Articles > Madagascar

I am searching for an indri. It is up there in the treetops, somewhere... It is bathing in the morning sun, loafing like a lord in the canopy of the dense, damp rainforest that covers the eastern slopes of Madagascar. On an island world-famous for its lemurs (and little else), the indri is the big one. Three-foot tall with soft black and white fur, it looks like an anorexic panda. Or babakoto, as the locals call it - the father-child.

It is not seeing indris that shocks you, but hearing them. Their territorial call can be heard over two miles away, a long, chilling howl that stops the world like a fire alarm. It is a cry that grabs you by the heart, a sound as profound as the song of the whale, as startling as the first yell of a newborn baby.

After two hours tramping through the thick woods of the Périnet reserve (Muddygascar would be a better name), I finally peer up through the branches at an awesome foursome. One bloke, two missuses and a five-month old kid are lolling around in the yapaca trees. Wearing a dapper outfit of black jacket with white trousers, they look like cuddly toys - until one opens its mouth to scream. Then I see a vivid red gash, and stand listening, terrified, as it all comes pouring out. The cry of the indri... A haunting, blood-turning siren call, lifted straight from the soundtrack of the universe.

This is only my third day in Madagascar, yet I've already become a lemur bore. There are at least 50 species, folks, and the big fuss about them is a) they are cute, acrobatic and good for tourist revenue, b) they are only found on Madagascar, and c) they have hardly changed in 57 million years. Look into the teddy bear eyes of a lemur, and you are riding the fast track back to The Beginning Of It All.

Some lemurs are now so habituated to tourists they are as tame and importuning as cats. Others, like the indri - which can't survive in zoos due to their prissy eating habits - require a major pilgrimage. My favourite is the grey mouse lemur, which is four inches long and would make the perfect hero for a Disney cartoon. Mouse lemurs are nocturnal and live up in trees in little holes, so you have to hunt for them at night with a torch. It seems an impossible task, then suddenly your beam catches the glint of two oversized eyes, and you realise one is staring down at you like a devil wearing Ray-Bans. I also have a soft spot for sifakas. These sport black faces with all-in-one suits of white fur, and tear around the trees like Lenny Henry on some Arctic mission. And why are they called sifakas? Well, sometimes it's hard to see the...

Lemurs are why everybody goes to Madagascar, but they are just the icing on a very exotic cake. Moored like a battleship off the southeast corner of Africa, the island is bigger than France. It has superb tropical beaches, highland plateaux rising to 4,500 feet, and a Flora and Fauna Dept. so bizarre and colourful you begin to wonder if God takes drugs. The tomato frog, Parson's chameleon, the giant jumping rat, pitcher plants that trap and drown innocently passing insects - all your wildest dreams are alive and well and living in Madagascar.

The Malagasy people are equally captivating, with roots in Asia rather than Africa. According to the historians, Madagascar was first populated 2,000 years ago by Indonesian tribes who came hopping round the Indian coast like frogs seeking the perfect lily-pad. This heritage is apparent as soon as you drive from the airport to the capital, Antananarivo, and look out at a glassy landscape of rice fields and roads groaning with wooden carts pulled by zebu, a hump-backed cattle from northeast India.

Throw in some Arab and African influences, add 70 years of French colonial rule, and the result is a culture of affable craziness. The Malagasy language, for example, could drive a computer spell-check to suicide - the word for "zoo" is saha misy bibidia hojeren ny mpitsangantsangana, while one famous king was called Andriantsimitoviaminandriandehibe. The Malagasy also go in for superstition big time, with ancestor worship ingrained in daily life. One day, on the road to Andasibe, we met a cheery, flag-waving procession of villagers "turning" the bones of a deceased relative. On another, Jean-Baptiste, our fifty-something driver, swore to me that a passing mpamosavy (witch) had touched his head during the night.

Another crucial belief concerns what is fady. Jannicq, our well-educated, perfect-English guide, wouldn't eat goat because it was fady, and warned us not to sing and eat at the same time or we might get buck teeth. Or at least a messy shirt. I warmed to the concept of fady when he explained that some people found it fady to work in the rice fields on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe fady could become the new feng shui? I'm terribly sorry warden, but I find it fady to pay parking fines.

Antananarivo, which is thankfully better known as Tana, is where the French influence remains strongest. The city is a charmingly faded world of battered Peugeots, sleepy supermarchés and haut cuisine. I was travelling around with a couple of friends, and we started our adventure with a slap-up meal at the top-notch La Taverne restaurant, where the most expensive dish cost £4. There was a picture of Notre-Dame cathedral on the wall, and the menu included snails, foie gras, frog's legs and magret de canard. The loos were scented with cloves, the view was of rusty tin rooves and church spires, and John Lennon sang Imagine as a waitress wheeled in a trolley bearing crêpes flambés à l'eau-de-vie de mandarines.

