Madagascar comprises a natural world unlike any other. In this blog I’ll emphasize animals (fosa, lemurs, chameleons, birds), but the plants (baobabs, pachypodia), the landscape (tsingy) and the Malagasy culture of the people living there are often notably unique as well. And scuba diving in places is quite good too. The five weeks my wife and I were there were well-spent due to much effort I made researching the things I wanted to see and places to visit. Of course, I include some pictures here (including the picture of the pair of golden-diademed sifacas shown on this blurb page), but Madagascar is so picturesque, I have many more pictures in the Photography section of my website; many are in the section on animals, but there are pictures in other sections as well.

If you put a line directly through the center of the earth with one end where I live in Northern California, the other end comes out in the southern Indian Ocean. The closest large land mass is Madagascar. In other words, Madagascar is the most distance place on the planet I could possibly visit. Knowing a bit about its unusual fauna and flora and also musing about the possibility of visiting for years, I finally started reading some books about Madagascar and checking the internet. Thus, I made a list of the places and things I especially wanted to see. As I have usually planned travels on my own, I put together an itinerary, including transportation and lodging options. At the end of this blog, I’ll comment on how that proceeded. First though, the exotic animals….

Fosa (aka fossa). I have personally met no one who knew what a fosa was, and I didn’t know either, until a couple years before seeing them in the wild in Madagasgar. They have the body size of a small cougar but with a longer tail. Genetically, they and other carnivores in Madagascar comprise a genetic family with none found outside of Madagascar. They are classified as a threatened species, primarily due to habitat loss. They are endemic to Madagascar but are rare even there; and they are elusive. However, they become more careless during mating season. I had heard the best possibility for spotting a fosa was in Kirindy Forest during the first week in November when they mate, so I arranged to stay a couple nights in Kirindy. 

Less than two hours after our arrival, we saw a pair of fosa mating in a tree, as well as another male awaiting his turn, one additional male, and later a juvenile female. Our good fortune in witnessing this was especially evident when we learned there were only two females of mating age among the 14 known fosa in Kirindy Forest, which covers a large territory, and they are in estrus only 12 hours per year. One of the other three visitors to Kirindy had been waiting for three days before he joined us in the sighting. 

You can see from one picture here that I was standing next to the tree trunk as the female descended headfirst. In most places in Madagascar, fosa are famous for being ferocious and dangerous, even though very few people have ever seen one. As they are considered threatening by locals who have seen them, our guide (who had never previously seen a fosa himself) yelled for me to run as local camp staff had decided to quickly move away themselves; I simply moved about five meters (or yards) back, and that was sufficient for the female and the next male in line to run off to a more private location.

Lemurs are primates. There are ~90 species of lemur, all of which are endemic to Madagascar. In our five weeks there, we saw about half of the species. Some are diurnal, but many are nocturnal. This website, https://thomasljamesphotographytravel.org/wildlife), has pictures I took of several species we saw. Most of the species cannot survive in captivity, so it is necessary to see them in the wild. We saw the smallest (various species of mouse lemurs) and the largest (indri). This covers a large range in size, as the adult male indri is nearly my wife’s height and its long arms enable it to reach further than I can. Indris communicate via fairly high-pitched howling sounds. They are also impressive jumpers as they travel from tree to tree. Weirdly enough and very unusually for me, my wife can attest that in bed in the middle of the night after our first indri sightings, I started howling in my sleep. I guess I wanted to communicate something to my brothers in a dream. 

Unfortunately, conservation scientists predict that 20-30 years from now, up to 90% of the lemur species will be extinct, principally due to loss of habitat by illegal logging, often implemented by members of the Madagascar government. Even now, some lemur species can be found in only a single small area, and their numbers are quite low. It was not easy for me to move through the forest, sometimes on steep slopes, to get a decent picture of some lemurs. Of course, they can move pretty fast (usually, but not always) in the trees too. Fortunately, in remote locations far from people, the lemurs were often curious about humans too, so they would not necessarily flee when we approached, as animals typically do in other places.

Chameleons and other reptiles. You may find some chameleons elsewhere, but Madagascar is definitely chameleon central. I know only a little about them, but there must be hundreds of species. As we went on walks – typically at night – different guides on a few occasions would find a chameleon and point out that it was a recently discovered species. Again, I have a few pictures here, but more are in the Reptiles section of https://thomasljamesphotographytravel.org/wildlife. I wish I could put a video clip here, as their jerky mode of walking is quite striking. Other reptile species are numerous too, again with many endemic to Madagascar. There are additional pictures of fascinating geckos, frogs and snakes accessible from the link above.

