy tribes. It was an inaccessible refuge and that, to this day, has still been maintained as it was.

The beauty and simplicity of this place is undoubtedly one of the stops we liked the most during our trip to Togo. However, due to the security conditions of the region with the presence of jihaddist groups, it is essential to check how the area is in order to access it. We contacted the official guide of the caves, Koulbême, who you can locate by sending a Whatsapp to his phone which is +228 92 51 15 86. He is working tirelessly so that these caves have their historical and tourist recognition, and will organize the management of the visit.

Visiting the Nok caves means immersing yourself in an unforgettable landscape of indescribable attraction. The journey between fields and small villages and the ascent to the top of the cliff from where you can see the entire plain of Dapaong is one of the most beautiful paths we have done. In addition, the history hidden behind these caves nailed to the rock and barns make it a unique visit in a place very well cared for and respected by the local population and for all the memory it represents. 

– Visit the Aledjo Wildlife Reserve and marvel at its fault

The Aledjo reserve is a reserve of about 765 hectares that extends between the central regions of the country and Kara, near the towns of Kpéwa and Alehéridè, both located on the N1. There, apart from small antelopes, you can see different species of primates such as baboons. But Aledjo is mainly known for its fault that you will find if you take the road that is further west and that goes from Kpéwa to Alehéride.

This fault consists of an impressive cut made in the rock by the German colonizers when they wanted to make their way to the north of the country. To this day, it has still remained intact and is a very photogenic place to take different photographs with this rock formation located right in the middle of the road.

– See Evala, the initiation ritual of the Kabyé population

Kara is a region mainly inhabited by the Kabyé ethnic group which has a very interesting ritual known as Evala. Evala is the first step that every man who wants to move on to adult life has to take. If in the otamari people, this ritual was celebrated with the dance des fouets (to know more, you can click here) or in the kingdom of Abomey with the dance of veneration towards the god Zakpata (to know more, you can click here); in Kara every teenager participates in Evala at some point.

Evalo means in the Kaybé language “fighter”. For this reason, this dance revolves around struggle. Teenagers who want to become men will have to fight each other in order to knock down their opponent, as if it were a judo match. With their hands and body, they will have to fight for 3 years against different opponents to prove that they are all men. This ceremony usually takes place during the first weeks of July, where the most important day is the second Saturday of each July. Therefore, if you are in the area, you cannot miss this traditional ritual practiced by the kabyé population.

Where to sleep in Kara and its surroundings?

Sokodé and Kara are the second and third most important cities in the country, respectively. There, you will find different accommodations to discover the central region of the country and the Kara region. Below, we will highlight the places where we slept in June 2022 during our public transport trip through Togo:

– Appartament Marie Antoinette: This accommodation located in the city of Kara, in Togo, is one of the best places to do base camp and visit the Koutammakou region, which is about 75 minutes to the north, as well as the surroundings of Kara, a large city where you will find all kinds of services. Here, you can find apartments with kitchen, wifi, refrigerator, air conditioning and also sheltered parking. We stayed there for 6 days while we waited for confirmation where the ritual of initiation into adult life would be held in a small village in the Pays Tamberma. A good option if you are north of Togo. For more information, you can click here or call Marie Antoinette at +228 90 05 73 13.

– Bonne Auberge Sokodé: This accommodation is located north of Sokodé, right next to the N1 main road and next to different restaurants. Omar is their owner and will assist you with open arms. They have different spacious interior rooms, ideal for rest and rest during your tour of Togo. It also offers a restaurant. From there, you can go all the way to the market or city center with Zems for around 250 CFA. This property is one of the best value options to stay in Sokodé. For more information, you can call or write a Whatsapp to Omar on the following phone: +228 90 02 78 45.  

Our route

DAY 1: After the day before we left behind the Pays Betammaribè, crossed one of the most rural and quiet borders during our trip to Africa and rode some motorcycles for an hour on dirt roads between mountains and a spectacular landscape crossing the Koutammakou region of the otamari village, we woke up for the first time in Togo,  in the apartments of Marie Antoinette de Kara.

