Paga crocodile pond, Upper East

What actually happens at the Paga pond

At Paga a guide walks you to the edge of a shallow brown pond, calls, and a crocodile comes out of the water and settles on the bank, and you are then invited to sit behind it and hold its tail for a photograph. That is the whole event, and it takes about twenty minutes.

The animals are wild in the sense that nobody keeps them in an enclosure, and tame in the sense that they have been fed by the same families for generations and associate people at the water's edge with food. The one that comes out is usually a large old animal the guides know by sight. Smaller ones stay in the water and watch.

The approach is managed carefully. You are told where to stand, when to move, which side to sit on and to keep clear of the head. Guides handle the crocodile's attention with a live guinea fowl, which is the part visitors are least prepared for and which I will come back to.

Nobody should pretend this is a wildlife encounter in the safari sense. It is a cultural site where a community's relationship with an animal has become something visitors pay to witness. Seen as that, it is genuinely interesting. Seen as a nature experience, it will disappoint.

Why the crocodiles are protected

The crocodiles at Paga are protected because the Kassena people of the town hold that each one carries the soul of a person, and that killing one would mean the death of a resident. That belief, not a fence or a ranger service, is what has kept the animals alive in a pond in the middle of a busy border town.

The founding story told at the pond involves an ancestor who was saved by a crocodile — led to water when he was dying of thirst, or carried across a river, depending on who is telling it — and who swore that his people would never harm them again. Versions differ between families, and the guides will tell you the version their family holds.

The practical consequence is a genuine truce. Children swim near the water. Women wash at the edges. Livestock drink. Nobody in Paga treats the crocodiles as dangerous in the way you would expect, and there is no record locally of the relationship being broken.

Understand this before you arrive, because it changes what you are looking at. The photograph is a by-product. The thing that is actually remarkable is a town of several thousand people living around a pond of large predators and regarding them as relatives.

Where Paga is and what the journey involves

Paga sits in the Upper East Region at the very top of Ghana, directly on the border with Burkina Faso, about ten minutes north of Navrongo and roughly forty minutes north-west of Bolgatanga. It is as far from Accra as you can get on Ghanaian tarmac.

By road from Accra you are looking at a journey of the better part of two days if you drive it sensibly, or one very long day if you do not. The realistic route runs Accra to Kumasi, Kumasi to Tamale, then Tamale north through Bolgatanga to Paga. The Tamale–Bolgatanga stretch is good road and fast; the earlier sections are where time disappears.

The alternative that most visitors should take is to fly Accra to Tamale, which takes about an hour, and pick up a vehicle there. That removes two days of driving and turns the Upper East from an expedition into a manageable three or four-night trip.

The far north feels different from the south in ways that are immediately obvious. The land flattens and opens out, the trees thin to scattered shea and baobab, compounds are round and mud-walled with painted walls, and the heat is dry rather than heavy. March and April in Paga are punishingly hot. December nights can be genuinely cool.

The chief's pond and the other one

Paga has more than one crocodile pond, and the one nearly all visitors see is the Chief's Pond, close to the main road as you come into town. A second site at Zenga, sometimes written Zenabi, sits a short drive away and is quieter, smaller and less organised.

The Chief's Pond is the operation: a visitor building, guides on a rota, a book to sign, and a routine that has been performed thousands of times. That polish cuts both ways. Everything runs smoothly and nothing feels unplanned, and on a busy weekend you may be one group among several waiting for a turn.

Zenga has fewer facilities and fewer visitors, and the encounter can feel less staged as a result, though it is also less predictable — the crocodiles may not come out, and the guide arrangements are looser. Travellers who have a whole afternoon sometimes do both and prefer the second.

Ask your driver or guide which pond is currently the better visit before you commit. Water levels change through the year and affect where the animals are lying, and local knowledge on the day beats anything written months in advance.

The guinea fowl, and the part visitors find uncomfortable

A live guinea fowl is used to draw the crocodile out and to hold its attention while you sit behind it, and the bird does not survive the visit. This is the detail most people are not told in advance, and it is the reason a fair number of visitors leave uneasy.

The practice is not a piece of theatre invented for tourism. Offering a fowl to the crocodiles is part of how the relationship between the town and the animals has always been maintained, and the fowl is bought at the site and its cost is folded into what you pay. Knowing that does not make it easier to watch, but it is the honest context.

If you would rather not see it, say so before the guide begins. You can ask to keep your distance, to skip the photograph, or simply to be told about the pond and its history without the demonstration. Guides are used to this request and do not take offence.

Families with young children should think it through beforehand rather than at the water's edge. A five-year-old who has just watched this is not easily distracted, and the drive to the next stop is a long one.

Pikworo slave camp at Nania, just outside town

Three kilometres from the pond, at Paga-Nania, sits Pikworo, a slave transit camp used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it is the more affecting of the two sites by a wide margin. Most people who come to Paga for the crocodiles and skip Pikworo have got the priorities backwards.

The camp occupies a rocky outcrop of granite. Guides walk you round the features that are still visible: shallow bowl-shaped depressions worn into the rock where captives were made to eat, the outcrop used as a lookout, the place where auctions were held, a cemetery, and the rocks that were struck as instruments to make music.

That last element is the one that stays with people. Certain stones ring when struck, and captives held here used them to play. A guide will demonstrate, and standing on a hot bare rock listening to it is a very different experience from walking through a coastal castle. There is almost no built structure, no interpretation panels, very little shade.

Give it an hour and take water. Read the coastal side of the same history in our guide to northern Ghana and the road through Tamale and Bolgatanga, which sets Pikworo in the wider route captives were marched along.

Standing at the Burkina Faso border

The Paga border post is a few minutes north of the pond and is a working international crossing, not an attraction, though visitors routinely drive up to see the frontier and turn around. The tarmac simply continues into Burkina Faso.