Birds. Some people visit Madagascar solely for the birds. For a big-time bird watcher, Madagascar is great not only for the number and variety but for the fact that many are endemic to the country. My wife and I are not avid birders, but we do enjoy spotting them and actually watching them. Spotting a helmet vanga is apparently a highlight for many birders. Getting the picture of the helmet vanga shown here was a major undertaking for me as I worked my way down a steep muddy slope hanging from one tree and sliding to the next repeatedly until I could get close enough to peer between tree branches for a clear view through my camera lens.

Baobabs and Pachypodia. There are numerous plants endemic to Madagascar, but you are probably most familiar with baobabs. That is undoubtedly because two of the eight species of baobabs occur in Africa; the other six are endemic to Madagascar, with a couple of those possibly becoming extinct in the coming few decades. The various species can be found in different locales, but the most photographed ones (by me and others) are those around the “Avenue of the Giant Baobabs”, a World Heritage site, near Morondava. I found the various species of pachypodium to be quite fascinating as well; they grow in what appears to be quite inhospitable terrain.

Tsingy. Western Madagascar is unique in having tsingy, if only because it’s a Malagasy word describing this particular type of geological formation – limestone karsts sculpted by water erosion often forming pinnacles and sheets sometimes nearly razor-sharp and sometimes with caves and undercut ledges. Located in a more remote location is tsingy rouge (red tsingy), which I learned results from the erosion of laterite due to rain and the Irodo River. The red color is due to iron, but you can see from some pictures that it is not homogeneous; the white moiety has much more aluminum than iron. I have seen limestone karsts in different places in the world, but I have never seen elsewhere anything like tsingy.

A few aspects of Malagasy life and customs. Altitude and rainfall are the biggest influences on the climate and the terrain of Madagascar, with some areas being rain forest and others being nearly desert. Regardless where one lives, for most Malagasy people, life is not easy. But family, friends and community compensate.

Children learn to work and thus contribute to their family while still young. In dry areas, in particular, it may be a child’s daily responsibility to bring water a few kilometers to home. In the driest season, it is sometimes necessary to get that water from a nearly dry stream bed. As you can see in one picture here, the small trickle of water in a stream serves for bathing, washing clothes, grazing the livestock (zebu), crop irrigation, and as source for water to bring home for cooking, etc. Without financial resources, many places in Madagascar are unable to drill a well.

Burial practices also are characteristic, as there is strong connection of living people with their ancestors. In common with some southeast Asian cultures, there is a ceremonial “turning of the bones” of a deceased relative at a suitably propitious time several months after death with accompanying sacrifice of a zebu (like a cow). The “bones” are then wrapped in new silk and, accompanied by music and dancing, the silk-enclosed “bones” are carried to their permanent burial place. Generally, there is an expensive feast served, as some members of the extended family may have traveled a great distance. In the southern half (more or less) of the country, the final burial place is often in a cliff face (similar to The Marquesas) or other site in nature, although an affluent family may have a special tomb constructed.

Madagascar logistics.  I worked out the first draft of an itinerary to visit Madagascar based on my reading and research into potential travel connections would require staying about two months in Madagascar. I decided to tighten that up a bit, and the easiest way to do that was by using more domestic air travel, which necessitated use of several Air Madagascar flights. I tried multiple ways of contacting Air Madagascar, the only airline, but I had no success. On-line searching indicated that was the common experience for the airline. So, with good recommendations on TripAdvisor for Cactus Tours Madagascar, a Malagasy-owned and run company, I emailed my itinerary to them in the capital Antananarivo. We exchanged a few emails and, with minor modifications, we agreed that they would assume responsibility for getting us around on my itinerary. They did an excellent job. In our travels in Madagascar, it became abundantly clear how advantageous it was to have Cactus looking after us; Air Madagascar continually modified flight plans, so it was necessary to modify lodging as well as land and boat transportation many times. Often my wife and I did spend time waiting, but frequently we were able to visit interesting places while the Cactus crew hustled to make sure our transport and lodging worked out. I would have spent an enormous amount of time myself in this foreign land continually making adjustments and seeing far less with much more stress. We interacted with many guides, drivers and office personnel at Cactus; nearly all were excellent. Still, we were often on our own in cities, towns and villages, so we certainly interacted with local people – many times in finding local markets or cafes.