Today was the first day in the country and therefore, it was time to do different procedures that we always used to do in the first days. In Africa, the procedures are not usually fast, so we expected a long day ahead. Fortunately, Togo shared the same currency as Benin, the African francs, so we were able to skip the currency exchange management.

We also went looking for a SIM card in order to obtain Internet data and have telephone coverage for Togo. Unlike other countries, we could not get the card from anyone under an umbrella with the emblem of Togocel, the country’s main telecommunications company. We had to go to the headquarters to do all the paperwork from there. So we walked to the office on the outskirts of town. It was a hot and humid day, but when we entered the office we had to shelter ourselves by the force of the air conditioning.

There, there were quite a few people queuing, so we took our turn and waited seated on some benches while we watched the different employees who were at about 5 tables serving customers. On television, he had announced the corresponding shift number. The pace was slow and we waited for about two hours until it was our turn, we presented our passport and we were able to get the SIM card with Internet data to be able to travel through Togo during the following weeks. First task done.

Now it was time to go to the market for a moment to buy different groceries to store in the apartment, which had a kitchen, so we could cook some meals at home. The market was full of fruit and vegetable stalls, so choosing one was a difficult task. In the end, we stopped at a stall where the fruit was very beautiful and bought a few mangoes that was our usual fruit in our African routine. On the way back, we stopped with a kind of warehouse where they sold different types of food and grabbed pasta, tomato sauce and some yogurts. We already had the purchase done. Second task finished.

Finally, came the most arduous task of all: getting the visa for Togo. We entered through the Natoba cross-border crossing, in the Pays Tamberma. There, there was a room with four policemen who wrote down the names of people passing by and put a stamp on your passport, but to get a stay in Togo of more than 7 days, it was necessary to go to the police station in Kara or Lomé and get a 30-day tourist visa. 

To get this visa, we first had to go to the OTR post office which was next to the main junction of Kara, on the road leading to the south of the country. There, we paid a stamp for each of us for 10,000 CFA (about 15 euros in exchange) that would be used to process our visas. With this stamp and our passport, we just needed to go to the main police station to be given the 30-day tourist visa to visit Togo. It was a simple step but, because of the policeman on duty, it became an odyssey.

We arrived at the police station and the guard, with a powerful and serious tone of voice, told us that there you could not get the visa since we had to get some stamps in another office. His face was one of surprise when he saw that we were showing him the stamps we had bought. He made us stop by in a small room and told us to wait and he’d come talk to us. We sat for a while in chairs in front of an office table with a computer from the year of the itch. Suddenly, the door opened, and the same policeman appeared with faces of sour apples. He asked us for his passport, looked at the stamps we had been given to Nadoba and threw his passports on the table… With those passports we couldn’t get the tourist visa, he said. We had done it wrong and now it was impossible to fix that matter and get the visa. He raised his arms and gestured as if he were performing in one of Kara’s most important theaters… We, patient and quiet, told him that we had been told that we could do the tourist visa and that we had even seen it on the Togo immigration website (that was a lie) and that with the stamps we had bought from the OTR, he had to process the visas for free. The policeman was silent, and waited and nodded… He went out. It was one of the many theatre scenes we’d experienced in Africa where they try to get you nervous to give some money and thus earn a paycheck. After a while, the policeman came back with a bad face and seeing that we were staying in the same position, he said the typical final sentence of: “It’s okay, although you can’t do it I’ll make an exception for you and process your visa!” We thanked him for his work (although perhaps we should have complained about his malpractice) and came out with the visa in our passports, which was the most important thing. Finally, the third task was completed!

It was already getting dark in Kara and there was a lot of movement of people in the streets who would have to return home after a day of work in the second most important city in the country. We, to celebrate all the efforts we had achieved, decided to go to dinner at a pizzeria called Kara Pizza (a very original name) run by Stefan, a Frenchman from Marseille who had been living in Kara for eleven years.

