Tsaranoro Valley, Madagascar

The highlights have been high, but the travel has been long and punishing, and one week in, I’ve spent more than half my time in Madagascar sitting in transport. After an 8 hour 4×4 ride again on the world’s worst road from Tsingy de Bemaraha to Morondava (250 km), barely a night’s rest before a 12 hour ride from Morondava to Antsirabe (484 km), a one-day break there, then what was supposed to be a 7 hour taxi-brousse ride to Fianarantsoa (243 km) that turned into 10 hours where I missed my onward transfer, I admit to feeling pretty done. And while people have been unfailingly polite, real interactions have been few. For a classic backpacking destination, I was also surprised not to have encountered anyone to group up with; any other tourists I saw were heading off in different directions, mostly in private transport. (Turns out I was a few weeks early from peak season.)

After missing the transfer, I needed to re-plan, deciding to take one last southbound taxi-brousse 2 more hours to Ambalavao (55 km – yes it’s that slow even on a paved road) en route to a nearby lemur reserve. It turned out to be one of the worst rides I had: a one-hour wait for it to fill up before departure, 29 people squeezed in a Sprinter for 18, squeezed so tight I was unable to move (hey look, name of the blog), barely avoiding the beak of a live duck in a plastic bag sitting on the lap of the man beside me. It felt like the last straw — in my head, after that, no more taxis-brousses except to return to Tana. No more hikes, having had enough of that in Réunion. Sure, there’s far more points of interest further south, like Isalo to Toliara, but… when the spark’s gone, you can’t force it.

And yet, on my arrival to Ambalavao, a vaguely familiar face made me change my mind on a dime, with a different spark. Thanks to him, I chose more suffering, and got even more suffering than I braced myself for — yet I couldn’t be happier for the experience.

I’ll skip talking about Antsirabe and Fianarantsoa for the time being. JB, a tour guide, had been at the same rest stop hotely I was a few days prior; I was heading from Tana to Morondava, while he was with clients and headed the opposite direction. He returned home to Ambalavao. When I arrived there a few days later, he happened to be at the station, where we recognized each other. When I told him my re-planned itinerary, he paused for a second, and suggested a far better use of my time: skip the easy stuff, and go camping with him immediately.

I had never planned on going to the Parc National Andringitra, typically accessible only by private and expensive 4×4. He proposed going to the adjacent Tsaranoro Valley, sharing the same mountain range, by taxi-brousse and on foot. Ambalavao is surrounded by tantalising massifs, a mere precursor to the scenery there. Plus, instead of seeing lemurs in a reserve on an easy walk even grandparents can do, why not see them in open nature with peaks to hike? And…well, despite everything I just went through, I had to remind myself, how often am I here? Will I ever have this chance again? Given the chance to go with someone who knew what they were doing, knew how long things should take, and understood my limits just by looking at me, I decided to bite the bullet.

After repacking my supplies into a smaller bag, leaving my larger one with his wife, a quick walk around town, and getting food for three days and two nights, off we went to find the taxi-brousse to Vohitsaoka…which we sat in for nearly two hours waiting for it to be full before we left. Oof. And instead of a promised two-hour ride for the 47 km journey, it was three, on the slowest taxi-brousse known to man, crawling up even the slightest incline at 5 km/h. Classic. Not a great start, but too late to back out now.

Turning off the paved national route, the last 10 km to Vohitsaoka was on a dirt road akin to the awful one to Tsingy. Just 10 km, but over half an hour. We arrived in Vohitsaoka hours after we had hoped, but on arrival, I lost any pessimism that remained: wow.

Despite imminent sunset and a 12 km hike to our campground, our surrounds were incredible — jagged peaks behind Vohitsaoka and verdant rice terraces in the direction we were walking, all bathed in the glow of golden hour, which further amplified the red of Madagascar’s famed red soil. As we rounded a corner, the sight of an unexpected dramatic massif made me audibly gasp. Darkness fell two hours into our walk and moonlight led us for the remaining half hour. We were the only people at the campground, and JB made a feast of a dinner before we retired for the night…and I wake up with a very upset stomach. Worse, in my haste to repack, I left my traveller’s diarrhea antibiotics in my other bag. Uh oh.

Definitely no turning back now, with Ambalavao hours away by foot and taxi-brousse. Morning light brought the surrounds of the campsite into full view. Set on a hillside, we looked down upon small villages and rice terraces in the mountain valley, surrounded by the Tsaranoro Massif and the day’s objective: Chameleon Peak, which certainly looks the part. Enough motivation to power through the severe bloating.

