The incredible treks: from the granite of Vavavato to the canyons of Makay and the Tsingy of Bemaraha

After breakfast, we leave Antananarivo heading west. The road crosses the rice plains of the capital, then the villages of the Highlands, with their red brick houses and terraced rice fields. Gradually, large volcanic cones appear on the horizon: we are entering Itasy.

Itasy is a cluster of several dozen recent volcanoes on a geological timescale. Their lava flows blocked the valleys and gave birth to Lake Itasy, one of the largest in Madagascar. The volcanic soils are fertile, and crops climb the slopes.

Late morning, we arrive in Ampefy, on the shores of the lake. After lunch, an easy walk along the banks takes us through hamlets of fishermen and farmers: canoes pulled up on the shore, nets drying, rice fields meeting the water's edge. This first walk allows us to find our rhythm.

Late afternoon, the slanting light on the lake and volcanoes is very beautiful. At the hotel, we meet the team that will accompany us during the trek. At dinner, our guide presents the five days ahead in the Vavavato, a granite massif very rarely explored, around 2,000 meters altitude. Most of the baggage will travel with the porters; everyone keeps a small bag for the day.

We leave Ampefy along one of the most beautiful mountain roads in Madagascar. It rises in switchbacks above Lake Itasy, then winds its way to Faratsiho, a small town nestled in the heart of Ankaratra, on the island's highest plateaus.

At Faratsiho, we meet up with the porters and the cook. The loads are distributed, and we set off on foot. Very quickly, the roads disappear: villages are connected only by trails and cart paths.

We trace our route through an area of high relief, toward the edges of Bongolava. The villagers cultivate potatoes, and their fields cover the slopes up to the ridges. The trek is progressive, without any particular difficulty, and our trek guide, who knows every hamlet, introduces us to the inhabitants we meet.

In late afternoon, we reach the balconies of Ankaratra, a high-altitude prairie where we set up our first camp, at 1,750 meters. The porters pitch the tents, the cook lights the fire, and we watch the sunset over the reliefs of the west. Night falls quickly, the cool air with it, and the sky becomes filled with stars.

At the camp, the team sorts waste into colored bags and carries it back down the mountain at the end of the trek. This is a rule on all our treks, from the first to the last day.

We set off in the freshness of the morning, across the large rocky ridges that dominate the bivouac. We progress off-trail, from slab to slab, towards beautiful peaks from which you can read the structure of the massif: parallel ridges, separated by narrow valleys and basins occupied by lakes.

We walk around 2,000 meters. The air is cool, but the southern sun remains scorching: hat and sunscreen are essential.

At midday, we emerge into the central valley, in the heart of the mountains, where small hamlets are scattered between cultivated land and lakes. The people here almost never descend into the valleys of the Highlands. Keepers of ancient cults, they are known only to a few scholars, astrologers and traditional practitioners. Their settlement predates the Merina expansion, and history pushed them onto these heights, where they have maintained their way of life.

While searching for documentation on these mountains, we found only a simple mention in a French military document from 1914. Our presence remains discreet: we respect the local taboos, which our guide explains to us, and we take time for encounters.

In late afternoon, we set up the bivouac at the foot of the mountains. It is the longest day of the trek, and the one where we truly enter into the intimacy of the Vavavato.

The western range of the Vavavato stretches towards the Betafo region. Peaks rise on either side of our route: no mountaineering, but beautiful hikes on granite ridges, with views over the entire massif.

Since entering the mountains, we come across unusual herds. These are vabus, hybrids between zebu and cattle, sturdy like zebus but without a hump, mixed with enormous pigs. The herders navigate by the sound of their flutes, whose melodies rise from rocky chaos and accompany our walk. This is one of the images that travellers remember the longest.

In the afternoon, the terrain becomes gentler. We reach a remarkable region, dotted with a multitude of lakes and almost flat high-altitude meadows, where rocky outcrops remain very much in evidence. All that's missing are a few yaks to feel like we're on the high plateaus of Spiti, at the gates of Tibet.

On a soft meadow, by a lake, we set up our last bivouac in the Vavavato. After five days of walking, the team has become familiar, and we share a festive dinner around the fire. At night, the silence is only disturbed by the wind in the grass.

We reach the southern edge of the Mony Mainty. Through a narrow valley, dotted with stepped lakes, we rapidly lose altitude and leave the granite behind for volcanoes: the scenery changes completely within a few hours.

Around Betafo, the hillsides and valley bottoms are cultivated and developed with extraordinary care. The beauty of the terraced rice paddies is striking in the morning light. From the wild nature of the Vavavato, we transition without interruption to a nature mastered by humans.

We reach Betafo at midday. We have one last picnic with the team, before saying goodbye to the porters and the cook. The bags of waste, sorted throughout the trek, descend with us.

Our vehicles await us for the long descent westward, one of Madagascar's most beautiful roads. The rice paddies and brick houses fade away, the hills become grassy, and the mountains of southern Bongolava appear bare, carved with lavaka, those great red scars opened in the slopes. The heat rises as we lose altitude: after the cold nights of the Vavavato, the change in climate is striking.

