How to Spend 5 Days in Togo

This five-day loop through Togo suits travelers who want the full length of the country in under a week and accept one big bus day to get it. The style is independent and overland, the pace is brisk but never frantic, and you will use a long-distance coach for the north, shared bush taxis and minibuses between regional towns, and motorcycle taxis (“zems”) for short hops and village access.

Day 1: Lomé and Its Markets

Spend your only full day in Lomé on the two places that explain the city fastest. Start at the Grand Marché de Lomé before the heat builds, when the cloth sellers on the upper floors are unrolling wax prints and the lanes outside are thick with charcoal smoke and grilled fish. In the afternoon, take a zem north to the Akodessawa Fetish Market, where dried animal parts and carved figures are sold for vodun practice. Hire a guide at the entrance and agree the photo fee before you lift your camera. Go to bed early. Tomorrow is the long one.

Days 2-3: Kara and Koutammakou

Leave Lomé … read more 👉

This five-day loop through Togo suits travelers who want the full length of the country in under a week and accept one big bus day to get it. The style is independent and overland, the pace is brisk but never frantic, and you will use a long-distance coach for the north, shared bush taxis and minibuses between regional towns, and motorcycle taxis (“zems”) for short hops and village access.

Day 1: Lomé and Its Markets

Spend your only full day in Lomé on the two places that explain the city fastest. Start at the Grand Marché de Lomé before the heat builds, when the cloth sellers on the upper floors are unrolling wax prints and the lanes outside are thick with charcoal smoke and grilled fish. In the afternoon, take a zem north to the Akodessawa Fetish Market, where dried animal parts and carved figures are sold for vodun practice. Hire a guide at the entrance and agree the photo fee before you lift your camera. Go to bed early. Tomorrow is the long one.

Days 2-3: Kara and Koutammakou

Leave Lomé at dawn on a coach to Kara, a 7 to 8 hour ride up the N1 through Atakpamé and Sokodé. Kara is calm, orderly and noticeably drier than the coast, a good place to recover with a cold drink and an evening plate of fufu. On Day 3, ride a shared taxi north past Niamtougou toward Kandé (about 1.5 hours), then a zem into Koutammakou, where the Batammariba still live in takienta, two-story mud tower houses with granaries on the roof. A local guide is required and well worth the fee, because the meaning of each room and shrine is invisible without one. Back in town by late afternoon, walk through the Marché de Kara for shea butter, millet beer and northern pottery.

Day 4: Sokodé and Atakpamé

Head south in short stages instead of one punishing ride. About 1.5 hours down the road, stop in Sokode for its Marché de Sokodé, a Muslim trading town with a different rhythm from Kara, more boubous and kola nuts than wax print. Continue roughly 3 hours to Atakpame, a hilly town where the savanna gives way to green slopes, and sleep there. This split keeps you off the road after dark and avoids a second marathon day.

Day 5: Kpalimé and Mount Agou

A 2 hour minibus brings you to Kpalime, the coffee and cocoa town of the southwest. Drop your bag and go straight for Mount Agou, at 986 meters the highest point in Togo, climbing through villages and banana plots to views across to the Ghana border. Spend the night in Kpalimé, then it is 2 to 2.5 hours back to Lomé the next morning.

With an extra day in the far north, and only if current advisories allow travel to the Savanes region, the Nok Caves near Dapaong hold clay granaries and hideouts built into a cliff face, reached by a steep scramble that few visitors ever make.