Fianar’s hilltop old town is one of the Madagascar’s most picturesque, with narrow lanes and views across the modern city and its rice fields.
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Wonderful lemur-watching, including troops of habituated indris, plus night walks and decent hotels, just a three-hour drive from Antananarivo.
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This beautifully unspoiled island is quieter than Nosy Be, with the jewel of Île aux Nattes at its southern tip. Leave time to get back to the big island: it’s easy to get stranded by the weather.
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Heaven on a plate for beach-bum natural history buffs, with leaf-tailed geckos camouflaged obligingly on every other branch and a beach to make grown men cry.
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The real-life version of your local rainforest experience, complete with tumbling streams, buttress-rooted forest giants and thousands of life forms. Take a waterproof.
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Madagascar’s most developed concentration of tourist resorts is low-key by global standards. Get away from the beach hotels and out to the offshore reefs or up to the hilly interior.
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Worth the special journey for the towering “tree-elephants” and the exhilarating nocturnal animal life of Kirindy, including fossas.
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Hard to get to, but worth every ounce of effort for the extraordinary expanses of weirdly eroded limestone pinnacles, cut through by winding rivers.
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A park of big landscapes, lush canyons and wide horizons in the dry savannah, with easy access, good hotels and camping.
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Moist coastal forest and creeks, home to lemurs and chameleons, with glorious beaches and onshore whale-watching, as well as some excellent guides.
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