Savanes

The regional capital sits on high ground with the plain falling away from it, which gives it something most Togolese towns do not have: a view. It is a working market town rather than a destination, and its market is the reason to time a visit — a large regional one drawing traders from the surrounding country and from over two borders, heavy on grain, livestock, calabashes, ironwork and the woven straw goods of the north. There is a small regional museum with local archaeology and ethnography that is worth half an hour and gives useful context for the cliff sites outside town. What the town mostly offers is a base and a shift in atmosphere: this far north the day organises itself around the heat, business happens early and late, tea is drunk in small glasses at roadside stalls, and the mix of peoples — Moba, Gourma and others — is audible in the languages around you. Accommodation is simple and adequate rather than good, and there is no reason to expect otherwise this far from the coast.

The most remarkable thing in the region is easy to miss because so little is written about it. In the escarpments outside the regional capital, around Nano and Tamongue, people built into the rock itself: shelters, storage chambers and granaries tucked under overhangs and into clefts in the cliff face, reached by paths that climb and occasionally scramble. They were places of refuge, used when the plain below was unsafe, and they are constructed with the same mud-and-stone technique still used for granaries in the villages today. Visits are arranged through guides in the villages at the foot of the escarpment, which is both the practical way in and the right one: the sites belong to the communities below them, some parts are not shown to outsiders, and a guide is what turns a pile of stones into a legible building. The walk up is short but genuinely steep in places and hot from mid-morning, so go early and take water. What stays with people afterwards is the view out from inside one of the shelters — a long, flat, hazy plain, seen from the exact position someone once watched it from for reasons rather more pressing than the scenery.

South and west of the regional capital, the land drops to the floodplain of the Oti, the river that drains this corner of the country and eventually feeds the great lake far to the south. In the wet season and for some weeks after it, the plain floods into a shallow, shifting wetland; as it dries, the water concentrates into pools and channels and the birds concentrate with it. For anyone who cares about birds this is the best reason to come to the region — storks, herons, waders, raptors and seasonal migrants in numbers, in a landscape where you will be the only person looking at them. West of the main road lies the small protected area that gives the region its wildlife claim. Be realistic about it: it is small, it has been heavily pressed by farming and grazing around its edges, and its famous elephants are a seasonal presence that moves across borders rather than a resident herd you can count on. Go for the landscape, the baobabs and the birds, treat any large mammal as a bonus, and arrange a local guide, because the tracks are unsigned and change with the seasons.

The region's own art form is worth knowing about before you arrive, because it is the thing most likely to send you home with something remarkable. The Moba of this area carve standing wooden figures — tall, spare, almost abstract, with elongated bodies and simplified features — which stand in compounds and at field edges in connection with the household and the land. They have been admired by sculptors and collectors abroad for a century, and the modern carving that continues here can be bought directly from the people making it, which is both cheaper and better than anything in a city gallery. Ask locally who is carving rather than looking for a shop. On the question of whether to come at all, what is honest to say is that the standard circuit stops south of here for most visitors, that the region rewards anyone who does come with emptiness, light and hospitality, and that how far up the road to commit is the single decision this whole country turns on.