Uknown Diaries Entry 02: The long way north

It's Day 5, and this morning I did something I haven't done since we left Accra: I stepped out alone.

The team is flat. Five days of shooting, moving, packing, unpacking, dancing, climbing and ferrying catches up with everyone eventually, even a crew of fourteen who signed up for exactly this. So today they're resting in Tamale, and I'm out here on my own, walking streets I've never walked, doing the thing I love most in the world: getting slightly lost in a place that doesn't know me yet. Let me catch you up on how we got here, because the road has been generous. Volta didn't shake our hand. It hugged us.

I told you in Entry 01 that we were taking the long way north through the Volta Region, and I told you the route would justify itself. I undersold it.

We hadn't been there long before a Borborbor troupe welcomed us. Drums, movement, that rolling Ewe rhythm that doesn't ask your permission before your shoulders start moving. If you've never stood inside a Borborbor circle, I don't know how to explain what it does to a travel-tired body. Fourteen exhausted people got out of the vehicles. Fourteen dancing people got back in.

In Kpando, we went out with the fishermen. Not watched them, went *with* them. Hands on nets, on the water, doing work that families there have done for generations. Then we traded the water for the air and ziplined over the same landscapes we'd just been floating on. That's Volta in one day: from a fisherman's canoe to flying over the trees.

Then came my favorite part of the entire journey so far.

We took the ferry across to Dambai, vehicles and all, drifting over the water while the crew filmed everything that moved. On the other side we found something nobody talks about enough: good roads. Beautiful, smooth, open roads, running north through scenery that kept pulling my eyes off the tarmac.

Everyone imagines the drive north as punishment you endure to reach the destination. This stretch was the destination. I'd do the whole trip again just for that drive.

Tamale, city of two wheels

Tamale welcomed us the way Volta did, with dance. A troupe met us on arrival, and I'm starting to think this is the real story of this journey: everywhere we go, the welcome comes before the questions.

Here's the first thing you notice in Tamale: the motorbikes. In Accra, cars rule and everything else negotiates. In Tamale, it's reversed. Motorbikes own these roads, flowing through the city in numbers I've never seen anywhere else in Ghana, and the cars are the ones adjusting. It changes the whole rhythm of the place. The city moves lighter, faster, closer to the ground.

We spent Day 4 exploring, including Red Clay Studios. And I'll be honest, standing in a world-class contemporary art space in the middle of the northern savannah rearranges your assumptions about where culture "happens" in this country. The North is not waiting to be developed into something. It is already something.

The lie about the heat

Now let me correct a myth I carried up here myself.

Everyone warned me about the northern heat. Pack for fire, they said. And maybe in March that's true. But it's August, and the weather has been kind. Genuinely kind. Cool mornings, gentle days, the kind of weather that lets you actually be outside instead of hiding from the sun.

It's made me revise something I now believe strongly: August is the best month to tour Ghana. The rains have softened everything green, the North is cool, the roads are open. If you're in the diaspora planning your trip home and you've been defaulting to December like everyone else, think about August. You'll share the country with fewer crowds and better weather, and I'm watching the proof through my windscreen.

What's next

The team rests today. Tomorrow we push deeper: Wa, and then all the way to Bolgatanga, near the roof of Ghana, where this diary closes. The final entry will come from up there. But today, it's just me, a city full of motorbikes, and a few hours of the unknown.

Exactly how I like it.

FROM THE DIARY: Journey To The North, Days 1 to 5

- Covered so far: Accra → Volta Region (Borborbor welcome, fishing in Kpando, ziplining) → ferry crossing to Dambai → Tamale

- Derrick's highlight: The drive north from Dambai. Great roads, unreal scenery

- Surprise of the leg: Tamale's cool August weather, and motorbikes outnumbering cars

- Don't miss in Tamale: Red Clay Studios

- Travel tip: August over December. Cooler North, greener country, fewer crowds

- Final dispatch: From Bolgatanga, at the end of the road

If you're coming home to Ghana and want to see the version that isn't in the guidebooks, that's literally what we do. Into The Unknown Tours designs and hosts adventures across Ghana for the diaspora and the adventurous. Reach us at intotheunknownts@gmail.com or +233 24 155 3613.

Don't just travel — Explore & Experience the Unknown.