You can look, and you can photograph the surroundings with care, but do not photograph the post, the officers or the barrier. Border officials in any country take a dim view of that and the conversation which follows is tedious at best. Keep your passport with you even for a look, because you are in a controlled area.

Crossing into Burkina Faso is an entirely different matter involving visas, current security conditions and advice from your own government. It is outside anything we arrange, and the security situation in the wider Sahel changes, so check your own foreign ministry's travel advice rather than taking a driver's word at the barrier.

What the border does give you is a sense of place. Paga is a trading town shaped by that line: lorries queueing, money changers working the roadside, goods moving both ways, and a market that serves two countries at once.

The best time of day and year to come

Come in the morning before about ten, or in the late afternoon, and prefer the dry months from roughly November to March. The middle of the day in Paga is brutally hot and the crocodiles lie deep in the shade or in the water, which makes the whole visit slower and less pleasant.

Seasonal water levels matter more than most guides mention. In the rains the pond is fuller and the animals spread out; in the dry season the water shrinks and they bask on exposed banks, which is when the site is most reliable. Harmattan, roughly December to February, brings dusty air and surprisingly cold nights.

March into May is the hot season in the Upper East and it is a different order of heat from Accra — dry, relentless, and hard on anyone who has come straight from a European winter. If you are travelling then, do everything before eleven and rest through the afternoon.

Weekdays are quieter than weekends at the Chief's Pond. Ghanaian school groups and domestic visitors arrive at weekends and during holidays, and while that is a good sign for the site, it means waiting your turn.

How to reach the far north-east without wasting two days

Fly to Tamale and drive from there. That is the answer for almost everyone with limited holiday, and it turns a punishing road trip into a comfortable circuit of the north.

Several domestic carriers operate the Accra–Tamale route and the flight takes about an hour. Schedules and fares change constantly, so check directly with the airline or have a travel agent confirm current timings rather than relying on anything written here. From Tamale, Bolgatanga is a straightforward drive of roughly two and a half to three hours on good road, and Paga is another forty minutes or so beyond it.

The alternative is to build the north into a longer overland loop that includes Mole National Park, coming up through Kumasi and across, then down again. That is a genuinely rewarding trip of seven to ten days and it is the right way to see this part of Ghana if you have the time. Our Mole National Park safari guide covers the western half of that loop.

Driving straight from Accra to Paga and back for the crocodiles alone is the one plan I would talk somebody out of. It is roughly two days of road each way for twenty minutes at a pond.

What else is within reach in the Upper East

Paga alone does not justify the journey, but the Upper East as a whole comfortably does, and the sites sit close enough together to fill three or four unhurried days. Sirigu, Navrongo, Bolgatanga and the Tongo Hills are all within an hour or so of each other.

Sirigu is known for the painted architecture of its compounds, where women decorate mud walls with geometric patterns in earth pigments, and there is a women's organisation there that shows visitors the work and sells it. Navrongo has a cathedral built in mud and decorated in the same idiom, which is one of the more unexpected buildings in the country. Our guide to Navrongo and the painted houses of Sirigu goes into both properly.

Bolgatanga is the regional capital and the place to sleep, eat and buy the straw baskets the region is known for. The market is the real thing rather than a craft display, and the weaving is done in surrounding villages.

South-east of Bolga, the Tongo Hills hold a shrine complex among extraordinary balanced granite boulders. Visits are arranged with local custodians and there are protocols about footwear and photography that you follow without argument.

Fees, photographs and practical manners

Entry contributions, guide fees, camera charges and the cost of the fowl at Paga are set locally and change, so ask at the visitor point on arrival and carry small cedi notes rather than expecting change for a large one. Nothing printed in an article is a reliable guide to what you will pay today.

Expect the amounts to be structured rather than single — a site contribution, a guide fee, and a separate charge if you want photographs or video. That structure catches people out when they have budgeted for one number. Ask for the full total before the visit begins and the rest of the morning goes smoothly.

Tipping the guide at the end is normal and is separate from the fees. These are community sites without much other income, and the money is the mechanism by which the pond and Pikworo stay looked after.

A few points of manners hold across the Upper East. Greet before you ask for anything, in English or with a word of Kasem or Gurune if someone teaches you one. Ask before photographing people, especially at compounds and shrines. Dress modestly away from the hotel. None of this is enforced and all of it is noticed.

Where to base yourself

Base yourself in Bolgatanga. It is the only town in the Upper East with a real choice of accommodation, functioning banks, fuel and a hospital, and everything worth seeing in the region is within about an hour's drive of it.

Hotels in Bolga are modest by southern standards. You will find clean rooms with air-conditioning and a generator at the better places, simpler ones with fans and intermittent water elsewhere. Ask specifically about the generator and the water supply when booking, because in the hot season both matter more than anything else about the room.

Navrongo has a small number of guesthouses and is closer to Paga, which suits an early start at the pond. Paga itself has very little, and staying there is a choice you make for the border rather than for comfort.

Tamale is the other option and the one to use if you are flying in and out, though at two and a half to three hours from Bolga it is too far south to be a base for Paga. Most sensible itineraries fly into Tamale, sleep a night there, then move north for two or three nights in Bolgatanga before returning.

How we arrange a trip to the far north

Ghana Travel & Tour builds the Upper East as a managed route rather than a single booking. That usually means a flight into Tamale, a driver and licensed guide who know the road north through Bolgatanga, rooms chosen for generator and water supply rather than photographs, and the guide arrangements at Paga, Pikworo and Sirigu agreed in advance.

We will also tell you when the drive you are proposing is not worth it. Current northern routes are set out on our guided tours page, and every quote is itemised and comes from one named trip manager who handles your trip throughout.

Questions people ask