Bradt Madagascar Guidebook
Madagascar travel guide. Holiday advice and travel tips including Antananarivo highlights, Malagasy wildlife and endemics, national parks and reserves. Also featuring detailed species identification, the best spots for wildlife watching and birding, Nosy Be, Nosy Mangabe, Masoala, Toliara, baobabs, lemurs, chameleons, local cuisine and hotels.
Edition: 14
Number of pages: 472
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Bradt Madagascar Guide
The latest edition of the leading guidebook to Madagascar.
About this guide to Madagascar
This updated Bradt Madagascar Guidebook remains the leading and by far the most detailed guidebook to this unique African island nation – a place like nowhere else on Earth.
Its authors are both established Madagascar experts: Hilary Bradt, who first visited in 1976 and has returned roughly 35 times, and Daniel Austin, who has visited 30 times across 20 years and continues to spend several months a year there.
The world’s oldest – and fourth-largest – island, Madagascar is fascinating not only zoologically and botanically, but culturally, linguistically, historically and geologically too.
Evolution has transformed the country into an unparalleled hotspot for biodiversity, with four-fifths of its flora and fauna occurring nowhere else on the planet. More than a fifth of the world’s 533-odd primate species exist only here, and Madagascar is the sole country to harbour wild lemurs.
Offering itineraries to suit all interests and budgets, with Bradt’s Madagascar you can:-
- Visit tropical rainforests to seek out the country’s remarkable animals and plants (including a thousand species of orchid)
- Explore otherworldly eroded limestone spires, famously at Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park – Madagascar’s most striking landscape
- Discover beach-fringed islands around Nosy Be with their fabulous scuba diving, snorkelling, kayaking, whale-watching and fishing
- Make the most of a host of adventuring and sporting possibilities, including surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, rock climbing, tree climbing, caving, river trips, mountain biking, distance running, quad biking and hiking
This updated Bradt Madagascar Guidebook also features the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ambohimanga, the renowned Avenue des Baobabs (one of the country’s most photographed scenes) and information on the best birdwatching spots. The so-called “eighth continent” hosts almost 300 avian species, with a high proportion of endemics, including six families wholly endemic to the country and surrounding islands.
National parks and protected areas are given detailed treatment, around a thousand hotels and restaurants are covered, and Madagascar’s cultural richness is celebrated. The world’s only truly Afro-Asian nation is geographically part of Africa but has an indigenous population that primarily originated from present-day Indonesia, and emerged from French colonial rule as recently as 1960.
Madagascar truly is ‘a world apart’.
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Contents
Introduction
PART ONE GENERAL INFORMATION
1 The Country
2 People and Culture
3 Natural History
4 Practical Information
5 Health and Safety
6 Madagascar and You
PART TWO THE GUIDE
7 Antananarivo and Area
8 East of Tana
9 The Highlands South of Tana
10 The South
11 The West: Menabe Region
12 The North and Northwest
13 Nosy Be and Nearby Islands
14 Toamasina to Masoala and the SAVA Region
15 Île Sainte Marie (Nosy Boraha)
16 The East Coast between Toamasina and Taolagnaro
Appendices: Historical Chronology; The Malagasy Language; Further Information
Index
About the authors
Daniel Austin’s fascination with Madagascar began in his teens, long before he managed to make his first visit – but once he did, he was hooked, and the trip changed the course of his life. In the two decades since, he has clocked up around 30 visits and now spends several months of each year exploring the island country. Now occupied full time with all things Malagasy, he leads small-group tours to the island (danielaustin.co.uk) as well as guiding and lecturing on expedition cruises, is secretary of the Anglo-Malagasy Society and founded the Madagascar Library (an archive of 7,000 books and documents about Madagascar: madagascar-library.com).
He has co-authored Bradt’s Madagascar guidebook since its ninth edition, as well as co-authoring Bradt’s companion title Madagascar Wildlife and the book Madgascar Highlights.
Hilary Bradt’s career as an occupational therapist ended when potential employers noticed that the time taken off for travel exceeded the periods of employment. With her former husband George, she self-published her first guidebook in 1974 during an extended journey through South America. While building up Bradt Travel Guides during the next few decades she supplemented her income by leading tours to Madagascar. Her in-depth knowledge of the country has brought her numerous lecture engagements and commissions for travel articles.
She received an MBE for services to travel in 2008, and other awards have followed, but nothing compares with walking out of the presidential palace in Antananarivo under the upraised swords of a guard of honour, after being made an Officer of the National Order of Madagascar. Now living in semi-retirement in Devon, she is delighted to have handed over to Daniel the hard graft of researching new editions.