Highlights of Madagascar: RN7, Lemurs & Landscapes

Today you explore Antananarivo, a fascinating introduction to highland Madagascar. You wind up through the old upper town to the royal hill, taking in the great Rova palace complex and the views over a city that spills across a dozen hills above a patchwork of rice paddies. You wander lively markets fragrant with vanilla and spices, browse Malagasy handicrafts, and visit a craft workshop or the excellent Andasibe-style lemur park on the city fringe if time allows, learning about the island's extraordinary natural heritage. Colonial-era churches, steep staircases and bustling street life give Tana a character quite its own. Your guide brings the city's layered history, from the Merina kingdom to independence, vividly to life. As the day ends, you return to your hotel with a first feel for Malagasy culture. Rest well, for tomorrow the great RN7 road trip begins in earnest.

Today the RN7 road trip begins as you head south into the highlands towards Antsirabe. The drive is a feast of scenery, winding through emerald rice terraces, red-earth villages of tall brick houses, and hills dotted with grazing zebu, with plenty of stops for photographs and roadside markets. You pause in craft villages known for wood carving, embroidery and miniature model-making, and perhaps at a local workshop to see artisans at work. By afternoon you reach Antsirabe, a genial highland town founded as a spa resort, famous for its faded colonial grandeur, thermal springs and countless colourful pousse-pousse rickshaws that throng the streets. You settle into your hotel and perhaps take a rickshaw ride through the wide avenues. As the day ends, you relax in the cool highland air. Rest well, for tomorrow you explore Antsirabe and its lakes and crafts.

Today you explore Antsirabe and the beautiful volcanic country around it. You visit the workshops for which the town is famous, watching artisans transform recycled zebu horn into jewellery, forge miniature bicycles and rickshaws from scrap, cut precious and semi-precious stones, and embroider fine textiles, a wonderful window on Malagasy ingenuity. You drive out to the crater lakes of the region, such as beautiful Lake Tritriva and Lake Andraikiba, ringed by hills and steeped in local legend, where you can walk the rim and take in the peaceful scenery. Along the way you pass through farming villages and terraced fields, meeting the gentle, industrious highland people. A ride by pousse-pousse through the town's broad avenues is a classic Antsirabe experience. As the day ends, you return to your hotel amid the cool highlands. Rest well, for tomorrow you descend towards the rainforest of Ranomafana.

Today you leave the highlands and journey southeast towards the rainforest of Ranomafana. The road descends through more spectacular highland scenery, terraced valleys, brick villages and busy market towns such as Ambositra, the centre of Madagascar's celebrated Zafimaniry woodcarving tradition, where you can browse beautifully carved boxes and marquetry. Gradually the cool, cultivated highlands give way to greener, wetter, forested country as you drop towards the escarpment. By late afternoon you arrive at Ranomafana, where thick rainforest cloaks steep hills and the air turns humid and alive with birdsong. You settle into your lodge near the park, perhaps enjoying the sound of the forest at dusk. If time and energy allow, an optional night walk along the forest edge may reveal mouse lemurs, sleeping chameleons and nocturnal creatures by torchlight. As the day ends, you rest amid the rainforest. Sleep well, for tomorrow you enter the park.

Today is devoted to Ranomafana National Park, one of the richest wildlife reserves in Madagascar. Setting out early with your local park guide, you follow forest trails that climb and dip through dense, dripping montane rainforest laced with streams and waterfalls. Your guide's trained eyes pick out the park's celebrated lemurs, the rare golden bamboo lemur discovered here, red-bellied lemurs, graceful Milne-Edwards' sifaka and lively troops of brown lemurs moving through the canopy. You also look for colourful chameleons, tiny frogs, unique birds and the strange plants of this ancient forest. The walking can be steep and muddy but is endlessly rewarding, and your guide explains the fragile ecology and the conservation work protecting it. Afterwards you may soak in the thermal springs that give the town its name. As the day ends, you return to your lodge, thrilled by the day's sightings. Rest well, for tomorrow you continue south to Anja.

