About this book

Thoroughly updated by a resident journalist, this new fourth edition of Bradt’s Sierra Leone remains the only English-language guide dedicated to this unique West African destination, one of just three countries where the über-elusive pygmy hippo can be found. One of Africa’s last ‘hidden gems’, where coastal mountains and secluded beaches are the stuff of daydreams, Sierra Leone lives up to its nickname of ‘Sweet Salone’. This welcoming country offers much natural beauty and culture, yet remains unsullied by mass tourism. In many places, local people are happily surprised each time they get visitors, and strive to make your stay the best possible.

The country continues to be one of West Africa’s best beach destinations and trekking zones, the latter thanks to varied topography and the presence of Mount Bintumani, the region’s highest peak. Then there’s Ma Dengn (a new beach music festival); sanctuaries for rescued chimpanzees; tours of traditional wooden-board homes of the Krio people, descendants of repatriated slaves; and the significance of the UNESCO site of Bunce Island, a former slave-trading fort, as a destination for heritage tourism. You can also visit the infamous diamond mines and rainforest-covered mountains; search some of the burgeoning ecotourist sites for those pygmy hippos, explore the transboundary ‘peace park’ of Gola Forest to track down the cave-dwelling picathartes birds; or simply relax on beach-blessed islands.

The country has seen a heartening recovery since emerging from civil war and the subsequent Ebola outbreak. Following the COVID pandemic, there has been considerable investment in the tourism sector, which has resulted in a surge of new tour operators and hotels alongside improved roads connecting key towns – all of which is reflected in this fourth edition.

Although the country’s devastating past still informs many aspects of daily life, Sierra Leone is proudly back on the tourism map for the discerning, adventurous, beach-loving, jungle-exploring, mountain-scaling traveller, volunteer or international worker – and all those curious of heart. Offering significantly more coverage than any other guide, Bradt’s Sierra Leone is the ideal travel companion to this up-and-coming African destination.

About the Author

Katrina Manson is an award-winning journalist who covered Africa for 12 years, living in Kenya, DR Congo, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso. During this time she co-authored the first ever travel guidebooks to Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso, published by Bradt Guides. She is currently a Bloomberg News reporter covering the nexus of cyber and emerging technology with national security; before that, she worked for the Financial Times and for Reuters. After Bradt accepted the urgings of Manson and co-author James Knight to publish the first edition of their Sierra Leone guidebook, just as the country was emerging from a desperate civil war, the duo’s explorations revealed ‘a beautiful, storied, proud, sometimes painful, but always absorbing country’. Manson has subsequently witnessed ‘how the country can intoxicate and bewitch visitors, whether diaspora returning home, tourists looking for something new, or foreign workers keen to explore’.

James Knight has extensive experience of working in emerging-market countries as a journalist, writer and consultant. He now works at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, having previously been a Senior Associate at a London-based communications agency, and freelanced for Reuters, ITV and The Sunday Times. He has lived across Africa, in Buenos Aires and Brussels, and is the co-author of two Bradt guidebooks to African countries. Researching the first edition of Bradt’s Sierra Leone with journalist Katrina Manson, the duo ‘found in its resilient splendour a place where you can track monkeys, buffalo, and rare hippos; dine on an unspoilt, empty beach with only the moon for company; dance all night in Freetown’s thriving scene; step onto a former slave island drenched in history; clamber to the top of mist-shrouded mountains; and listen to the anger of the surf off abandoned beaches’.

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