Tana is also the place to go shopping. The market at Andravoahangy has it all - brightly patterned straw baskets, elaborately carved rosewood boxes, zebu-skin rucksacks, dinky DC2 Citroens fashioned from insect repellent cans - and, inexplicably, hundreds of carrier bags from Sainsbury and Tesco. Raffia originates from Madagascar, and it is also famous for vanilla and a beautiful paper called Antaimoro made from bark and dried flowers, which can be bought from small factories on the outskirts of the capital.

You need at least a month to see the best of Madagascar, but we got a good taste for the place in ten days. Few Brits go there, which is refreshing, but the French adore the island - which means the hotels, guides and transport facilities are better than expected. We had no problems hopping around with Air Mad, as the national airline is affectionately known, kicking off with a short flight down to Fort Dauphin, on the southeast tip of the island.

Madagascar is known as the Great Red Island on account of its vividly coloured soil. Peering through the plane window, I looked down to a topsy-turvy landscape of snaking ochre roads and dark blue lakes where matchstick men were punting along in wooden canoes. Fort Dauphin turned out to be a wild, windblown town with huge beaches where shipwrecked tankers lay scattered in the sand like great rusty whales. It is a place for travellers who like the end of the road, a venue for taking stock of things, where you can dine on lobster for a fiver and get a bottle of wine for even less. Our favourite was a local vin gris called Lazan'i Bestileo, which comes with the irresistible slogan "made with the love of peasants".

Even here, in such a forgotten corner of the world, the Malagasy people were strolling around with baguettes, peering into shops selling boules, queuing up outside the epicerie. On the beach kids were tobogganing down sand dunes on tortoise shells, while the graves of 19th century missionaries lay cracked and overgrown on the cliff tops.

From here, most travellers head to Berenty, a reserve 130 miles to the west where you can see lemurs galore. You get there on a surreal drive through the "spiny forest", a semi-desert landscape that bristles with thin, luminous cacti that suggest the world is about to be taken over by giant green pipe-cleaners.

Another Madagascar must is Pangalanes, a necklace of lakes and canals running up the east coast that you can zip along by speedboat. This is a water world of big skies and lakeside lodges, where a thin strip of land separates serene inland waters from the pounding breakers of the Indian Ocean. We stayed on the shores of Lake Ampitabe in Ankanin'ny Nofy, which very suitably means "Nest of Dreams". As we arrived at our rustic thatched lodge we found the chef had just caught our fish supper from a canoe called Boogie Pilgrim. Talapia served with yellow rice and ratatouille. Breakfast was baguettes with pineapple jam, and lunch was poulet au coco followed by crêpes - you won't go hungry in Madagascar.

The Pangalanes waterways end at Tamatave, a big, rough-edged port on the east coast that was a reminder that there is always a thin line between the romantic and the grotty in such places. Suddenly the markets seemed dirty and pathetic, and the boulevards were lined with pousse-pousse (rickshaw) drivers whose desperate seeking of dosh jarred with the picturesque idea of riding round town in colonial style. When we went for a sundowner at the supposedly classy Hotel Neptune we were attacked by a swarm of horrible black flies. Yet there was also a beguiling yesteryear charm that made it worth it - a clapped-out Renault 5 with yellow headlights, some faded Air France posters, the ancient wooden bar at the Hotel Joffre, where the sole amusement for guests waiting in the foyer is an ancient coffee-table book on Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

The best way to end a Madagascar adventure is with a short flight across to Ile Ste-Marie, a slither of a tropical island off the northeast coast. Our plane was overbooked, and the few French holidaymakers left behind stormed about in baggy shorts yelling "merde!" at the floor.

I understood their dismay when we landed, for the vibe in Ile Ste-Marie is reminiscent of the French Caribbean. Louchely leaning palm trees, warm blue waters, dishes spiced with coconut and ginger, hawkers selling shells at your bedroom door, atrocious roads... So far the island has had just enough development to make things nice, but it is not yet spoilt. The locals spend their days watching kick-boxing videos and staging zebu-catching contests, while we tourists have to put up with walking along empty beaches, guzzling papaya for breakfast, and watching the whales that funnel past the island between June and September.

We walked round the idyllic Ile aux Nattes, and visited the beautifully overgrown Cimetière des Pirates, then hired some mountain bikes to pedal off into the forests. It was a long hot ride, up over red-earthed hills, down to coral beaches, through sleepy villages where children waved and shouted "bon-bons" at us.

Afterwards we quenched our thirst with a few bottles of Three Horses beer in the island's main town, Amboifotatra. I sat in the bar of the Au Bon Coin restaurant, where the waitresses wore red gingham pinafores and the infectious rhythms of Malagasy music mingled with the afternoon heat. At such a perfect moment, it seemed fady to have to go home.

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