We made a few beers and pizza each for a price of 6 euros and had a great dinner on the small terrace outside an unlit dirt street. Electricity and street lighting in Togo and many African countries stand out for being scarce, but we were lucky that the pizzeria was close to Marie Antoinette’s apartments, so we went to rest after a long day of management. To solve the slowness of bureaucracy in many African countries you need a lot of patience and, above all, time.

DAY 2: Today we had met with Leopold, a person who recommended us Euloge of Benin. We had called her the day before, and despite her African French where she ate most words, we were able to make ourselves understood in order to stay in our apartment and talk about the activities we could do in Kara.

We were having a quiet breakfast in the apartment on toast with butter when suddenly the door opened and a man in his 50s appeared (getting age right in Africa is mission impossible), short and squishy, wearing old jeans and a cap. It was Leopold who had come straight to see us. He sat on the couch like he was at home and went for work – how many days did we have in Kara?

We introduced ourselves, chatted for a while and at the end we told him that we would stay a few days in Kara to make time to see a traditional dance in the Pays Tamberma that took place the following Wednesday. He told us he knew a certain David, with whom we already had contact. There, all the people who are dedicated to being a guide or tourism know each other. Since it was Saturday, we still had a few days to do some activity around Kara, although we also wanted to rest one day.

Leopold, who spoke as angry, told us that we could visit the villages that work the forge, take a tour of the Kara mountains and visit a local community. He kept repeating that we didn’t worry, that with Leopold we would be very safe and that he would take care of us as if we were his children. But the angry, rude tone did not help to understand this message… Leopold was a special guide, but we had very good references from Euloge, so we said ok.

So Leopold immediately called a taxi driver friend of his, Kamue, who was also in our apartment afterwards. We negotiated a price for the tour and got into the taxi to the outskirts of town. We went to the main junction of Kara and there we followed the road to where the OTR stamp office was where we had bought the stamps for the visa. That road ended in Benin, but we turned off onto a dirt road that zigzaged up. And it is that the city of Kara stands out for being in an area of mountains.

The scenery was very beautiful, although the day did not accompany as there were heavy clouds that threatened rain. Next to the roads, small mud villages and plantations where you saw people working the land or carrying logs on bicycles or over their heads.

After this first scenic driving route, we came to another road and Kamue stopped on the shoulder. We went down and Leopold told us that we would go see a village of the Kabyé tribe. We passed through some orchards where we came across a snake that scared us while the children who accompanied us laughed at our jumps.

Finally, after passing by a large baobab, we arrived at a small round clay house where we entered and walked out into a courtyard where there was a set of adjoining round houses and that was where the family lived and also kept the animals. These mud houses had a thatched roof that was supported by wooden logs.

There, we were able to greet the head of the family and who was the oldest gentleman and sit for a while while Leopold spoke to them in his local language. That family spoke no French. We took the opportunity to make a magic game with some stones that left the children very delighted, and we shared some time together among the noises of cocks and a drop of rain that fell outside. We were in a rural dwelling in the Kara region, characteristic of the Kabyé tribe, a tribal group that lives mainly on subsistence agriculture.

We said goodbye to that family and returned to the car where Kamue was waiting for us. After a short stop at a memorial to the soldiers who died during the war for Independence, we advanced until we reached a church that had spectacular views over the region. Leopold told us that he was Catholic and that there was a very important Catholic mission in the Pya area.

Finally, we continued with our circular route until we reached the village of Tcharé. There, after asking different motorcyclists, we came to some small houses from where a very loud noise came: we were in an area where they worked the forge. We got out of the car and drove over to see it and were amazed at this craft and the strength that is needed.

In a circular house, there was a fire on the ground that was rekindled for a muscular guy without a shirt who was sweaty. With a fan, he was animating the flames while on the other side, a boy with the muscles that came out of his back and arms, chopped the iron with a large stone forging a shovel, one of the tools they were building in that case. In that small circular space there was also another boy who was resting and who was exchanging with the person who chopped the stone.

