Basic information
Location: Benin, Ghana & Togo 
Dates: Departing on - 21.07.10, 04.08.10, 01.09.10, 13.10.10, 24.11.10, 31.12.10 (voodoo festival), 16.02.11, 30.03.11, 11.05.11, 22.06.11, 03.08.11, 14.09.11, 26.10.11, 07.12.11, 28.12.11.
Duration: 12 days
Group size: 2 - 10+ people
Price: From £1362 - £2550 (depending on size of group) including full-board. Excluding flights, dinner day 1 & 12, lunch day 12, all drinks and visa. Extra single room £380

What will I be doing on this trip?
This 12 days cultural festival tour gives you a rare opportunity to witness some of the most ancient and traditional festivals. The Akwisadae festival in Ghana of the Royal palace of Kumasi, and the Egun traditional festival of Fon and Yorouba in the South of Benin performed by the secret mask society of Egungun. You will also be able to witness an Ashanti traditional funeral ceremony, fire dances and Voodoo ceremonies. The company who operates this tour not only has more than 23 years experience in the area, but has also helped organisations such as National Geographic and The Discovery Channel with their local expertise. Each departure will fit in with one of the two following festivals:

There are certain days each year on the Ashanti calendar set aside for a celebration at the Royal Palace. This ceremony is called Akwasidae. During the celebration, the King is seated under a spectacular umbrella of colourful, draped cloth and is adorned in vivid cloth and massive gold jewellery which is centuries old (the Ashanti gold jewellery and masks are considered masterpieces of African art).

This traditional ceremony takes place in one of the last African Kingdoms to have kept its ancient rituals alive. We will live the splendour, the flavour, and the atmosphere of the grand monarchs of the forests of yesteryear.

Egungun is a very powerful masks secret society. Egungun masques are the reincarnation of deceased people. These masks are known and feared for their aggressiveness and the unpredictable way of moving that often make the crowd escapes from their charges. Intensively colourful the masks are covered of a multitude of pieces of cloth in many tones of red.

My holiday itinerary...
Day 1: Lome (Togo) or Accra (Ghana).
Transfer from airport to hotel. O/N Ibis or Novotel.
Lome and Accra are very close, the tour can start from either one or the other capital. This depends on the flight availability and the time of year.

Day 2: From the capital of Togo to Volta estuary. Lome/Accra - Kokrobite
Accra, the capital of Ghana, has maintained its unique identity despite the fast paced development currently underway in this intriguing African city.

Our first visit of the day is to people specialized in building fantasy coffins. These handcraft-coffins are in shape of: fruits, animals, fish, cars, airplanes, etc. and only their limit is the intended occupant’s imagination. Started in Africa, these flamboyant coffin designs are collected and exposed in museums. On the agenda is also a visit to the National Museum, one of the first works of independent Ghana. The idea inspiring the Museum is to relate Ghana art to the rest of the continent and to prove the existence of an African history as part of general history of the humanity.

We end our day exploring the old quarter of James Town, home of the local population known as the 'Ga'. 

Day 3: Castles of slave’s trade. Kokrobite – Elmina
Elmina Castle is the oldest permanent building in Africa. The Portuguese built the castle in the 15th century. At different times in the castles chequered past it has been used to trade gold, ivory, and slaves.

Outside the castle, there is a wonderful fishing village complete with a harbour full of large colourful fishing canoes. Every day these canoes are piloted by the skilled fishermen who confront the strong ocean for their livelihood. The alleys in the old town have a lively atmosphere, harkening back to a time when Elmina was a wild colonial town. In the old town we turn out attention to the Posuban. The Posuban are the shrines of the ‘Asafo companies’. It is at these shrines the warriors used to place their offerings on the large colourful statues.

Day 4: Golden forest. Elmina – Kumasi
Kumasi is the historical and spiritual capital of the old Ashanti Kingdom. The Ashanti people were one of the most powerful nations in Africa until the end of the 19th century, when the British annexed the Ashanti country to their Gold Coast colony.

The honour offered today to the Asantehene (=King) is the best evidence of the past splendour and strength of Ashanti. Today with nearly one million inhabitants, Kumasi is a sprawling city with a fantastic central market, one of the biggest in Africa. Every kind of Ashanti craft (leather goods, pottery, kente cloth) is found here, along with just about every kind of tropical fruit and vegetable.

On the agenda is a visit to the Ashanti Cultural Center, which has a rich collection of Ashanti artefacts housed in a wonderful reproduction of an Ashanti house.

