I cross the border to Benin just as it opens. Ahead of me is a challenging 230+ kilometer road to Nigeria, to manage in less than the 48 hours that my visa is valid for. All on dirt roads, locally called ‘le rouge’ (the red) from the earth’s characteristic, brick-red color. I cycle maybe nine hours effective time and reach Bori at sunset.

There is no hostel, but I’m given a bed at the local hospital. Fortunately, there are no patients so I can also get the only bed which has a mosquito net. I’m dead tired, and happy of being spared pitching the tent. An elder man who says he is the night guard at the hospital sleeps outside on the porch. He walks into my room every now and then during the evening, and shouts something in French with his rough, harsh voice, that I cannot understand. I’m relieved when he finally falls asleep himself.

Water is to be found only from a small tap at the bottom of a huge concrete cistern behind the house. A thin squirt of water slowly fills each bottle. I make some spaghetti with canned tuna for dinner. Wash the dust off my face with the little water I have left, before I go to bed. As usual, there is no light. I scan the room and its bare walls for mosquitoes. Then the inside of my net. My whole body is aching; I fall asleep quickly.

From Kara, I continue the short ride east to the border of Benin. I get to camp right behind the Togolese police and immigration office. The men working there turn out to be good company, too.

At Benin’s borders one can only get a 48-hour transit visa, which is just on the verge of what is needed to pedal across the country to Nigeria. With over 230 kilometers of bad dirt road ahead of me, it is important to gain even the short while that it takes to get the visa done. So in the evening, I walk over to the Benin border post where they help me to get the visa done the day before; dating it for tomorrow.

Summary Togo
Even if Togo is a small country, five days was hardly enough time to make it justice. The little I had the chance to see at least made me long back even before I’d left the country. A beautiful landscape – at times quite mountainous, but more often with soft, rolling hills. With small, tidy, perfect-looking villages seemingly scattered at random over the savanna, it was as picturesque as any Disney movie. The people – peaceful and calm, not the least in comparison with the Ghanaians – fitted that picture perfectly, too.

As a tourist it was also nice with cheap hotels – besides immaculately clean, something that seemed to characterize everything in Togo.

I continue a short way to Kara, which is said to be the country’s economic capital. But it’s surprisingly small, and to find a shop that sells e.g. DVD discs isn’t easy. There is Internet anyway, and a post office. Sergeant Djamongoug, a parachutist of the military whom I meet on bicycle in the outskirts of town, helps me to find a cheap guesthouse. Hotel Sapaw is 3,500 CFA pppn – for a room with air condition. Luxury!

I camp in a small village along the road, about halfway through Kéran National Park (Parc National de Kéran).

To find the right border post is not easy. In the small northeastern corner of Ghana, there seems to be several only with Togo. There are rarely signs showing where to go at borders between African countries, but it is usually possible to rely on the one and only main road in the area. Usually a tarred road. Here, there are instead several, and none of them are tarred.

“The police? No, he is out. Back in thirty minutes,” says someone at the first police office that I pass. “Immigration and exit stamp? Unless in Bawku,” he continues. “Isn’t it possible to get the stamp here,” I ask to make sure – not really into cycling back to Bawku after more than an hour’s pedaling. “Yes, here is also possible. There is a customs office five minutes up that road,” he replies and directs me to a small path, big enough only for bicycles and people on foot.

Reaching the office, two boys sit outside on a wooden bench. They tell me that the man in charge is out, “But he will come back soon.” I stay around; wait. The boys listen to a radio, and occasionally get up and dance a few steps on the sandy ground in front of the house. When the officer finally arrives, I’m told that it is the wrong border.

I’m directed back to the intersection from where I continue on the main road. After forty kilometers – most of it on a short cut underneath huge power lines – I finally reach the main border post. I get my exit stamp out of Ghana there and – after a few kilometers, in busy three-border town Sinkasse – get my Togolese visa for 10,000 CFA.

Togo offers beautiful views. Winding roads across rolling hills, through what I’d call typical savanna. Low grass vegetation be-scattered with only a few beautiful, grand trees. Compounds and villages look very neat and ordered. It is much more clean and quiet here than in Ghana. A calm rests over the whole country. No children that shouts from along the road; not much traffic. It feels like cycling on a minor rural road instead of what it actually is – the country’s only main, tarred road.

In Dapaong, the first city that I reach, is a nice auberge where I get my own room for only four dollars a night. It is a nice, quiet town also – to walk around at night feels completely safe and there is a lot of life in the streets.