The hook
Western Madagascar's twin wonders: a dirt road lined with giant, ancient baobab trees glowing at sunset, and, further north, a forest of razor-sharp limestone pinnacles you cross on ladders and rope bridges.
01Why it's worth it
Madagascar split from other landmasses so long ago that most of its wildlife and plants evolved in isolation and exist nowhere else, and the west shows this at its most surreal. Near the town of Morondava, the Avenue of the Baobabs is one of the island's iconic images: a stretch of road flanked by towering, bottle-shaped baobab trees, some centuries old, their bare branches catching fire in the low light of dawn and dusk, when local life passes beneath them. Further into the remote west lies Tsingy de Bemaraha, a UNESCO reserve of "tsingy," a bizarre forest of grey limestone blades and pinnacles eroded into knife-edged towers, threaded with canyons and caves, which you explore on a via-ferrata of ladders, walkways, and rope bridges, home to lemurs and endemic birds. Reaching either takes effort on rough roads, but together the sunset baobabs and the alien stone forest capture the strange, singular magic of Madagascar's west.
02How to experience it
Base near Morondava for the Avenue of the Baobabs at sunrise or sunset, and make the rough overland journey to Tsingy de Bemaraha for the guided ladder-and-bridge circuits through the limestone (dry season only; the roads flood in the wet). It is remote travel; allow plenty of time.