Day 5: Ashanti, African kingdom. Kumasi – Techiman
Sunday morning Kumasi wakes up slowly. It’s noticeable with less traffic, which allows us to have a good look at the specialties of this town: the colonial buildings around the market, the hand painted signs – painted in a real ‘urban art’ style, the train which passes through the market and sometimes stops right in the middle, the devoted churchgoer on the way to church dressed up in their best Sunday dress.  The visit of Kumasi comes to an end with all these last ‘looks of the town’, and the visit at the Royal Palace Museum, which opens the gate to a unique collection of gold jewels worn by the Ashanti court.

Day 6: From the forest to the savannah. Techiman – Tamale
In the Brong Afo region we will leave the main road and follow a track to a sacred forest. The population living there considers the Monas and Colobus monkeys as their totems. As result we will witness the largest community of these species in the world. Walk in the forest trough giant trees and a green emerald light. We will meet plenty of sacred monkeys.

At Kintampo, we are the edge of Kumasi forest. Waterfalls offer us a breathe of cool air before reaching the North and its Sahel weather: drier and hotter. The landscape will change from the lush forest to the wild savannah spread with large Baobab trees. We will stop in tiny villages of Gondja tribe and appreciate the great sense of African hospitability. Gondja are farmers and the villages are surrounded by plantations of millet, cotton, and yam.

Day 7: Witches village. Tamale – Kara
A track brings us to the Togo boarder to a rarely visited region. In this region of the savannah live the Dagomba. They build round clay huts with thatched roof. The village chief’s house is characteristic by being a large hut with a central pole supporting the roof. It’s here the council elders meet. The entry is framed with pieces of coloured burned clay

In one of these villages we meet a very large settlement of … witches, exiled from their villages. We will discuss with them about their life in the village and how they are protected by a special shrine, in charge of “cleaning” their spirits from bad wills.

Further to the East we visit a region inhabited by the Bassar. They live in large clay houses with conical roofs and keep the secret of the very old procedure of iron production: a mixing of geology and alchemy knowledge.  For example: the needed coal is provided by old women (just old women) who go to the mountains surrounding the villages. And the melting will be not successful if the men, during the time of all the procedure, have sexual activity.

Day 8: Adobe castles. Kara – Sokode
We enter the land of the Tamberma that live in fortified dwellings. Similar in form to medieval castles, they are one of the most beautiful examples of ancient African architecture.  Their style impressed Le Corbusier, who talked about "sculptural architecture". In fact the houses are built with hands, layer by layer, putting round balls of mud and shaping them following the design of the house. A kind of sensual gesture, mixing strength, care and aesthetic.

Their strong traditional beliefs are proved the presence of big shrines, of a phallic form, at the entrance of their homes. With the permission granted to us by the inhabitants we will enter their homes so we can better understand their way of life. Actually their houses are a projection of their anthropology and cosmology: the first ground, with its darkness, represents the death: it is the place of the ancestors; the second floor, open to the sky, represents the life: it is the place where the grandmother keeps the babies as long as she has found which ancestor has come back in the new life.

All the family, the food and the animals are kept in the house, for the survival of the family group in case of attack of enemies. For centuries these populations have been seeking refuge in the hard to access Atakora mountain chain to escape from slave trade practiced by Northern Muslim African merchants.

Day 9: Warriors Kings. Sokode - Bohicon
On the way down, the fetish of Dankoli will be the gateway to the voodoo world. Pilgrims plant thousands of wood sticks to testify their prayers to the voodoo. When they are satisfied, they come to sacrifice the promised ransom: a goat, a chicken, a cow. A mound of blood, palm oil and sodabi (local liquor) proves le long line of pilgrims, which have found here a solution to their existential problems.

We then visit the Royal Palace in Abomey. The walls of the palace are decorated with bas-reliefs representing symbols of the ancient Dahomey kings. Now a museum listed among the World Heritages by the UNESCO, the palace displays the items belonging to the ancient kings: thrones, ancient cult alters, statues, costumes and arms. A way to learn about this Kingdom whose economy was for so long based on the slave trade. A perpetual status of war enabled the Kings to capture and sell thousands slaves.

In the middle of the royal courtyard is a temple build with a mixture of clay and human blood. At the height of their power there were up to 4.000 women in the palace harem. Walking among the buildings will help the visitor to remember the past splendour of the court, who may be challenged with their pride due to the history of Western powerful armies coming to colonize the continent.

