Heritage and Culture

About this kind of travel

Heritage travel means travelling to understand where you or your ancestors come from, and it carries a weight that other travel does not. For travellers of African descent that often means the slave forts of Ghana and Senegal, the archives and oral histories that survive, and the communities that have been receiving returning visitors for decades.

It also means everything that is not about the trade: the Ashanti court, the Ethiopian church, Swahili trading cities, Great Zimbabwe, the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu. African heritage is not only the history of what was done to Africans.

Practical advice from people who have made these journeys is consistent: go slower than you think you need to, travel with people who understand why you are there, and leave unscheduled time after the hardest days.