Extreme Benin: Voodoo, Royal Palaces and the Tata Towers of the North

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This extreme itinerary dives into the deepest Benin, land of vodun (voodoo) and ancestral kingdoms. It begins in Cotonou with the most striking experience in all of West Africa: the Dantokpa Fetish Market, where shamans sell animal skulls, ritual herbs and fetishes for all kinds of ceremonies. From Cotonou, a pirogue leads to Ganvié, the 'Venice of Africa', a village of 30,000 inhabitants built entirely on stilts on Lake Nokoué, where life unfolds on the water. The route continues to Ouidah, global epicenter of voodoo: the Python Temple, the Kpassè Sacred Forest and the moving 4-kilometer Slave Route that ends at the Door of No Return facing the Atlantic. Inland, the Royal Palaces of Abomey (UNESCO) reveal the greatness of the Kingdom of Dahomey and its legendary Amazons, the only documented female warriors in history. The adventure culminates in the far north, in Somba country, where tata tower houses — two-story family mud fortifications with conical granaries — dot a savanna landscape that seems frozen in time. Ten days that connect with the continent's most ancestral roots.