Madagascar split from Africa 160 million years ago and evolved alone — nine out of ten species here exist nowhere else on Earth. Lemurs leap through the rainforest at Andasibe, baobabs line a dirt road at Morondava like cathedral columns at sunset, and the limestone blades of the Tsingy cut a stone forest you cross on suspension bridges. Roads are slow and the country is huge; that is part of the deal.
7-Day Madagascar » Avenue of the Baobabs & Morondava is a 7-day private tour of Madagascar, run on your own dates with a private guide and driver. You stay in the best available lodges beside the parks, on half board, travelling by private 4×4 with a driver who knows the road conditions.
Prices are per person and drop as your group grows — from $2180 per person for two travellers down to $1420 for a group of seven. Every departure is private: you never share the vehicle or the guide.
7-day Madagascar itinerary
Met at Antananarivo — 'Tana' to everyone who lives there — and driven east into the rainforest at Andasibe. Madagascar broke away from Africa 160 million years ago and has been evolving alone ever since: roughly 90% of everything alive here exists nowhere else on Earth. Nothing you see in the next few days has a close relative anywhere.
Overnight: 3-star hotel / lodge.
Andasibe is where you meet the indri — the largest lemur alive, black-and-white, tailless, and the only one that sings. Family groups call across the canopy at dawn in a wail that carries two kilometres and sounds like nothing else in the animal kingdom; it is the most memorable sound in Madagascar. Eleven other lemur species live here, plus chameleons and the improbable giraffe-necked weevil. On the night walk, the mouse lemurs come out.
Overnight: 3-star hotel / lodge.
Fly west to Morondava on the Mozambique Channel, and out to the Avenue of the Baobabs late in the afternoon. These are Adansonia grandidieri, up to eight hundred years old and thirty metres tall, and they are the last survivors of a dry forest that was cleared around them — which is why they stand in a line on open ground. At sunset the trunks turn copper and the shadows run the length of the road. It is the image of Madagascar.
Overnight: 3-star hotel / lodge.
One more visit to the baobabs at first light, when the tour buses are not there and the local people are — women carrying water, zebu carts, children going to school between trees that were standing before Madagascar had a king. Then the flight east across the whole width of the island back to the capital, over the deforested red highlands, which is a sobering view and worth taking the window seat for.
Overnight: 3-star hotel / lodge.
Fly north to Nosy Be, the island off the north-west coast — volcanic, hot, and covered in ylang-ylang plantations, which is why the whole island smells faintly of perfume. This is where Madagascar goes to the beach.
Overnight: 3-star hotel / lodge.
The flight back to Tana and your onward connection. End of our services.
