Ghana holidays

The Ashanti region, in southern Ghana, is known for its craftsmanship. There are several craft villages, including Adanwomase, Ahwiaa, and Ntonso, dotted around the regional capital, Kumasi, where you can visit workshops for kente weaving, textile printing and wood carving, among other skills. You can learn the meanings and stories behind different designs, pick up unique souvenirs that support local creators, and even have a go yourself.

The Ashanti festival of Akwasidae takes place on a Sunday every six weeks, for people to honour their ancestors with dancing, drumming and song. The king and chiefs are out in their gold and finery, and visitors are welcome – you may even be invited to meet with one of the chiefs.

Ghana is more of a destination for the cultural traveller than the safari-goer, but Mole National Park in the north of the country is home to some of the last remaining elephants in West Africa. On our walking safaris you can admire the elephants along with wildlife including antelopes, warthogs, baboons and other monkeys. You can also see some immense termite mounds, fascinating natural construction that can be as wide as 30m across.

Mole is also a first-class location for birders, with more than 300 identified species in the park including egrets, flycatchers, martial eagles and white-headed vultures. There are concerns here about poaching and illegal rosewood logging in Mole. By visiting, tourists help to encourage wildlife protection and conservation.

To Ghanaians, funerals, particularly those of elderly people, are not sad events. Death is seen as a natural part of life, and family members believe they will be reunited in the afterlife. As such, funerals in Ghana aren’t sombre affairs, but a chance to celebrate someone’s life with dancing and colourful dress. If you receive an invite to attend one – don’t pass it up. Ghanaians advertise their funerals and it’s an honour for guests to come and help celebrate the deceased.

One of the most unusual aspects of Ghanaian funerals are the “fantasy” coffins; bespoke coffins are constructed for important members of society. A pilot may be sent off in a giant wooden plane; a teacher in a giant pen. If you can’t attend a funeral, try and arrange a visit to a coffin workshop in Accra, where these works of art are painstakingly carved from hardwood by hand.

Tribal culture is still very much at the heart of Ghanaian life, and there are few better ways to experience it than by visiting a traditional festival. Held every May in Winneba on the coast, the Aboakyer Festival is a commemoration of the Efutu and Winneba peoples’ migration to Ghana. Visitors are invited to watch the ceremonial deer hunt, as well as to take part in the ritual feasting, dancing and drumming.

Other opportunities to explore Ghanaian culture on our holidays including market visits, where you might buy a length of cloth and chat to the stallholder about the meaning of the adinkra symbols or how the batik is made. Our local guides can help you take your fabric to a local seamstress and she can make a shirt or trousers or dress in your chosen style. Alternatively, you might head to a kente workshop to see the weavers working on long, narrow looms, and learn about the symbolism behind this heavy fabric that adorns kings and chiefs to this day.

In northern Ghana around Mole you can spend time with a women’s cooperative as they make shea butter, and learn about the process of extracting the fat from the shea tree nut. You can see how the nuts are washed, pounded and roasted, turned into a paste, purified and heated to extract the vitamin-rich oils, a process which has been carried out in much the same way for centuries.

Our walking holidays are a chance to explore Ghanaian nature and culture at a relaxed pace, allowing for a greater degree of immersion. You can trek between fishing villages on the Cape Three Points peninsula, staying in a succession of eco lodges. You’ll be walking on trails used for centuries by the Ahanta people to negotiate passage through bamboo forest, and plantations of coconut and rubber. When not on the trail your options include everything from a canoe safari in search of crocodiles, to a Ghanaian cookery lesson.

You can also walk in the Volta region, perhaps pausing to try rock climbing in the Shai Hills Game Reserve, which is home to zebras, baboons and antelopes, or to cool off with a dip beneath the Wli Waterfalls, the highest in Ghana.

While walking you’ll be accompanied throughout by brilliant guides from the communities you’re passing through, which allows for plenty of conversation and cultural insight.