“Why is everything on this island spiky?” I lament to Theo, our local Malagasy guide, as I bruise my palm on a tsingy.

“The Spiny Forest down south had the longest thorns I’ve ever seen but even the rocks of this landscape are out to impale me.”

We have come to Madagascar to see some of the most engaging furry animals on Earth – lemurs – and they don’t disappoint, but the spikiness of their habitat is impressive.

Every lemur seems to be competing for the title of the most endearing. The first we see are ring-tailed lemurs, the model for King Julien in the Madagascar movie. But they are soon upstaged by the arrival of a troupe of dancing lemurs, the sifaka who walk/hop upright with their arms raised like Greek dancers. All seem undisturbed by our presence.

The cast of lemur characters grows daily. The nocturnal sportive lemurs enjoy a not-so-sporty nap during daylight hours, red brown lemurs are just that, while the most endearing lemurs we encounter are the bamboo lemurs that resemble benevolent Ewoks. There are more than 100 species of lemur but by far the loudest are the indri, the second-loudest primate (beaten only by howler monkeys) who can be heard up to two kilometres away. The great variety of lemurs is a surprise: indri are the largest and weigh up to 10 kilograms while a mouse lemur tops the scales at 30 grams.

Every aspect of Madagascar is wonderfully different, like stepping into an alternate dimension. First-time Australian visitors to Africa often note that the bush looks familiar, until a giraffe steps into view or a lion roars.

Madagascar’s location, 385 kilometres off the south-eastern coast of Africa, may lead us to expect that it’s little more than an extension of the continent. While the resemblance is superficial, nothing is the same, and it unfolds in unexpected ways. Most importantly, nothing is out to kill you. The snakes aren’t very poisonous, the scorpions don’t sting too hard and the Fossa, the largest carnivore, is a timid relative of the mongoose. That’s liberating, and we walk to every natural wonder in complete safety.

After lots of pre-departure research my wish list for Madagascar is concise: lemurs, chameleons, tsingy, Spiny Forest and baobabs. The Spiny Forest is in the far south while the strange rock formations known as tsingy stretch across the east and north-east. Add in the rainforest of the central highlands, and you have the perfect circuit for encountering different lemurs, chameleons and most of the six species of baobab endemic to this special tree’s birthplace.

Our host, Madagascar Classic Collection, has its own African-standard luxury safari camps in tsingy and Spiny Forest and offers a fully hosted holiday with knowledgeable guides and skilled drivers at each destination. That’s reassuring in a nation where domestic flight schedules change, roads are potholed and highways busy, and local culture fascinates enigmatically.

Antananarivo, the capital

Mercifully, Madagascar’s strongly French-influenced capital is universally abbreviated to Tana. The airport is about an hour’s drive from the city centre so you drive past rice fields and flood plains into increasingly chaotic traffic on approach to the hilly metropolis crowned by the imposing Queen’s Palace.

The palace is rightly the starting point for exploring Tana. The stone and wooden structure was gutted by fire in 1995 and only reopened as a rather sparse museum in 2024. This eyrie offers panoramic vistas over the city and the steep drive up through the Haute-Ville is impressive. Indeed, UNESCO lauds it: “The Upper Town of Antananarivo is an urban site of exceptional quality that has no equivalent in sub-Saharan Africa. The mix of typically Malagasy architectural elements and elements from the colonial presence has shaped a unique architecture of high quality that is still sufficiently well-preserved.”

Tana surprises with its contrasts: from a morning exploring the colourful produce in the bustling open-air Analakely Market, to buying from the huge range of local chocolate at a modern, expansive Carrefour. Madagascar has a rich geology, so the rustic row of market stalls of the Digue Market on the way to the airport offers excellent mineral ornaments, gemstones and handicrafts. Prices are negotiable.

Tana offers some Michelin-quality French restaurants at Malagasy prices. The Citizen, housed in a former diplomat’s residence overlooking Lake Anosy, is sublime, from the pate to the souffle. La Varangue, in the Upper Town, is renowned as one of the city’s best restaurants. It’s worth staying here for the food, city views and eccentric decor crowded with 20th-century artefacts from telephones to saxophones.

Magic Andasibe mountains

The 140-kilometre drive along Route Nationale 2 from Tana to the mountain village of Andasibe takes all of four hours, filled with grand mountain scenery, pretty rice terraces and endless crawling trucks and switchbacks across steep ridges. Even on main highways 40km/h is aspirational. Finally arriving at Relais de Mantadia, we’re welcomed by a piercing Australian “cooee”. It’s an indri calling from a distant forest.

