AFTERNOON TEA IN THEGARDEN OF GODSoon after our arrival, we went to visit the King of Madagascar, even though he was dead. His home was out in the highlands, a feather-light pergola, more pavilion than palace. Around the walls were his soldiers’ tridents and a fancy mirror, given by Queen Victoria. There was a mysterious escape-hatch in the dining-room, and his ghost slept in a bed with ten-foot legs. Around it all, was a rampart made of sand and the whites of 10,000,000 eggs. No-one thought it at all odd to come and speak to the long-dead king. “Our ancestors are everywhere,” said our guide, “even in the trees.”
Looking back, I suppose Madagascar has always defied explanation. At its heart is Antananarivo, the capital of strange ideas. I remember baguettes and rickshaws, cockfighting, car-races, the cobbled streets of provincial France, little English village churches, circumcision parties, poinsettias as big as a house, and strings of sausages round the block. My wife even spotted a travelling beautician with a bucket of make-up. Odder still, this entire assembly was nailed - or chiselled - into the flanks of twelve sheer hills, nosing out of the rice. We were enchanted, as were the earliest visitors, in the 1630s. They thought Madagascar an earthly paradise, an arcadia, the Garden of God. That’s it, I suppose: God’s Garden. For who else would have thought to snip a piece off Africa, and haul it almost 300 miles, off into the safety of the Indian Ocean? And safe it was. Things had survived here which had long been lost elsewhere - like 80% of the island’s flora, or fifty varieties of lemur. In the absence of pests like lions and elephants, this menagerie had become conspicuously vain. We’d find chameleons in Fabergé, and sifakas in cream pyjamas and maroon velvet gloves. Even the ants were obsessed with their make-up. Only a few hours from Antananarivo, the garden runs wild. I loved these journeys, through rice padis, Tuscanny, Borneo, the Middle Ages and Middle Earth. I gave up trying to understand it all, the Indonesian faces, the spears and the games of petanque. At the Périnet reserve, it was we who were curiosities (to some creatures in pantaloons and ruffs). We stayed at the Vakona Lodge, which was like a wigwam made out of bricks. “We never use stone,” said our guide, “Stone is dead.”
But, travel on garden paths is slow, and so – after that – we stuck to the north. From the air, Madagascar was more implausible than ever, with its tiny round forts and swoops of turquoise and moon-rock. We paused momentarily at Diego Suarez, (just as the Second World War had. The surf was still prickly with wrecks), and then headed up, into the cool. “The Montagne d’Ambre,” announced our new guide, Philippe. Philippe was part-tribal, part-French and at home in this forest. He knew every click and squeak, and every flash of feathers. There were over 1,200 plant species here, he said, and more than half were medicinal. One tree, it seemed, even sprouted fresh handkerchiefs. Others were holy, protected by fady (or taboo). It was also fady to kill lemurs, sing whilst eating or hand someone an egg. At the edge of this complex world was a delightful French manoir. Although the Domaine de Fontenay had become a hotel, much hadn’t changed. The giant tortoise in the stable-yard was now 150, and every night we bathed in a vast, marble sea-captain’s tub. Then we were seated before one of Gustav Eiffel’s fireplaces, and plumped up on tropical treats; confit de canard, lobster and slices of ice-cold beef. The only other visitors to our forested eyrie were an acrobatic lemur (begging for lettuce), the fishman and Mother Superior. From now on, afternoon tea became a feature of our remarkable adventures. We had tea and madelaines in forests and empty coves, on desert islands and in gardens-within-gardens. Sometimes we were alone and sometimes there was a wildlife display - teatime humming-birds or lemurs cartwheeling round the cakes. We thought this ritual was doggedly French, but our hosts thought it amusingly English. Even when we camped a night in the forest, Philippe found a tablecloth, made of flour-bags. We knew we were nearing the coast by the bicycles covered in fish. There was a brief interlude of volcanic cones and savannahs, and then the sea. It was the colour of swimming pools, and pebbled in islands; Nosy Be, Nosy Komba and the Mitsio archipelago. The celestial spice gardens perhaps? Or Zanzibar but with more space and light. I can hardly imagine more ornamental isles, with their tiny hills and streams, and clumps of cloves and vanilla. Small wonder that, in 1904, a passing Russian warship simply abandoned its war, and defected to paradise. Speedboats and dolphins carried us from haven to haven. We had these places mostly to ourselves, just us, fish-eagles and the occasional turtle. The real action was usually out in the turquoise, a carnival of fish; angels, clowns and two-foot clams. We stayed first at a tropical idyll, La Pirogue, (‘the outrigger canoe’). It was pure Gauguin. The shower erupted from a primitive carved crocodile and yet the cats were from Paris. It was a similar story out on Tsarabanjina, except that now we had a desert island all of our own. The sand was sifted between cool forest and molten-chocolate rocks, and masked boobies wandered in and out of the bar. It was all so improbably pure that, in 1994 (just pre-hotel), the BBC abandoned Joanna Lumley here, a story that became Girl Friday. “Bien sûr, elle est revenue,” said the barman, “Everyone comes back.”
For our last stop, we boarded a tiny aeroplane laden with tomatoes and plumbing parts. It was like a flight to the end of the world, or perhaps the beginning. Below us, the west coast looked like Earth in the moments before life; virgin islands, powder-white sand and the grand, untenanted bush. Then I spotted a pirogue and we swept down on Anjajavy. As resorts go, it was hardly obtrusive; much of it had been built from the forest, though finished with Parisian élan. We had our own exquisite decked house, with our own stretch of beach and our own troupe of lemurs. The maids were from the tribes, and tidied up so enthusiastically that – at first – we thought they’d packed all our things and sent them home. By day, we chugged around among the islets. Some had been whipped into wine-glass shapes by the sea, and others were safe-havens for the dead (it’s fady for a pig to walk over one’s tomb). We also found ourselves amongst baobabs, the trees of children’s drawings. There were more species here than in Africa and Australia put together. These days seemed all too short (though at least they ended in teas). At night we had dinner by the beach, crab bisque perhaps or carpaccio of wild boar. One evening, the pastry chefs put on a tribal dance, and Monsieur L’oeuf (Mr Egg) told local jokes. As with so much of Madagascar, I found myself curled up with pleasure - even though I had no idea what it meant.
John Gimlette travelled as guest of Rainbow Tours (020 7226 1004). A 15-night northern Madagascar tour costs from £2,725pp sharing (for details, see www.rainbowtours.co.uk ). This includes all flights, taxes, transfers, guides, transportation, park fees and accommodation on a B&B basis (except full board in Tsarabanjina and Anjajavy). The trip takes in Antananarivo (2 nights), Mantadia reserve (1 nights), Montagne d’Ambre (3), Nosy Komba (2), Tsarabanjina (2) and Anjajavy (3).
There are no direct flights from the UK to Madagascar. Return flights from London to Antananarivo via Paris cost from £775 (Air Madagascar, 01293 596 665.)
Accommodation (The dialing code for Madagascar: +261): In Antananarivo, the smart Hotel Colbert (from £36pp double; 2022 – 20202 Colbert@Simicro.mg ); the Domaine de Fontenay (£41pp double; (0) 3311 – 34581); La Pirogue (£43pp double; (0)3207 – 440 40); Tsarabanjina (from £85pp double) and Anjajavy (£615pp for 3-night package including flights), both contactable on 2022 – 28514.
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