Today you journey on down the RN7 to Ambalavao, pausing at the wonderful Anja Community Reserve. The drive climbs back into open highland country of granite domes and golden hills, and you pass through the pretty town of Fianarantsoa, the intellectual heart of the highlands, wrapped around its old upper town. Near Ambalavao you stop at Anja Reserve, a small park run by the local village where ring-tailed lemurs thrive among giant granite boulders, strangler figs and ancestral tombs at the foot of soaring cliffs; you walk among these charming, striped-tailed lemurs at close range. In Ambalavao itself you visit the famous Antaimoro paper workshop, where handmade paper is embedded with pressed flowers, and perhaps the region's renowned zebu market. As the day ends, you settle into your accommodation. Rest well, for tomorrow you cross to the dramatic sandstone country of Isalo.

Today you drive southwest into a changing landscape as the highlands fall away to golden savannah and the dramatic massif of Isalo. Crossing the wide plains of the Horombe plateau, you watch the scenery grow steadily wider and more arid, with grasslands stretching to distant blue hills and herds of zebu moving across them. By afternoon the eroded sandstone ramparts of Isalo rise on the horizon, sculpted by wind and water into cliffs, canyons and strange formations. You settle into your lodge on the edge of the park, many of them beautifully designed to blend into the landscape, and perhaps drive to a famous viewpoint to watch the sandstone glow crimson and gold at sunset over the plains. As the day ends, you relax under enormous skies at the gateway to one of Madagascar's most beautiful parks. Rest well, for tomorrow you hike into Isalo's canyons.

Today you hike into the spectacular canyons of Isalo National Park. With your local guide you set out among the eroded sandstone massif, following trails that wind through ravines, across open plateaus with sweeping views, and into hidden gorges where palms and pandanus cluster around cool, clear natural swimming pools fed by waterfalls, an idyllic place to swim and picnic. You look for ring-tailed lemurs, Verreaux's sifaka and brown lemurs among the rocks and shady canyons, and admire the endemic plants clinging to the cliffs, including the strange elephant's foot. The rock formations, sculpted over millions of years, take on extraordinary shapes and colours, and your guide explains the sacred sites and burial places of the Bara people hidden among them. As the day ends, you return to your lodge, perhaps pausing again for the glorious sunset over the sandstone. Rest well, for tomorrow you continue to the coast.

Today you complete the RN7 to the coast, passing through the strangest landscapes of all. Leaving Isalo, you drive southwest through the transitional forest of Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park, a good place to stop for endemic birds and lemurs, before the land turns truly arid. You enter the spiny forest, a bizarre, prehistoric-looking thicket of octopus-armed didierea, thorny scrub and swollen baobabs found only in southern Madagascar and alive with unique creatures. Reaching the coast near Tulear, you turn north along a sandy track to Ifaty, a laid-back fishing area strung along a lagoon behind a coral reef. You settle into your beachside lodge, the pace slowing to the rhythm of the sea and the sails of the Vezo fishermen. As the day ends, you relax by the Indian Ocean after the long journey down the island. Rest well, for tomorrow you explore the reef and baobabs.

Today you enjoy the coast and the extraordinary dry country around Ifaty. In the morning you may take a boat out to the coral reef offshore to snorkel over gardens of coral and colourful fish, or simply relax on the beach and watch the graceful Vezo pirogues sail by. Inland you visit a private spiny forest reserve, walking with a local guide among ancient baobabs, some many centuries old and vast in girth, and the weird, thorny endemic plants of the region, on the lookout for chameleons, tortoises and unique birds found nowhere else. You may also visit a Vezo fishing village to glimpse the seafaring way of life of this coastal people. As the day ends, you savour a final sunset over the Mozambique Channel, reflecting on the astonishing journey down the RN7. Rest well, for tomorrow you begin your journey home.

After a final morning by the coast, perhaps a last walk on the beach or among the baobabs, you are transferred to Tulear for your domestic flight back to Antananarivo and your onward international departure. You leave having travelled the length of the legendary RN7, from the hillside capital and terraced highlands through the misty rainforest of Ranomafana, the ring-tailed lemurs of Anja, the sandstone canyons of Isalo, and finally the baobabs, spiny forest and reef of the southwest, all warmed by gentle Malagasy hospitality. The images stay vivid long after you land, the golden bamboo lemur in the mist, the striped tails at Anja, the natural pools of Isalo, and the giant baobabs glowing at sunset. Madagascar offers wildlife, adventure and beauty found nowhere else on Earth, and you depart already dreaming of a return to this extraordinary island.