Rough Guide to West Africa
Replies: 8 - Last Post: Mar 3, 2013 10:44 AM Last Post By: davidh
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Rough Guide to West Africa
Probably shouldn't be posting this here, but the LP West Africa is published a few months to late for my travels next year, this info is available on LP's website. I can't find similar information for Rough Guides. Does anyone know when the Rough Guide to West Africa will next be published?Thanks
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Were you not saying you are going to BF and Niger only?I remember the Bradt guide for BF was pretty good, not sure about the Niger one, but for two countries, you do not need the whole RG or LP, I'd say. If you speak some french then guide routard for Afrique noire (Sic), though sometimes annoyingly French, can be good. It is printed on extremely thing paper, so very easy to carry and updated every year.
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Very kind of you to say so WanderinWilco, but Penguin doesn't seem able to sell enough of the Rough Guide to West Africa to make it want to do a 6th edition. So there's currently no new edition of the Rough Guide to West Africa on the horizon - and I won't have to worry about how to cover a region that should feature Mali as its centrepiece, but is increasingly broken up and hard to move through.Incidentally, for French speakers, the individual Petit Futé guides do a much better job than the ridiculously limited and selective - and often quite chauvinistic – Guide du Routard. Buy on amazon.fr.
Richard
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I agree with Richard about Petit Fute. I find them well written, insightful, and clever. Plus they publish a country guide for some really obscure countries (like Central African Republic). However unless you understand French well don't bother.6
My French is pretty basic, in that I can get by in a French speaking country, but I'm not sure how much I'd get out of a guide in French. I've added an extra two weeks to include a little bit of Ghana with Burkina Faso and Niger. I've seen very good reviews of Bradt Burkina Faso, so I might get that along with Bradt Ghana and download the Niger PDF from LP.Shame rough guides aren't making another one, in Asia I always use in LP but for African countries (Kenya, Tanzania and Tunisia) have found Rough Guides far superior.
Thanks for the info
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Just saw this. I do like Bradt and Petit Fute guides for individual countries, but as far as regional guides to West Africa are concerned, I also felt that the Rough Guide was infinitely superior to Lonely Planet. It was very well written, and really conveyed a sense of the region, rather than be a collection of individual country chapters; sad that it is going to disappear.
