Togo

Togo is 600 kilometres long and at its widest barely 150 across - a country shaped by the lines that European powers drew without looking closely at what they were dividing. What resulted is a narrow vertical slice through West African geography: coast, plateau, savannah, and the Atakora hills in the north, each with its own climate and culture. Lome is the only African capital that directly borders another country on foot, which gives its Grand Marche a particular energy - traders, goods, and currencies from everywhere that is almost everywhere.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: Lome's fetish market, Koutammakou tower houses, plateau village stays and the border markets where West Africa's trading logic becomes perfectly visible.