The Tamberma Valley and other Togo Off The Beaten Path Tips

The very scenic landscapes and the spectacular local architecture are reasons enough to visit the somewhat isolated Tamberma Valley.

The homesteads (called “tata’s”) are spread out all over the valley and look like little castles. Made of mud, 2 storeys high, complete with thick walls and towers (used for storage of millet – the staple food) and fetish shrines in front of them, these castles are a unique sight in the beautifully green land that once protected them against the Germans!

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You can reach the Valley from a junction at Kandé Village about an hour north of Kara along the International Highway.

If you come on Wednesdays, for sure you’ll find a bushtaxi to Nadoba, a village 25 km. towards the Togo-Benin border following a dirt road. Vehicles can only pass during dry season though, as I found out!

Just 15 minutes out of Kandé, the river had flooded the bridge and surrounding lands, so that we had to get off and choose either waiting for the river to quiet down or wade through the water and continue by foot. Together with half a dozen of other passengers I chose for the last option and continued by foot.

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Actually I was happy that the bushtaxi couldn’t continue across the bridge and we had to go on foot, because I befriended one of the others who got stranded, who later invited me to take a look in their “fortress”.

Which was really great since I read quite some reviews of tourists being treated less nicely when they wanted to visit a homestead like that.

The point is that most people don’t live in villages, but live individually on their lands, so if you stop by and ask if you can look around, some owners take the opportunity to negotiate a (big) fee and react hostile when you start taking pictures. Understandable from both points of view in my opinion.

Note that I read in some travel reports that in Kandé Village wanna be guides approach tourists for a tour around the valley; however I didn’t meet any of them during my 2 hours stay waiting for the shared taxi to leave.

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Maybe the best possibility for independent travellers, who seek to be invited in a traditional homestead instead of risking a disappointment, is to take a Wednesday bush taxi to Nadoba Village, mingle with people at the local market and hope for an invitation.

If that doesn’t happen you can see some of these traditional castle homes around Nadoba as well, and although the ones I saw here where not in their best shape, they were still more natural then the “museum-like” homesteads that I saw on the Beninese side, that were newly build especially for tourism purposes.

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The colourful Wednesday market in Nadoba is a regional highlight and supplied me the nicest day of my stay in Togo.

Not because of its size, but because of it’s rural charm. It had a really cosy and friendly atmosphere, but is full of activity.

Farmers from all around the border region, some in traditional dresses, come here to trade, but socializing is a major motive as well. Towards the end of the day most men got involved in gambling, sitting together and drinking locally brewed beer out of huge calabashes.

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As the Beninese town of Boukoumbé was still quite far, and I was having a very enjoyable time on the market, I decided to stay for the night in Nadoba, at the local guesthouse annex bar annex (as I discovered later) disco.

Just when I made up for a very boring evening alone with no electricity, no friends, no English speakers, one after the other youngster dropped in. Not long after that followed by a whole bunch of guys who started to install a generator, light and loudspeakers right in front of my room.

By 10pm, some 5 dozen of people (mostly teenagers) had arrived and the DJ finally started the music, a mix of modern and traditional from all over West Africa! This now was really great; it was big fun!! Some hours later I fell asleep in my room, only to wake up at 5AM. The weekly Wednesday party was still going on.

I went back to sleep another hour and then went out for an early walk around the village and the trip by foot to Benin!

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The cross border road from Nadoba to Boukoumbé (Benin) is about 10 km. long (2 hrs. walk) and passes through very scenically lush and quiet land, with several traditional houses and farms.

There’s no checkpoint at the actual border that is reputedly only marked by a Baobab tree but you need to report at the police station in Boukoumbé to fulfil formalities (the relaxed officer fortunately didn’t mind that I couldn’t show a Togolese exit stamp)

If you arrive here from Benin, you almost certainly need to get your entry stamp in the Togolese town of Kara.

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