Andasibe is a sensual feast from the macro to the micro. Over several days we explore private reserves and national parks, the smell of damp tropical vegetation and the croak of innumerable frogs merging with lemurs leaping in the canopy overhead and every tree and branch promising a new discovery, often a phlegmatic chameleon. At lunch by a waterfall deep in Mantadia National Park, there’s a floor show of butterflies fluttering above the rapids.

As we watch a white-ruffed lemur mother and baby in Parc Mitsinjo we realise we are not alone. On a branch level with our heads is a bright-green Parson’s chameleon watching us intently. Chameleons can move and focus each eye independently and it’s disconcerting to observe him following our roving cameras with his eyes while remaining motionless on the slim chance we haven’t seen him. We are told Parson’s chameleons are the largest (though this is the smaller local p. cristifer sub species) and he’s a male because he has horns.

The following morning we discover the most bizarre creature in the panoply of Malagasy weirdness: a male giraffe weevil. It has a red body just 15mm long and an articulated neck three times as long as his body. Apparently, his courtship neck moves would make a hip-hop dancer proud.

Tsingy laid bare

Karst landscape is not unique to Madagascar: the largest karst landscape is the Nullarbor Plain and many have visited the rocky spires of China’s Guilin. However, the clue to what makes Madagascar’s karst special is the name “tsingy” coming from the Malagasy verb “mitsingitsingy” meaning “place where you can’t walk barefoot”. That’s a considerable understatement.

Imagine vast areas throughout the island where thousands of hectares of ancient calcite have been upraised and polished by monsoonal rains into endless points of knife-sharp grey rock where a simple fall could be fatal. Think of it as spikes on spikes, an extended plain of broken glass intruder deterrent on top of towering security bollards.

For us, even walking on it in heavy boots is a challenge, yet resident lemurs can run and hop across it undeterred. Fortunately, we are taken to it along tracks formed by Zebu, the ubiquitous and distinctive cattle of Madagascar, to several vantage points with spectacular overviews of the tsingy without venturing too far onto it.

The best known tsingy is Bemaraha but, with a spirit of adventure, we arrive at a new luxury camp in the Tsingy of Namoroka that extends more than 220 square kilometres and is contained within a rarely visited national park. It was intensively explored in the 1940s but not much since. It’s August, and I am one of the camp’s first five visitors and the park’s eighth visitor for the year. Even so, every trip we take into the park is under the watchful eye of Moril, the national park ranger.

The new camp of just nine well-separated tents is built around its own tsingy outcrop, so evening cocktails are served in a rocky grotto as the setting tropical sunlight plays across stone and baobabs. In this remote setting, the camp is completely self-contained, a dot of luxury in the vastness. Our accommodation is beyond comfortable, the cuisine excellent, drinks always cold, and we return from every excursion to a platter of chilled face towels to wipe off the dust. There’s even excellent internet coverage at the bar.

While the hostile surface of the jagged tsingy is unwelcoming, under the tsingy is a remarkable world of caves, grottoes and canyons, a world of strange plants, microbats and signs of ancient human occupation.

With helmet and headlamp on, I twist around a stalagmite and contort into a narrow defile. I look up and a perfectly preserved fossilised tusk is illuminated mere centimetres away. I shiver from the import of the moment as this is the remains of the Madagascan pygmy hippopotamus, last seen alive more than 500 years ago. A slight movement to my left reveals a sleeping microbat, clinging to a tiny ledge by my ear. The Namoroka caves are one of the longest networks of caves in Africa, and we feel like first explorers.

We emerge from the darkness to find a lunch table set up in a giant cave. There’s much to recommend great hospitality in an inhospitable environment. Back at camp we have dinner with MCC’s owner, the affable Edward Tucker Brown, who tells us he’s planning to use charter aircraft in 2025 to make the process of moving around Madagascar considerably easier, with much less time bouncing down awful roads. His enthusiasm for the potential of tourism to help the rural people of this impoverished nation is unbounded.

Over the next few days we discover there’s much more to Namoroka Tsingy Camp than tsingy. Led by Ernest, our knowledgeable guide, we explore by day and night, watching Van Der Decken’s sifaka dance across the ground in the daytime and Tsiombikibo sportive lemurs being very active at night. We have lunch by a crystal-clear turquoise pool with lemurs in the trees above.

Sharp receptions

Most destinations would be content to have one very prickly tree define a region known as Spiny Forest. Not here – every plant, from tiny shrubs to Octopus trees raising their arms high to the heavens, are covered in thorns that range from mere rose-like prickles to branches with long spikes of hypodermic proportions.