It was a mechanical job, where the noise of stone chopping the iron became a continuous soundtrack interrupted only by the shavings of the fire and the air of the fan. They spent hours doing that craft in order to build tools that they would then sell so people could use them in the field. Forging was one of the most complicated and hard trades we had seen on the African continent.

After this experience, we ended up on the road from Kandé to Kara that we had already done the day we had arrived in the country. Leopold, happy to have shown us a more rural part of the region, and Kamue, happy to have accompanied us, left us at the apartment and we went to eat at one of the establishments we liked most in Kara: a stop in the street where a woman cooked rice with delicious sauce. A dish and a drink cost 1,100 CFA per person, 1.70€ in exchange.

In the afternoon, we stayed in the accommodation resting and preparing for tomorrow’s marathon day on Sunday. We had met Kamue who would accompany us to Tandjouaré, a village north of Togo, where we had met Koulbême who was the guide of the Nok Gruttes, beautiful caves in the Dapaong region.

After hearing Dapaong’s name so many times, we could finally pay a quick day visit despite the instability in the area due to the presence of jihadist groups. For years we had known Dapaong electronically, since this was the region where Joan Soler, a priest who was at our parish center of Sant Josep, lived and worked as a missionary, and who just returned to Catalonia when we wanted to go see him a few years ago. Now, after a few years, we could go to see this more rural area of Togo and discover incredible caves where different tribal groups took refuge. The next day it was time to get up very early as a journey of 2 hours and a half awaited us to reach Tandjouaré. 

DAY 3: Today was a special day. After hearing the name Dapaong many times, we would set foot in this province. The place where Joan Soler, a missionary with whom we shared different courses at the parish recreation of Sant Josep in Girona, stayed for many years. Unfortunately, he was no longer there and the situation in this area, as Joan told us, was not the best, with the presence of military groups trying to control the advance of jihhadism in the region; but by taking preventive measures such as not sharing the direct location with anyone or not having said anything about our plan, we were able to spend a very beautiful day in the Dapaong region.

The day started very early, as a car route of more than two hours awaited us until we reached Tandjouaré. Very early, Kamue was already waiting for us in front of Marie Antoinette’s apartments. He was a kind and trustworthy person, and would take the opportunity to pick up different passengers along the way and make a long and profitable route for his business. So just as it was still dawn, we got into Kamue’s car and headed north of Kara.

Kamue was taking the opportunity to honk the horn when he saw people standing on the road to see if they wanted to get into his taxi. We went up some women and also a guy heading north. In a ramshackle car, with seats of the year of itching and with a loud noise from the engine that was counterbalanced by the high volume of the radio, we drove to Sansanné-Mango where much of the passengers descended. After this town, it was 45 minutes until our final destination. In this last part of the route, we already had to pass through different military checkpoints located along the N1. Finally, after 2 hours and 30 minutes by car we arrived at the junction where we had met Koulbême, Nok’s grotto guide and who was waiting for us on a motorcycle to make the last part of the journey with him.

We said goodbye to Kamue, who would return us to Kara after a few hours, and we changed the car for the motorcycle of Koulbême, a boy who was already waiting for us at the junction with his motorcycle and with whom we would advance on dirt roads for about 40 minutes of travel until we reached the top of the Nok caves. We traded the asphalt for the track and headed inland into Dapaong province in an incredible rural landscape.

We passed through different villages, people on bicycles, people on foot, fields that were being plowed with mules and a green and totally rural environment. We were in an agricultural region that was located at the foot of a small mountain that protruded and that was our goal. At the top of that hill emerging from the earth were the Nok caves, our final destination. The motorcycle trip, where the 3 of us were well taken, was surely one of the most beautiful journeys we have made on the continent since we were in a remote place where we were soaking up a very authentic Africa.

After leaving the village of Nano behind, we started climbing up some steeply steep zigzag roads. The bike here slowed down as the weight of the passengers was noticeable. We passed through small forests of trees, paths that were erected into the trees and the road became narrower and narrower until it became a path that passed by some houses until we came to a small UNESCO sign where the Nok caves were announced. After more than 3 hours of driving from Kara, we arrived at a very special and unknown place, which is currently under study to obtain the UNESCO World Heritage seal.