Hoby, my required local guide as JB stayed at camp for the day, pointed out local tombs, some culturally-significant landmarks, and introduced bizarre plants one after another as we passed — a crown of thorns, the alien stalk of agave and its fibrous leaves used to make rope, a cotton-like plant, poisonous leaves, plant sap used for glue, leaves used for medicine, lemongrass to make a hangover-cure tea, leaves used as sandpaper… (And for my sake, thank goodness there were also leaves typically used as toilet paper!) In the morning sun, we could see ring-tailed lemurs in the distance sunning themselves on exposed rocks: further motivation to keep going.

Towards the top, we waited for the clouds to dissipate from the valley below, exposing paths towards the massifs (used mostly by visiting rock climbers and base jumpers!), before taking in the view of the villages below Chameleon Peak. The Tsaranoro Valley is home to tribes of Betsileo and Bara coexisting with each other, with some eyebrow-raising customs. Amongst both tribes, men who become close enough friends take a blood pact to affirm each other as family, spilling drops of blood in a shot of rum. Apparently this comes with the expectation that should one visit the other, the visitor gets to sleep with the host’s wife, or the host gets killed if he refuses. But Hoby, a Betsileo, didn’t seem to hold much love for the Bara — Bara custom forces men to prove their masculinity before marriage by stealing a zebu. If one tribe steals and considers it socially acceptable while the other doesn’t… I wouldn’t be surprised if that caused problems.

After five hours and a lunch break at another campsite in which I was barely able to eat anything, Hoby pointed out a family of lemurs in a village close by. And suddenly I had energy again! Ring-tailed lemurs are considered a symbol of Madagascar — perhaps in part due to one infamous king’s penchant to “move it move it,” of which locals are well aware. (Aside from lemurs and fossas, there’s really nothing else in the movie series associated with the country!) For me, they’re like cuter raccoons and they don’t steal: Hoby and I followed the family for an hour as they leaped from trees to clotheslines to the ground to roofs, mutually unbothered by neither the many children playing nearby, the working adults, nor the many chickens running around. Aside from resting and grooming themselves in trees, or “opening up” to bask in sunlight on bare rocks, they foraged around for leaves and berries, ignoring the human food lying around.

We returned to our own campsite a few kilometres away slowly, through other villages, rice fields, a dip at a natural pool, and after many chameleon encounters…to find JB amongst another family of lemurs at our tent site. Oh, their faces! Their clicky vocalisations! Their curious, perky tails! Adorable, but all the more surprising (and sad) to find out that ring-tailed lemurs are endangered due to habitat destruction from slash-and-burn farming practices. Despite its symbol status, they’re also only mostly present here in the central-southern region of Madagascar.

So my second and final night of camping was a lot worse stomach-wise. JB (who kindly slept outside the tent unprompted in hopes that I would be more comfortable) and I also had to wake up the next morning at 5:30 am to walk the 12 km back to Vohitsaoka, then take two taxis-brousses to Fianarantsoa — all of which I chose to do with as empty a stomach as possible, to mitigate any possible trouble. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the first taxi-brousse felt like a wagon struggling to even hold itself together: on every bump in the road, I could see a gap between the frame and the door, the barely-attached windshield would slip and shift, and its cracks would rain crumbs of glass onto my lap. Little surprise that the engine also completely burnt out on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and all passengers had to wait for another extraordinarily uncomfortable replacement taxi-brousse to get us to Ambalavao and the second taxi-brousse. Such is life here.

But for the final morning we had before the return to Ambalavao, even discounting the incredible previous day, it was all worth it: it was the final Saturday market day before Independence Day, and everyone either had something to sell or something to buy. We weren’t alone on our 5:30 walk: as our path converged at forks to other villages, we were but two in a growing sea of villagers carrying their wares to town, walking together in a landscape beautifully lit by the morning sun. JB spotted a farmer carrying a half-dozen live ducks — poor things, tied by their feet, hanging upside-down on a pole — and found one for his family’s upcoming feast. (Hooray, another taxi-brousse ride trying to avoid bothering a duck.) Despite carrying heavy loads, everyone was in a jovial mood, and they enjoyed the novelty of a foreigner joining their walk as much as I enjoyed the friendly company. And hey, they may be hours away from the nearest town of note, but they still know to greet a Chinese person with “ni hao!”

I gotta say, this was a turning point for me. Perhaps it’s the hapless grins and high spirits shared by all, or the mere presence of human interaction: no matter how hard the travel gets, they’re going through it too, mora mora — slowly slowly, the key words here. Might as well do as they do, and embrace what comes with it.