Morondava to Tsingy de Bemaraha, Madagascar

It’s a long, arduous bus ride from Tana to Morondava on the west coast, 700 km away. My guidebook from just a few years ago says it’s 12 hours. Nowadays, even in the best of taxi-brousse (bush taxi) options (companies such as Cotisse, Soatrans, or Kompima with better-maintained vans, assigned seating, and scheduled departure times as opposed to the vast majority: duct-taped vans struggling up even the slightest incline, passenger overloading, and departures when full), it’s 16 hours on one of Madagascar’s few paved national routes, riddled with deep potholes and washouts.

Well, infrastructure has clearly gotten worse over the years. But heading west from the capital, everything in general seems a bit sparser. The towns get smaller to the point of being one-street villages with over-manned police checkpoints that seem present only for bribes (and they certainly don’t care if the vehicle’s not roadworthy), the houses become more modest until they’re just straw and mud shacks, electricity poles are replaced by portable solar panels to charge phones and flashlights, virtually no economy exists, and there’s a lot more children around working in the rice terraces or herding zebus, even on a weekday — school is too expensive for many families. There’s also a pretty despairing sight around many of the potholed sections of road, given that all vehicles must slow down for them: children and adults selling meagre items or even begging. I never once saw a successful attempt.

Morondava’s on the beach but it’s more for fishing than for swimming or relaxing. There’s one thing people come here for: the Avenue of the Baobabs just outside of town, one of Madagascar’s iconic tourist sites. It’s more surprising just how many tourists I’m seeing who’ve made it this far — especially Asian tourists as old as my parents!

It’s sunset that people come for, and it’s spectacular to watch these odd trees change in the light, eventually turning to mere silhouettes. Less spectacular is the type of crowd it currently attracts: influencers doing silly stunts for photo-ops, and plenty of buzzing drones ruining the vibe.

But for me, my first visit at sunrise felt a lot more special, despite the fog I encountered. The Avenue is an actual road (one that I took twice on a round trip) connecting villages that just happens to be surrounded by baobabs, only later designated as a touristic site of interest, and locals start their day on this road, carrying their heavy loads on foot, by zebu cart, by rickshaw, or by truck. No matter how big their form of transport or their load, everything is dwarfed by the absolute giants that are the baobabs, each hundreds of years old, and species exclusive to Madagascar. (These ones grow straight up with thick trucks and spindly branches at the top, unlike the single baobab I saw in Ghana 10 years ago!) It’s an incredible sight.

Even past the designated avenue, further down the road are two particular baobabs with gimmicks: les baobabs amoureux, two trunks intertwined together; and le baobab sacré, revered for just how wide it is. And off in the distance, the baobabs just continue on and on… at least for awhile.

I’m guessing this is as far as most tourist groups go. Beautiful sites, to be sure, but given the sheer number of days it takes to get to and from here from the capital, I question if it’s a worthwhile use of time as a sole destination. But continue north on the road and there’s a huge reward.

Well… you continue on the road for another 8 hours or so, on the worst “road” I’ve ever encountered in my life: muddy in parts even in the dry season and frequently flooded in the wet one, it’s more “destroyed dirt path” than anything, though still designated as a national route! You’d need a 4×4, and it’s somehow still more arduous than the taxi-brousse (here, a camion/cattle truck instead). You also need to get that 4×4 on two river crossings — that is, drive it onto uneven planks of wood nailed down across two pirogues. (They fit 6 cars, so you’d inevitably need to do 200-point turns to shuffle your car to make space for others.) Not only is that difficult and uncomfortable, that’s expensive. Fortunately, I met tourists Takuo and Chisato on the Cotisse ride, and together we sought out a driver for three days, splitting the costs.

What’s up there? The Tsingy de Bemaraha: an area of alien, spiky limestone jutting out from the forest. According to local lore, early Madagascar was settled by the Vazimba from mainland Africa, who fought with the Merina in the east. After losing some battles, they intended to retreat to the mainland via the Tsiribihina River, but found the tsingy oddly habitable: despite appearances, there were many caves to live in, and beehives from which to gather honey. They thus gave the place its name: “tsingy” as they had to walk slowly and carefully, and “bemaraha” as their word for sharp.

It’s also not surprising that these limestone formations were previously under the sea. Our park guide showed us some fossils to further drill in the point. It’s for wayfinding, however, that a guide is both mandatory and essential: the signature visit is a via ferrata! Up and down ladders, precariously-nailed steps, through crawl-space caves and tunnels, and across a vertigo-inducing rickety bridge we went. Between nerves and the stunning viewpoint balconies, the experience left me literally breathless and awe-struck. Surrounding it is forest, with creatures hiding such as the brown sportive lemur we spotted in a tree hole.

Surrounding Tsingy de Bemaraha is the major town of Bekopaka. Considering its location at the dead end of a brutal road, it’s not too surprising that it’s a bit rough and tumble. As our park guide mentioned, villagers from surrounding areas walk 10-15km each day carrying loads of crops (rice, corn, sweet potato, manioc) or fruit to see for a pittance, before making the same walk back home in the evening. So it’s all the more surprising that tourist accommodation is of surprising quality, with excellent French-style food. One accommodation we passed even had a pool – this in a region where locals wash in the nearby dirty Tsiribihina River.

Our accommodation was lovely, a garden oasis where we were shown the local fauna in a night walk: boa constrictors, frogs, chameleons, and all sorts of fun insects and lizards were what we saw, though unfortunately not a lemur that night. Perhaps they were scared off by the very loud karaoke a party of domestic tourists were performing through the night.

Midway down the road, one river crossing and four hours before, in the major town of Belo-sur-Tsiribihina, there are two restaurants serving fancy steakhouse-quality food and drink for passing tourists. While incredibly affordable for us, it’s definitely not for the locals – and we had one in the restaurant asking if they could hitchhike with us up to Bekopaka. Outside the restaurants, the only food options are hotelys — stalls that serve old soggy sandwiches sitting in a hot display case all day, and simple restaurants serving rice and stews, with a side of ranovola to drink, a hot brown “tea” made from boiling water in a pot with burnt rice at the bottom (a clever solution to the fact that all non-bottled water isn’t potable, and that burnt rice is hard to clean). But all of this makes me wonder how the locals perceive us.

Away from the large towns, in the heat of midday, pausing from working the fields, people sit and stare, the passing car being the only source of amusement in villages with no diversions aside from sustenance, no electricity, no running water, and the next large town (often with little to no infrastructure) a dozen kilometres away. Children are only happy to wave to the vazaha (foreigner) they see through the window. They see these tourist cars plough through every day in dry season. If they need to go anywhere, the overloaded camion-brousse passes once every few days, frequently getting stuck. Otherwise, it’s a long walk. To us, passing this road twice (round-trip), being tossed around like clothes in a washing machine in our comfortable air-conditioned 4x4s is what people would call a travel “adventure.” To them, their day-to-day life exceeds that.

All of us head up to see the tsingy, limited to the area of the natural reserve a ways out of town. I wonder if the locals have even been up there. In terms of life amongst desolation, I’m reminded of my visit to Ethiopia’s Danakil back in 2015 — this feels just as bleak, but here, there are actual comfortable facilities for visitors and excellent certified guides staffing the national reserve. The money’s there. Why’s it only going to us?