An island that changes at every stage
Madagascar has been called the Red Island, the Rainbow Island and even the eighth continent. None of those names fully contains it. It is the world’s fourth-largest island, but what remains with me is the rapid change of scale: red brick and cool air in Antananarivo, knife-edged limestone in Ankarana, cacao around Ambanja and then the wide water of the Nosy Be archipelago.
The island’s long isolation explains animals and plants found nowhere else, yet Madagascar is never only a nature catalogue. African and Austronesian roots, Arab and Indian Ocean exchanges, French colonial history and independence in 1960 are present in language, food, markets and in the fady that still protect sacred places.
I travelled north by accepting slow roads, ferries, tides and changes of plan. The reward was not a single postcard beach, but the sequence: a red track after rain, a pirogue entering Lokobe, the white line of Nosy Iranja and the sun dropping behind Mount Passot.