Yet, this theatrically discouraging landscape is home to several species of lemur both diurnal and nocturnal who take turns to sleep in the bed-of-nails-like crook of absurd but aptly named Octopus trees. The trip from Mandrare Camp to the Spiny Forest and other lemur habitats takes us through cultivated fields. The cash crop is sisal and the road is lined with prickly pear – both introduced and both spiky. Incidentally, two other renowned Malagasy exports are introduced too: while most of the world’s vanilla is grown in Madagascar it is originally from Mexico, while chocolate began in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

On the other hand, Madagascar is the home of the baobab, and it’s thought that the Australian Kimberley’s boab tree arrived as a nut on an ocean current from Madagascar. The other seven species of baobab are here in all their various shapes, one being reintroduced from Africa. They are all immediately recognisable as baobabs but for those of us familiar with boabs, some look like they’ve been on a strict diet and others have distinctly red bark. Many, thick and thin, are hundreds of years old.

Can accommodation on a wooden platform with a spacious terrace overlooking the river, a four-poster bed, carpets and a large stone bathroom with luxurious toiletries really be described as a tent? In Madagascar as in Africa, our safari tent (one of nine) takes glamping to a whole new level, especially when combined with excellent meals and all-inclusive drinks and excursions.

After we have passed slowly through many villages with basic huts on bare red dirt, leaving a comet tail of small children shouting “bye bye” in our wake, we visit Analetalo village.

The small, dusty village along a deeply rutted dirt road lacks power, water and sanitation but there is a strong sense of community as mothers and children come to see the alien visitors. Here local traditions prevail.

“If you take a photo of a village child they will immediately ask to see it,” Theo, our local Malagasy guide briefs us. “That’s because the Shakalava tribal shaman doesn’t let children look into a mirror until they are in their 20s, or married.”

Whether your preparation for Madagascar is watching every David Attenborough – or John Cleese – documentary or just the animated movie, nothing prepares you for the real thing. There’s a gratifying richness to doing as much as possible over an intense two-week journey and knowing that you’ve barely touched the surface. For me, there’s 100 more species of lemur that I need to spend some time coming to know.

FIVE MORE THINGS TO SEE AND DO

Avenue of the baobabs
While you’ll find stands of baobabs elsewhere, the iconic image is this avenue near Morondava at sunrise or sunset, but there will be a crowd seeking the same shot.

Nosy Be
The name translates as “Big Island” and, with direct flights from Europe, this is the centre for the country’s beach and island culture. There’s diving, snorkelling and whale watching – and there are lemurs in the forest.

Pick a passion
Madagascar is crowded with the unique, so if 1000 species of orchids get your interest, come in the rainy season when they are in bloom. Or seek out 300 species of butterflies, 150,000 invertebrates, and numerous chameleons. Birders may seek to add the long-eared owl or the running coua to the life-list.

Chocolate making
Learn how to use Madagascar’s renowned chocolate to make your own combination of fillings and flavours. See tamana-company.com/brand/tamana-kitchen.

Dive into Malagasy life and customs
Question everything. There’s a richness to Malagasy life that is obscured by language, but if you ask your guide you may learn of shaman, intricate burial rituals and fady. Fady roughly translates as “taboo” and it varies from group to group and may dictate everything from days to work to it being fady to sing while you’re eating or your teeth will grow. It’s complicated and intriguing.

THE DETAILS

TOUR
Madagascar Classic Collection offers a fully hosted all-inclusive 13-day tour with charter flights that includes Mandrara River Camp, Andasibe and Namoroka Tsingy Camp from $16,120. Minor roads are largely impassable during the rainy season (generally November to March) with cyclones from January onwards. August-October is the best time to visit. See madaclassic.com

PHONE
For most Australians there’s no cheap option for global roaming in Madagascar. However, local SIMs are cheap and easy to obtain from the main networks of Telma and Orange. I was unable to obtain an eSIM from Telma but Orange had one installed in the shop in minutes and operated widely and cheaply. Wi-Fi is widely available.

MONEY
While hotels and larger shops in Tana will accept credit cards, everywhere else is a cash economy with payment in Ariary. Cash is best obtained in Tana. If most of your time is in safari camps your main outgoing will be tips to camp staff, guides and drivers. These are not obligatory but in this country they are very well-received.

FLY
The easiest ways to get to Madagascar are either via Johannesburg and on to Tana through the South African regional airline Airlink or with Air Mauritius through Perth and then Mauritius to Tana. Domestic flights are with Tsaradia which can be chaotic with delayed and cancelled flights and a crowded check-in.

MORE
See madagascar-tourisme.com/en/

The writer travelled as a guest of Madagascar Classic Collection.