Category: Madagascar

Lake Alaotra is Madagascar's largest lake, sitting in a rice-growing plain northeast of Antananarivo, and it holds the bandro or Alaotra gentle lemur, which lives in marsh reeds and nowhere else on earth. Dawn canoe trips from Andreba village are…

Malagasy cooking is built on rice and laoka, the sauced dish served alongside it, and that structure holds at every meal across the country. The national dish is romazava, a zebu and greens stew, and the other staple is ravitoto,…

Nosy Sakatia is a small island of roughly one square mile off the west coast of Nosy Be, known as the Orchid Island and best known for swimming with green turtles that graze the seagrass beds in shallow water. It…

Toliara, also called Tuléar, is the sun-baked terminus of the RN7 and the gateway to the reefs and spiny forest of southwestern Madagascar. Most visitors stay one night before transferring to the coastal lodges at Ifaty, Mangily or Anakao. The…

Madagascar holds more than a hundred lemur species and every one of them lives here and nowhere else. They range from the indri, the largest at over a metre when its legs are extended, to Madame Berthe's mouse lemur at…

Madagascar has two official languages, Malagasy and French, and English is spoken by guides and at tourist properties but rarely elsewhere. Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian family, related to languages of Borneo rather than to anything in Africa, which is…

Nosy Tanikely is Madagascar's most accessible marine park, an uninhabited island south of Nosy Be where green and hawksbill turtles feed on reef you can reach by wading in from the beach. Visitors come on day trips for snorkelling, a…

Les Trois Baies is a run of three wild beaches east of Diego Suarez, reached by four-wheel drive or on foot, with almost nobody on them. Sakalava Bay is the best kitesurfing spot in Madagascar, Dunes Bay and Pigeon Bay…

Lokobe National Park protects the last surviving lowland rainforest on Nosy Be, reached by dugout canoe and known above all for its black lemurs and panther chameleons. Visits run as half-day guided walks of two to three hours from the…

Madagascar's 5,000 km of coastline holds coral reefs, five species of sea turtle, migrating humpback whales, whale sharks and dugongs. The reefs are least damaged inside long-established marine reserves at Nosy Tanikely, Nosy Hara and the three protected areas off…