The Nok Caves are caves that house much of the history of the local population that currently inhabits the Nano area. There, they took refuge while different raids were taking place by enemy tribal groups that sought to capture people in order to sell them as slaves and obtain an economic and predominant profit against the European powers. The population decided to hide right in the center of the cliff with the construction of caves and granaries where they kept food to feed for the duration of the conflict.

From there they could see the arrival of the enemy and children, the elderly and women could be in a safe place while men descended to the plateau to fight. It was a perfect hiding place, since nobody could imagine that an entire population could take refuge on that cliff that paid the consequences of the instability generated by the slave trade and the expansion of many enemy tribal groups such as the Dagomba or the Chakosi, from the current area of Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast.

In order to see the caves, you must first go down some stairs nailed to the rock and that take you to visit the more than 130 barns that were built on the rock. You can enter the cliff itself where the stone was dug in order to hide the local population and store fresh food. The different granaries are mainly cylindrical in shape, and some also had a divine background, symbolizing the protection of the people against the enemy.

Walking through that shelter that held so much history was a brutal experience. In Koulbême’s eyes you could see the passion for keeping alive the memory of that population that, today, lives from agriculture on the Nano plateau but had to take refuge in that small village created on top of the cliff and that today is known as Nok caves (or also Nano caves).

After the visit of this unique and spectacular place, we faced the return journey, but before that it was time to be captivated by the beauty of the plain of the Dapaong region. From the top of the cliff we had incredible views of all that rural environment that we had crossed by motorcycle. In fact, you could see the dirt road that we had drawn and the different rural villages that, day by day, worked in the fields protected by the beauty and immensity of this cliff.

On the way back, as we passed through fields, small villages and people transporting goods up and down, we understood the beauty of the place that Joan Soler had told us so much, and we understood why he had fallen in love with that land and those people who seemed so humble and so simple. It was a very rural area and a splendid environment, so we made this part of the trip with a smile on our lips that did not leave while we told ourselves again that we were lucky to discover places as unthinkable and remote as the Nok caves and the Nano area. Lucky to be able to visit it, to be able to go, to be able to experience it and to be able to explain it. Thanks Nano, thanks Nok and thank you Koulbême.

We returned to the junction and wrote to Kamue who told us he was getting ready to leave. This meant starting to look for passengers in Tandjouaré considering that he had to save two spaces for us. While we waited, we were talking to Koulbême about the need to safeguard this area from jihaddist threats and to have the right promotion to encourage responsible tourism in this region. They were hoping to be approved by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site because it would open many doors to them in order to maintain and preserve the beauty of this region and the Nok caves and to have a new source of income so much needed in a population that lives fully from agriculture.

Finally, after a while, Kamue’s car stopped on the shoulder of where we were sitting while we ate a mango we had bought at a stall across the road. We said goodbye very gratefully to Koulbême for his welcome and hospitality, and got into Kamue’s car that was already full of passengers. He looked at us with a smile under his nose saying that we would make room, that it would only be a moment, so we climbed the children on our lap and started making the route back to Kara.

Obviously, the moment Kamue had told us was a good time. There, in Africa, taxi drivers take advantage of every last space of the car to be able to carry goods and people, and there we were as an example, where there were more than 9 people in a car, very narrow and crushed but with the same objective: to be able to reach the final destination soon and safely.

We arrived back in Kara after a long day on the road and an amazing visit to the Dapaong region and Nok Caves. That day had been a gift: we had made incredible weather without rain, we had had great company with Kamue and Koulbême and we had set foot in an agricultural region of Togo that had left us speechless. It was time to assimilate everything experienced on that great day and our visit in caves nestled in a cliff that emerged from the town of Nano and where the Nok caves were, a historical and incredible refuge that today kept all its history alive thanks to the conservation of the local population.

