Category: West Africa

West Africa is a region that intrigued me, but one I didn’t know a great deal about prior to going. For one thing, it’s not the first place on the average British backpacker’s itinerary. That said, you know by now I’m not exactly the average backpacker. In addition, and perhaps surprisingly given British colonial history, we’re generally not taught about anything that happened outside Britain. Indeed apart from really big events it took until ‘A’-level to get a firm grasp even of anything European.

I took a 5-week trip around though in late 2014, visiting Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo. I have active plans to visit other parts of the West Africa region (Senegal, Guinea, possibly Sierra Leone & Liberia) in the next couple of years. Since they’re not often mentioned as destinations, I wanted to write about them to show backpackers what there is here and how it feels to travel around. It means you don’t have any excuse now not to visit!