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Bien Tsingy ExpeditionBelo sur Tsiribihina, Madagascar

Tsingywhere one cannot walk barefoot

Madagascar

The fourth largest island in the world, and one of the strangest. Here is what I tell people before they come.

An island that evolved alone

Madagascar separated from the rest of Gondwana roughly eighty-eight million years ago. Whatever was aboard stayed aboard, and everything that arrived afterwards arrived by sea or by air. That long isolation is why around ninety per cent of the wildlife here exists nowhere else: the lemurs, the fossa, the giant jumping rat, most of the chameleons, and the eight baobab species that are ours alone.

The limestone at Bemaraha is older still — a coral seabed lifted, then dissolved by rain into blades. Tsingy means, roughly, the place where one cannot walk barefoot. The name is a warning, not poetry.

A people of many origins

The first Malagasy arrived by sea from the Indonesian archipelago, and later from the East African coast; Arab and Indian traders came later again to the north and west. The language is Austronesian, a cousin of the languages of Borneo, spoken on an island off Africa. Eighteen ethnic groups are officially recognised, each with its own customs and burial traditions.

Holding it together is fihavanana — kinship, the obligation people have to one another. It is why a stranger with a broken-down car is not left on the road.

The west is Sakalava country. They were cattle herders and coastal traders, and their kingdoms once ran the length of this coast. Royal relics are still honoured here, and zebu are still wealth. Belo sur Tsiribihina is a Sakalava town, and the customs you meet on my trips are Sakalava customs.

Mora moraslowly, slowly

Six Madagascars

My home ground

The Western Menabe and Melaky

Dry deciduous forest, baobabs, two big rivers and the limestone of Bemaraha. This is Sakalava country and it is where I am from.

Menabe and Melaky are flat, hot and red for most of the year, and then the rains come and the roads close. Between Morondava and Bekopaka you cross the Tsiribihina and the Manambolo by ferry barge, pass the Avenue of the Baobabs, and skirt Kirindy Forest, where the fossa lives. Belo sur Tsiribihina sits in the middle of it, at the river crossing every traveller uses. I grew up two streets from the landing.

The Highlands

Terraced rice, brick villages and craft towns between Antananarivo and Fianarantsoa. Cool nights, long views, the Merina and Betsileo heartland.

The Eastern rainforests

Andasibe, Ranomafana and the corridor between them. Indri calling at dawn, leeches after rain, and the densest lemur diversity on the island.

The South and the spiny forest

Octopus trees, sandstone canyons at Isalo, and a coastline of reef and Vezo fishing villages. The driest, strangest vegetation in Madagascar.

The North

Amber Mountain, the red tsingy, Ankarana and Marojejy. Wetter, greener, and a long way from everything else on the island.

The islands

Nosy Be and its neighbours in the north-west, Sainte Marie in the east for humpback whales between July and September.

Relief map of Madagascar showing the route of The Grand Traverse: Antananarivo, Andasibe, Antsirabe, Ranomafana, Isalo, Toliara · Ifaty, Morondava, Kirindy Forest, Belo sur Tsiribihina, Bekopaka · Tsingy de Bemaraha.N100 KM
By roadBy airOvernight or visit

The hop from the south-west to Morondava is flown.

Where things are

Almost everything takes longer than the map suggests. Antananarivo sits in the middle of the highlands; the roads radiate out from it and few of them connect to each other. Most travellers fly to Morondava for the west, then drive north to Belo sur Tsiribihina and Bekopaka, crossing two rivers by ferry barge.

See how the journeys are routed

Practical information

Fihavananakinship, the bond between people

Fady, and travelling respectfully

Fady are local prohibitions. They differ from village to village and sometimes from family to family: a day on which no one works the fields, a stretch of forest no one enters, a food that is not eaten, a tomb that is not photographed or pointed at with a finger.

They are not superstition to be humoured. They are how communities hold agreements about land, ancestors and each other. Breaking one in front of people is genuinely offensive, and it makes life harder for the next visitor.

You do not need to memorise anything. Before we arrive anywhere I will tell you what applies. Ask before photographing people, ask before entering a tomb area or a burial cave, and accept a no without negotiating it.

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