DAY 4 and DAY 5: We spent these two days resting in the city of Kara. It was two days with isolated showers and where we waited to attend the Dansa des Fouets ceremony. Many times, it is good to take a break after so many days of travel and we had already been traveling by public transport between Benin and the north of Togo for a month.

We took advantage of our stay in Marie Antoinette’s apartments to advance our blog and write pending articles from different African countries that we had visited. We also took the opportunity to visit the Kara market, which was located in a new place a few minutes walk from where we were.

We also did some food tour of Kara. For lunch, we had a meal in an establishment on the street for less than 2 euros, and for dinner we visited one of the best known pizzerias in Kara run by Stefan, a Marseillaise who has been living in this Togolese city for many years.

These two days were a kind of kitkat in order to savor all the experiences lived and to prepare us for the little less than three months that were ahead on the African continent. We talked to David from the Pays Tamberma and, indeed, he confirmed that on Wednesday there would be the Dansa des Fouets ceremony, so we recharged our batteries to continue living new experiences during this special sabbatical.

DAY 6: Today was the big day. The day we’ve been waiting for a week. The day we wanted it to arrive after 5 nights in Kara. The day it had taken us so long to guess to know where and, above all, when they did the ceremony of the passage of children to adults to a community in the Pays Tamberma.

The day started out rainy. Luckily, the rain decreased and we were able to reach Quaterma after much uncertainty in order to witness the Dansa des Fouets, a ceremony where children have to show in the village that they are ready to face adult life. We explain all the experience in the Pays Tamberma article, so if you want to read it, you can click here.

It was an intense day, full of emotions. Really, a totally African day, although we are not very favorable to prejudice. The day had begun with a taxi driver who had not shown up at the agreed place, had continued with our presence at the house of a guy who was to take us to the place of the ceremony but who had left for a while. There, we yawned and hung out with the children in a spectacular setting. And finally, we witnessed one of the most unlikely dances we have seen in our lives. A day full of surprises!

In the afternoon, we arrived in Kara after this unimaginable experience and there we said goodbye to Alo. Without him, we would not have been able to see what we had seen. We went to Marie Antoinette’s apartments to pick up our backpacks and say goodbye to our hostess. And we walked through the streets of Kara one last time, after 5 days in this city, and before taking a shared taxi to Sokodé, our next destination to continue traveling to the coast of the country.

In the evening, we arrived in Sokodé, where we stayed in a small accommodation next to the road, and where we took the opportunity to buy the bus tickets that the next day would take us to Lomé. However, we would have the morning off to visit the market that took place that Thursday. We went to dinner at a place that was right in front of the hotel and went to sleep still in shock with everything we had experienced that day in the Pays Tamberma.  

DAY 7: We woke up to the noise of buses, trucks, motorcycles and cars passing in front of our accommodation. That road was the main road in the country and it was very busy that morning. We had breakfast with Omar, the owner of the guesthouse, and took the taxi motorbikes with our luggage to go for a walk around the market.

Thursday was market day in Sokode. A very different market from what we had seen, for example, in Dantokpa (Cotonou) -if you want to read our experience, click here– or what we would see in the Grand Marché de Lomé (to know more, click here). That market was more rural, with the presence of live animals and many fruit stalls and street food. But it was an African market and, therefore, its visit was a must.

We were walking for a while along the esplanade of the market, with the ground still reddish and a little muddy from the rains and looking at the different stalls that were there. We talked to the people greeting us, and drove to a restaurant on the main road to eat a nice plate of spaghetti. After a while observing the outside world from inside that place, we grabbed our backpacks and walked to the Nagode Transfer station from where the bus departed for Lomé.

The rain made an appearance just as we boarded the bus that would take us on a journey of about 5-6 hours to the capital, in Lomé, where Louis and Martine were waiting for us. We left, definitively, the north of Togo after having enjoyed visits in incredible environments such as the Pays Tamberma or the Nok caves, and very diverse experiences. An area that we had no expectations of, but after a week, we ended up loving it!