Andasibe and Antananarivo, Madagascar

Off a flight, and right back to the taxi-brousse: something clicked in Île Sainte-Marie… or perhaps it’s the looming return home? With just a few days left in the trip, I made a beeline for one more national park visit with renewed energy. Negotiating with taxi drivers, dealing with the chaos of the gare routière, finding a balance between being firm but friendly in securing myself a good seat, dealing with more delays and traffic jams… Maybe I just finally found my rhythm in Madagascar. I left Île aux Nattes by boat to the Sainte-Marie airport at the crack of dawn at 5:30 am, exited Tana airport at 8:30 am and made it to Andasibe, 143 km away, at 2 pm. Slow travel, no sweat.

Staying at a hotel a stone’s throw from the national park entrance, I was approached by several guides, but found the quoted prices too steep unless I found people to group up with. On an afternoon walk, a local struck up a conversation asking about my plans before revealing that he was also a guide — and with not a trace of coercion, his suggestion was Parc Mitsinjo directly across the road instead, a far cheaper and less crowded option maintained by a local conservation society instead of the national park authorities.

All I wanted was to see more lemurs. It may not be the big name park, but it’s the same piece of rainforest with all the same species — and I’m so glad that option presented itself. On a very rainy morning, Panderies was an excellent guide, following the beautiful morning song of the indris to find three of them hanging out low in the trees after a heavy shower ended. Even without their vocalisations, you can’t miss them — they’re the largest of lemur species, with those ears and that pom-pom tail making it look almost like a panda with wrong proportions.

And in one of the most magical moments of my trip…one indri happily took leaves from my hand, and stared at me face to face while eating. It’d be weird if it were a human, but come onnnnn. This was adorable.

The intermittent rain made sightings in general difficult, in more ways than one: the lemurs all wanted to hide, usually way up in the tree canopy, huddled between trunk and branch under large leaves. We were lucky to spot three diademed sifakas, also one of the largest lemur species after the indri, but more importantly, they’re cousins to Zoboomafoo.

Birds and reptiles didn’t share any fear the same fear of rain. We had fleeting glimpses of some very colourful kingfishers, but Panderies somehow found some very camouflaged leaf-tailed geckos. Not so camouflaged, however, was one particular chameleon, perplexingly out in the open.

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It took days for my clothes and shoes to fully dry after visiting Andasibe. I certainly wasn’t dry when I made my way back to Tana: with no taxi-brousses to hail on the road early in the morning, I hitched a ride to Moramanga 25 km away in a massive speed-limited tractor-trailer. That took 1.5 hours, crawling up each hill towing a load of cement pillars. The remaining 118 km? One final taxi-brousse, stuck in a traffic jam.

It’s funny how my perception changes. What I found previously to be unbearably long and uncomfortable turned into a fun but slow morning, thanks to two truck drivers who barely spoke French but still cracked jokes and made sure I could get to where I was going. Being constantly damp was less unpleasant than just a part of the ride.

And on my second extended stay in Tana, a city that I did not enjoy the first time around, I can say the same. Perhaps my first visit was affected by a direct comparison with Mauritius. After a month in the country, it was nice to seek out Madagascar’s version of creature comforts, mostly in the form of food. Most of the time, Malagasy food is simple but fine, in the form of various stews or broths accompanied by a heaping portion of rice. There’s some unique ingredients in there, like with signature dish ravitoto using cassava leaves. It may be even more rice-heavy than Chinese food, with it served three meals a day — no wonder there’s so many rice fields! Snack stalls are also everywhere but mostly either deep fried, or as pre-prepared sandwiches sitting on the counter all day.

French restaurants and bakeries, on the other hand, cost a little more but are aplenty especially in Tana, and the capital also has a much wider variety of cuisines and slightly more upscale spots than elsewhere in the country. Going to those was a chance to see how middle and upper class Malagasy and expats unwind, along with being a nice reprieve too. The streets may be deserted at night, but the popular restaurants are packed. My best meal in the country may have just been at a museum café, and I’m not grading on a curve here — I’m talking French techniques and genuine creativity, without pretention.

There’s also a burgeoning arts scene too. Fondation H, a heritage building nestled in the shadow of the chaos of Analakely, boasted modern art as confounding as anything I’ve seen in a New York museum, including a VR exhibit. (It surprisingly also has the New York Times seal of approval.) The local teenagers seem to love it all, though I don’t think selfie potential is necessarily the intent… Still, there are scenesters here, trend-chasers, fashionistas, whatever you want to call them, something I never expected!

On my final day in Madagascar, I was invited by Olivier and Bryan, a father and son who I met on my whale watching excursion on Île Sainte-Marie, to stay at their house near the Tana airport. Olivier, a fourth-generation Chinese-Malagasy, still speaks Cantonese alongside French and Malagasy, and even ably cooks all three cuisines. (Bryan and his brothers, who are mixed, only speak French, owing to education at a private French high school.) They’re from the northeast of the country (and gave a sample of fried sakondry, the “bacon bug” commonly eaten in that region, to try), a rich vanilla-growing region with notable East and Southeast Asian populations, but the kids spent their formative years further north in Diego Suarez, where Olivier’s wife still lives. As Olivier put it, the Hakka and the Cantonese were seafarers, but the former went to La Réunion and Mauritius while the latter settled in eastern Madagascar.

From what I see of them and of other Chinese folks I spotted around the country, excluding the recent mainland Chinese arrivals present just for work, the resident population is small but well-integrated (virtually every restaurant serves riz cantonais with lap cheong and soupe chinoise!), people treat them as any other Malagasy, and they also see themselves as Malagasy. For Olivier, that’s clear — he’s travelled with his family all over Madagascar and has a deep love for their country.

It’s interesting to hear that appreciation contrast with the realities of a country so far behind in development and in a conflicted relationship with its former colonial power. Schools, already not free, aren’t of great quality, so parents who can afford the price send their kids to French-run schools in the country. Bryan mentions that the vast majority of his cohort went abroad for universities in France, with a few going to Quebec as he is. Even fewer stay behind.

With corruption, overpopulation, and underdevelopment among other myriad reasons, there’s little career opportunity in Madagascar, and yet Bryan isn’t the only Malagasy expat I’ve seen pining for a return. As he sees it, the only way to prosper on return would be to either start your own business or join your family’s. At least the latter is an option for him. On our whale watching tour, we met a Malagasy man who recently moved back to Tana from Paris, but only in retirement.

People leave, but what drives them to come back? I have to think it’s a universal sentiment for nostalgia and family. It’s always a good thing to see people yearn for home and make an effort to move back. (I’ve done that myself.) While to me it may feel like the best is in the past, they know better. Sometimes coming back is a vote of confidence, sometimes it’s mere acceptance of a workable status quo. Sometimes it’s just missing the land and the culture — the food, the people, the friendliness, the atmosphere, the daily routines. In a sea of tourism, the reality of life feels frustratingly lost amongst the understandable fawning over animals and scenery and the bubble of being shuttled around.

I may leave Madagascar with some really high highs, but also a lot of sights and experiences leading to mixed feelings that I can’t paper over. Looking back now with less exhaustion and more hindsight, it’s that combination of uniqueness versus reality that drives me to travel, and that’s made this trip fulfilling. I’m reminded of similar experiences in the past where it took me awhile to warm up to a place. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back, but there’ll be a lot waiting for me if I do.