The Restless Road

So began the afternoon from hell on our roadtrip from Lomé to Lake Volta. Which, of course, did not announce itself that way at the start of the day, with Togo being pretty interesting and not stressful. Days from hell rarely do. They usually begin with good coffee, clean clothes, and foolish optimism. The Togo…

We woke up excited to explore the spiritis, skulls, and city views, and all the things to do in Lomé, Togo. Breakfast at Hotel 2 Février was excellent, very much on par with our Indian room-service salvation the night before. After the previous day of salt villages, Vodun ceremonies, border paperwork, and spicy biryani, I…

The next morning started with a big drive ahead – the Benin to Togo border crossing. We started the day early with breakfast not starting when breakfast was supposed to be available. This is one of those small details that sounds petty until you are the person standing there, mentally calculating how much coffee, protein,…

This was our morning leaving Senegal for Benin. There is a particular kind of early morning airport departure that feels less like travel and more like being quietly processed by an invisible machine. You wake up too early, say goodbye to people who have somehow become part of the fabric of your trip, and then…

We took the ferry back to Dakar from Gorée Island still carrying the weight of that morning. Gorée doesn’t really let you walk away clean—it lingers, sits heavy, asks you to hold onto it longer than is comfortable. And then there’s Dakar. A city that, almost immediately, pulls you back into something louder, more chaotic,…

The island of Gorée is located less than 4 km off the coast of Dakar. It is a solemn emblem of the trans‑Atlantic slave trade: for centuries, enslaved Africans were held, chained, shipped from here. One of its most visited sites is the House of Slaves with its “Door of No Return”, which we would later…