Tonna'ab
Ba'ar Tonna'ab Ya'nee, in a cleft of the cliffs above Tengzug. A place of healing, oracles and witch-finding, and the source of the southern "Nana Tongo".
Ghana-Net.com · Upper East Region · Talensi District
A horseshoe of granite hills and balancing boulders southeast of Bolgatanga, where the Talensi keep shrines so powerful that the British attacked them twice and never closed them. Pilgrims came from Asante and the coast to consult the god they called Nana Tongo. You still take off your shirt and your shoes to enter. And the hills are now wanted for their gold.
The Tong Hills, usually called the Tongo Hills, rise out of the flat savanna about 15 kilometres southeast of Bolgatanga, beside Tongo, the capital of Talensi District. They are a chain of bare granite about six kilometres long, reaching some 355 metres, piled with boulders that look ready to roll and never do. The village of Tengzug (also written Tenzug or Tengzuk) sits among them.
In the harmattan, from about December to February, the dry wind blowing through the gaps between the rocks makes a low whistling or moaning sound: the Whistling Rocks that tourist brochures sell. Stone tools show people were here in the Late Stone Age, though the archaeologists who found them say that early occupation has not yet been dated.
A lived-in landscape, not a view. Talensi farmers have lived in these hills for centuries. Their compounds, granaries, cattle kraals and shrines are all part of one landscape, which is why the site has been on Ghana's UNESCO Tentative List as Tenzug – Tallensi settlements since 17 January 2000. More than twenty-five years later, like Navrongo, it has still not been nominated.
The hills hold many shrines, of two main kinds: earth shrines (tongban), tied to the land, and ancestor shrines (ba'ar), tied to the clans. Three are the ones visitors are shown:
Ba'ar Tonna'ab Ya'nee, in a cleft of the cliffs above Tengzug. A place of healing, oracles and witch-finding, and the source of the southern "Nana Tongo".
The shrine the British blew up with dynamite after 1911. It is still in use.
The third of the principal shrines named by the Ghana Tourism Authority.
The rule nobody escapes. To enter the inner shrine, every visitor, man or woman, Ghanaian or foreign, minister or backpacker, goes barefoot and bare from the waist up. It is not a show for tourists. It is the condition of entry, and if you will not accept it, do not go.
The Tong Hills were a religious centre on the frontier between the northern kingdoms, and the Talensi used the hills and caves to resist outsiders. When the British pushed their rule into the Northern Territories, the hills became a problem for them.
A British expedition attacked the hills. Afterwards the Bona'ab shrine was destroyed with axes, fire and dynamite, the people were driven off the hills, and access to the shrines was banned.
The British found the shrines active again and came back a second time. Again they failed. By the 1920s the oracle was flourishing and drawing pilgrims from far outside the north.
The Hiding Caves and Hyena Caves shown on the tour are where people sheltered during the attacks of the early twentieth century. The tour also takes in the so-called Cave School and the chief's palace.
The anthropologist Meyer Fortes began fieldwork among the Talensi in 1934. His books, The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi (1945) and The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi (1949), made Tengzug one of the most studied villages in Africa.
From the 1920s, southern Ghanaians, above all in the Asante and Akan cocoa country, travelled north to consult Tonna'ab, and carried shrines home. In the south the god was called Nana Tongo, and "Nana Tongo" shrines spread through the forest towns, offering protection from witchcraft to people whose lives cocoa money had turned upside down.
The colonial state tried again, in the south. In 1931 the colonial government moved against a southern offshoot of the shrine near Suhum, and the lawyer J. B. Danquah, later one of the Big Six, intervened on behalf of its priest. Pilgrims from the south still make the long trip to Tengzug today.
The great Talensi festival before the rains, with drumming and dancing across the hills, asking the ancestors for a good farming season.
The harvest festival at the ancestral shrines, thanking the ancestors for the crop.
Festival dates are set by the Talensi elders and are not published far in advance. If you want to be there, ask in Tongo or through the Ghana Tourism Authority office in Bolgatanga weeks ahead.
The same granite country that holds the shrines holds gold. Talensi District has been mined for years, by licensed operators and by small-scale and illegal diggers, and pits and waste heaps now scar land a few kilometres from the hills.
The next threat is official. Plans to open the Upper East's granite landscape to rock-gold mining put the Tongo–Bongo hills directly in the way. A sacred landscape that survived two British military expeditions may not survive a mining licence. Read our report: Blasting the North: Mahama's rock-gold plan for the Upper East and the landscape it would take.
From Bolgatanga, Tongo is about half an hour southeast by road. Tro-tros run from Bolga to Tongo; hiring a taxi for the day is easier, because transport back from Tengzug is unreliable. From Tamale, go to Bolga first.
A local guide is required and the tour is paid in cash. The GMMB still lists an entrance fee of GH¢10 for foreigners, a figure long out of date. Expect separate charges for the guide, the shrine and photography, and agree every amount before you start. See our entrance fees list.
Allow at least three hours. Go early, before the heat, with water and proper shoes for the rocks (you take them off only at the shrine). Ask before photographing people or shrines. Facilities are basic: the Ghana Tourism Authority itself admitted in 2024 that the paths and reception need work.
Bookings through this widget earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. No operator has paid to appear on this page.
The Upper East on our dedicated Paga site, the mining threat on GhanaWeb-News.com, and the people connected to Nana Tongo's story on MyGhana2027.com.
Our visitor's guide to Tongo and the Tengzug shrine, for travellers based in Paga.
The ancestral religion of the Upper East, from Paga's point of view.
The rock-gold plan for the Upper East and the landscape it would take.
The lawyer who defended a Nana Tongo priest in 1931 and later helped lead Ghana to independence.
And why you cannot visit any of them: Ghana's deep past and what is done with it.
The Board that lists Tengzug at GH¢10, and what it does and does not do for Ghana's heritage.
Tengzug is not a tourist attraction that happens to have shrines. It is a living religious centre that happens to let tourists in. The British dynamited it and failed; the Christian missions of Navrongo and Bolga, a short drive away, never replaced it; southern Ghanaians still come north to consult it. Its guides, paths and fees are badly run, and its UNESCO file has been gathering dust since 2000. The real danger now is gold. Go while the hills are still whole, and take your shirt off when you are told.
Verified: 28 September 2026. The UNESCO tentative listing (17 January 2000), the shrine types, the Boaram and Golib festivals and the 1911 and 1915 expeditions follow the UNESCO file. The destruction of Bona'ab follows Insoll, Kankpeyeng and MacLean, Shrines in Africa. The distance, caves, visitor rule and listed fee follow the GMMB. The three principal shrines and the condition of the facilities follow the Ghana Tourism Authority as reported by the Daily Graphic (March 2024). The hills' dimensions follow standard references. The Nana Tongo network and the 1931 Suhum case follow Allman and Parker. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.