Day 10: Lagoons and stilts villages. Bohicon - Ouidah
Very close to the Ocean coast, crossing Lake Nokwe by boat, we reach Ganvie, the largest and most beautiful African stilt village.  The approximately 18,000 inhabitants, of the Tofinou ethnic group, build their huts on teak stilts and cover the roofs with a thick layer of leaves.  Farming fish is the principal activity. The village has been able to preserve its particular customs and the environment. In fact despite the long-lasting human presence in a closed environment, the lake is not over fished. 

Life unfolds each day within the canoes that men, women and children, thanks to the brightly colourful poles, guide with ease. It is with these canoes that men farm and fish, women deliver goods to the market, children go to school and play.

Today, in Ouidah, with its Afro-Portuguese architecture, we find sitting face to face the python temple and the Catholic Cathedral. The laid back attitude of the locals mixes with the thunder of the distant waves on the beach and the rhythm of the drums creates an atmosphere outside of time, very well described by Bruce Chatwin in his book, "The Vice-Roi of Ouidah".

Walking the streets, we visit the python temple and we finish our tour of the city by following the “slave route” to the beach where the slaves embarked.

Day 12: Lome or Accra. Final day & departure
Lome, the vibrant capital of Togo is the only African town to have been colonized by Germans, British and French. One of rare capitals in the world on the border with an other country. These elements have developed a special identity reflected in the style of life and in the architecture of the town. Lome is cross point for people, trade and cultures. We will pay special attention to the central market with its famous Nana Benz, women who have concentrated in heir hands the market of expensive pagne (cloths) coming from Europe and sold in all West Africa;  the colonial buildings in the administrative quarter with a flavor of colonial time; the fetish market where an eclectic assortment of all the necessary ingredients for love potions and magical concoctions are sold.

How does this holiday make a difference?
Travellers experience
The tour team is used to travel with children. They guarantee that to really enjoy the experience they must be between 8-10 years old. At this age the experience is for them extraordinary, and they have recorded many accounts of this.

The populations the guests get in touch with whilst travelling in the different countries - Mali or Togo, Benin or Ghana etc. – are mostly friendly and the long experience in Africa of the team has created many relationships and friendships to guarantee true and emotional experiences for travellers, even in the most secluded villages.

The operator considers tourism as a professional activity and they are very responsible in order to guarantee the safety of our customers such as convenient transportation, adequate food preparation, security, etc.

The guides are either bilingual or trilingual, and are extremely knowledgeable of the destinations culture, rites and social values so as to make your trip as informative and smooth as possible.

Environmental responsibility
When camping, in order to not have an impact on the local environment, gas is used instead of wood for fires and for heating.

A policy has been set up which trains staff to make sure that the guests do not leave any rubbish or ‘alien material’ behind when leaving the camp, but also great attention is paid to leaving the least traces possible when visiting the places on the itineraries.

Water use is limited to the bare essentials. Water from wells is used for washing and cooking, and mineral water  for the guests.

Cultural responsibility
The traditional festivals of the countries in which journeys are organised are true and not "for tourists". This is the tour operators specific "quality trademark": to offer to the travellers the occasion for a contact still genuine with the daily reality of the populations they get in touch with, and with the several traditional ceremonies, that have remained almost unaltered.

The tour operator is commited to the conservation of the cultural heritage of the local populations destinations visited during the tours. Measures are taken to minimise the negative effects of tourism, and respect is always shown during the visit.

Economic responsibility
All of the operators sub directors, guides, drivers, mechanics, cooks and administrative staff are locally employed and they have set up various training schemes in order to benefit them with useful skills.

Most of the ingredients used for cooking are locally produced and sourced so as to benefit the local producers and offer an authentic experience to our guests.

On occasions money has been donated to villages in order to answer to their requests for community development projects such as financing a village school in the north of Togo (helping in fixing the roof, paying the teacher, providing them with school material), financing the construction of a water pump in south Burkina-Faso and building a school for 300 children in Benin.

Many other community development projects have gone ahead because of good will of our travellers such as one guest who financed facilities in a school in Accra.

Social responsibility
Often people are tempted to give money to children... since they see them in trouble and it is often the first thing they ask for. But giving money directly can have serious consequences because the amount a Westerner can give is often much more then what the father earns, and this can create serious imbalances.

It is advised to guests to give pencils and pens, exercise-books and paper as these will be useful at school. If anyone wants to donate money, better to give it to parents or to the chief of the village. Also sweets, biscuits, and other foods are not recommended, because even if children love them, when the tourists are gone they become needs that cannot be satisfied.

Where is it?