Bono East

Two neighbouring villages share a patch of forest with a large population of mona and black-and-white colobus monkeys, and the arrangement between them is the reason to come. The monkeys have been protected here by local tradition for a very long time — they are not hunted, harming one is not done, and the practical result is animals that show no fear of people at all. They come down into the villages, sit on roofs and walls, and approach visitors closely enough that the usual wildlife problem is reversed: you are not looking for them, you are surrounded by them. There is a cemetery in the forest where monkeys that die are buried with the same observances a person would receive, which tells you more about the relationship than any explanation would. The sanctuary is run by the communities themselves and guided walks through the forest are arranged on arrival. Go early or late, when the animals are most active. Feeding them is discouraged for the usual reasons and the guides will say so.

The Kintampo falls are the region's easiest stop and sit close enough to the main road that they take an hour rather than a day: the river drops in a series of stages through forest, with a long flight of steps down to the base and a pool at the bottom that people swim in. They are genuinely impressive after rain and considerably less so at the end of a long dry season, which is worth calibrating expectations against. A short distance away, a second set of falls sees far fewer people and rewards the extra effort of finding them. The town of Kintampo itself is unremarkable and useful — fuel, food, a place to break the drive — and just outside it stands a marker for the geographic centre of Ghana, which is the kind of thing that is either a five-minute diversion or entirely resistible depending on temperament.

Techiman holds one of the largest markets in West Africa, and its significance is regional rather than local: this is where produce from across the middle of Ghana and from over the borders is aggregated and redistributed, and on its main weekly day the town's population multiplies. Lorries arrive loaded with yam and maize and leave loaded differently; traders come from Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire as well as from across Ghana; and the scale of it is genuinely difficult to convey — this is wholesale agriculture happening in the open, not a craft market with a tourist section. There is nothing arranged for visitors here and that is the appeal. Go early, expect to be the only obvious outsider, ask before photographing anyone, and treat it as somewhere you are a guest at other people's work. On any other day of the week the market operates at ordinary provincial scale, which is why the day matters so much.

West of the main road the land runs down to the Black Volta, which forms the border with Côte d'Ivoire for much of its length and feeds the great lake further south. The country along it is thinly populated and little visited, with a national park straddling the river that protects hippo populations and a stretch of gallery forest — access is limited and the infrastructure is minimal, which keeps visitor numbers close to nil and makes it a genuine expedition rather than a day out. For most travellers the region's value is simpler than that: it is the place where the drive between the Ashanti heartland and the savanna north stops being a transit and becomes part of the trip, provided you build in the day it takes to do that. What waits at the far end of that drive is set out on the Mole and the savanna north guide.