Heading West to East of the Grand Island

Fishing sailboats in Morondava

The plan was to leave Morondava at 9am so I woke up early and decided to take a walk around the beach which was pretty a little further away from the city limits. The scene of boats with white sails against the backdrop of clear blue skies and blue water made for a nice shot and a great early morning walk.

Since we had an almost empty taxi-brousse Bernis has his daughter and niece ride along with us. We stopped by the bank where I withdrew some cash and then had my now regular breakfast of homemade yogurt and bananas. We also filled up our taxi-brousse with gas because for the next 500 kilometer we would encounter no gas stations as we travel through rural Madagascar.

Looking at the Mozambique Channel from the west coast of Madagascar

Seemingly rickety bridges on the way to Antsirabe

The road for about an hour and half after we left was in pretty bad condition which we were told by Bernis was due to floods having washed away part of the road. That meant that the progress for this initial phase was painfully slow and the traffic did not help either. I made the most of the situation by taking a quick nap.

Palm forest

By the time I woke up the road situation had improved and I settled at the front window seat beside the driver to take in the fantastic scenery along the way.


The region immediately bordering Morondava had paddy fields and the occasional baobab. I think irrigation might be a good reason for the well irrigated paddy fields here rather than the weather since it was still situated in the dry and arid climate of south west Madagascar.
Soon we were traversing through a region of over exploited dry deciduous forest which gave way to a stretch which seemed like a forest of palm trees. However, it seems to me that this region must have been somewhat similar to the vegetation of Tsingy and Kirindy before the massive deforestation and exploitation of the region.

Passing throuh the highlands of central Madagascar

For lunch we stopped by a small Hotely which served us fried fish and rice and it came at a pretty cheap $2 per person. A few hours after our lunch we drove by the city of Miandrivazo where we had begun our boat ride. It was a very weird feel at this point; it seemed to me that my entire journey was an array of small cycles each consisting of a journey within itself and all of these small cycles were encompassed within the larger cycle. It made me realize that I was fast completing the smaller cycles which invariable meant that I was coming close to completing the bigger cycle...but not yet…for now I still had to start and close one new cycle (the Andasibe one).

Passing thro one of many army posts along the way

After Miandrivazo the landscape changed dramatically again as we started to climb into the central highland of Madagascar where the land was dry and barren and consisting of gentle rolling hills. The structure of the houses also changed from thatch type houses or huts to more roofed houses while the air got progressively colder.

We got in to Antsirabe around 8:30pm and checked into the same hotel from where I had joined the group a week ago. Bernis bid adieu to us and left into the night and after dinner it was my turn to say goodbye to Luke and Jilli as I was supposed to leave for Antananarivo early in the next morning.

Early next morning, I took a push-push from the hotel to a taxi-brousse station to return to Antananarivo not knowing that I was to encounter my most poignant moment. The push-push are hand drawn rickshaws and I remember taking one in Delhi a decade or so ago in similarly cold weather but maybe I was too naïve to feel as I did that morning in Antsirabe.

Push-Push

The push-push driver was pulling the rickshaw with my weight plus the weight of my backpack and was literally jogging all the way. He was smaller than me in stature, wore less clothes than me in the cold morning air, had a pretty wrinkled face that seemed like it had endured a lot of hardship and he was barefoot. The fare for the 3 kilometer ride was a meager 3000 Ariary (less than 1 dollar 50 cents). It just did not feel right to be riding in the comfort of the push-push knowing that another human is pulling you like cattle drawing a cart…but then what could I do? Not ride and deprive him of his hard earned money? Just give him some money without his service and show my pity by stripping him of his dignity?

Paddy fields of eastern Madagascar

I don’t know the solution to prevent one human from doing something like this for another human but I did what I still think was right, pay him for whatever fare he suggested plus a little tip and then put my hand on his shoulder, looked into his eyes and said “Misotra” from the bottom of my heart before make a quiet prayer for him as I walked to catch my taxi-brousse.

Male Short-horned Chameleon (Calumma brevicornis)

A cramped four and a half hour in a taxi-brousse after than moment and I got into Tana where I took a taxi (a regular one) to a different station from where I caught a taxi-brousse to head east from Tana to the town of Moramanga. The ride was supposed to be only 3 hours but we had mechanical problems with our taxi-brousse which made the engine freeze after every 10 minutes upon which the driver got out of his seat, pulled the seat down and did some magic with the engne so that the taxi-brousse would run for the next 10 minutes. Fortunately this problem arose for the last leg of the journey but even then I lost about an hour and a half. The ride however was beautiful with the rice fields slowly giving way to green but exploited secondary rain forests. In a day I had moved from the dry deciduous flora of the west coast to dry palm landscape and then the highland landscape and finally the rain forest landscape of eastern Madagascar.

Some unknown species of Chameleon

Moramanga seemed like a busy town that was the local trading hub for the surrounding villages since the town was dominated by its busy and not so clean market. Since I was already running behind schedule due to the mechanical wreak that I got to Moramanga with, the last thing I wanted was to find out that the taxi-brousse going from Moramanga to Andasibe was a 26 seater so there I was waiting for over an hour and a half for the engine to crank. At around 4:45, I lost my patience and offered to pay for all the remaining seats to get moving.

Species of Brookesia chameleon on my index finger

Finally around 5:15 the taxi-brousse moved and I heaved a sigh of relief but was not sure if I would be making it on time for the night walk since the night walks begin around 6pm and it was an hour long ride. Fortunately, I shared my frustration with a couple kids who were sitting beside me and my luck would have it that they actually worked in an adventure company in the Andasibe rain forest and hence knew of a guide whom they called immediately and got me hooked to go on a night walk as long as I made it there before 6:30pm.

My guess is its the Brown Leaf Chameleon
(brooksia superciliaris

Around 6:20pm when it was already dark the kids stopped and got down with me seemingly in the middle of nowhere but then I saw the entrance to the park. I thanked the kids by giving them a small tip and set off with my guide into the night of the jungle.

Female Short-horned Chameleon

I didn't know how tired I was until I found my eyes weary and I was struggling to cope with the guide but I ploughed ahead. That night we saw three more species of chameleons and a tree frog but there was no luck seeing any nocturnal lemurs in the jungle till then.

After getting back to the park entrance I got my backpack from the office and the guide offered to walk me to the village of Andasibe as the road was pitch black and I did not know anybody there. As we were walking on the road, we saw a mouse lemur (a separate species than the one I saw in Tsingy) come out of the bush and within a couple yards of us before making eye contact with me and darting into the jungle. I really rued the fact that I did not have my camera ready but I was alteast glad that I saw it.

At the village of Andasibe my guide for the night hooked me up with a guide I could use to go into the main Andasibe Park the next morning and he in turn got me a place to sleep for that night. I think I might have dozed off within minutes of checking in.