In the late afternoon, we reach Miandrivazo, on the Tsiribihina, one of Madagascar's hottest towns. A shower and a real bed await us before the second trek of the journey.

We continue on the road to Malaimbandy, along the Mahajilo. The landscape flattens out: we enter the great furrow that separates the crystalline bedrock of the Highlands from the sedimentary plateaus of the West. To the south, a line of bright cliffs bars the horizon: it is the edge of the Makay.

The track crosses a savanna dotted with satrana palms and tamarisk trees, until the village of Tsiazorambo, at the northern base of the massif. Here live the Bara, a people of herders for whom the zebu remains the measure of all wealth. We know this village well: we are building a hut there where our drivers stay during the trek, and our driver-guides run a literacy program for adults there.

It is in the village that our caravan is formed: porters, cook and his assistants, local guide. The Bara porters know every passage through the massif; they carry the equipment, set up camp and watch over the group.

After lunch, we set off on foot. We cross the Manampanda river and reach the first sandstone ridges. The granite of the Highlands gives way to soft sandstone, deposited by ancient rivers more than 200 million years ago, then carved by water. Suddenly, the gaze plunges onto a superb meander of the Manampanda, set within ocher and pink cliffs: our first bivouac in the Makay.

We leave the bed of the Manampanda at the locality of Andasiberivotra and gain height over the vast tabular reliefs. The Makay is a plateau of crumbly sandstone that extends northward from the Isalo massif. Its successive layers can be read in the cliffs like the pages of a book.

Slight tectonic movements have fractured the plateau, and water has rushed into each fissure. It has carved canyons, isolated towers and domes, sculpted arches and basins. Seen from above, the Makay is a labyrinth: a network of corridors where you need to know the passage.

On the plateau, the savanna of hard grasses is swept by fire, and termite mounds rise their silhouettes among the grasses. The sun beats down hard. We find there the fruit that gave its name to the gorge where we descend late in the morning: Ankaromokotry.

The contrast is striking. In just a few meters, we pass from the harsh light of the plateau to the cool shade of a gorge where clear water flows over a bed of sand, between ferns and palm trees. In the afternoon, we follow it with our feet in the water: in the Makay, water is the road.

The camp is set up on a tongue of white sand. We have time to swim, or to watch the light climb along the cliffs until sunset.

Very quickly, we leave the gorge to climb to higher ground. From here, the logic of the massif becomes apparent: the rivers follow the fractures of the plateau, intersecting at right angles and creating a grid pattern that only hiking allows us to understand. From the eroded domes, our gaze extends far toward the crests of the eastern furrow.

This intricate geography had a major consequence on living things. At the bottom of the canyons, sheltered from fire and humans, animals and plants evolved in isolation, to the point of giving rise to species unique to the massif. Each canyon functions like an island within an island. Lemurs are very present there, but unaccustomed to humans, we catch sight of them more than we observe them.

We reach Ampasimaiky, "the dry sand": water circulates here beneath the sand and reappears further on. On these banks, our local guide teaches us to read animal tracks.

In the afternoon, the route becomes more complex: we must navigate around the plateau's fissures and follow the guide, who reads this terrain like a map. Along a steep path, we descend toward the waters of Andranomanga, at the bottom of a magnificent canyon, which we climb back through a landscape of pools, corridors and natural amphitheaters of rock.

We camp in the gorge, to the sound of water, beneath a sky of rare stellar density.

We head up the Andranomanga canyon toward its source. The riverbed narrows, and a few passages between the boulders require using our hands: small climbing steps, with no technical difficulty, where mutual assistance naturally develops.

The walls tell the story of the rock: oblique stratification, traces of ancient dunes or channels frozen in sandstone, cornices and overhangs. In this humid gorge, ferns, pandanus and palm trees take advantage of every ledge. The Makay shelters eleven lemur species, over a hundred bird species, reptiles, amphibians and the fossa, which we have little chance of encountering.

Late in the morning, we reach a pass, the watershed line between the Manampanda basin and the Sakapaly basin. It is a key passage of the trek, and the view encompasses both slopes. We take time to read the landscape, map in hand, with the guide.

From the pass, a well-marked trail, used long ago by the dahalos, leads us toward the head of Sakapaly. Black parrots are omnipresent, and raptors soar above the ridges: eleven of the fourteen species of diurnal raptors in Madagascar frequent the massif.

We set up camp on the white sands of Sakapaly Ambony. As night falls, bats emerge from the cliff for their silent rounds above the river.

This is one of the most beautiful days of the trek. Through a complex route, we navigate more than we walk between the ridgelines. The plateau is cut into blades, hillocks and corridors, and only a guide who knows the massif knows through which gap to descend toward a magnificent canyon.

We slip through this narrow passage, our feet in crystalline water. The walls draw closer sometimes to the point of touching both banks when stretching our arms. The water has sculpted giant potholes, grooves and overhangs shaped like frozen waves. Iron oxides tint the sandstone red, orange and violet, and the light falling from above changes these colors with each hour.

Then the river becomes calm and the canyon opens onto a completely preserved forest, dominated by tall grey and mauve cliffs: the valley of Sakapaly. Here grows the Ravenela rakatra, a threatened palm tree of which the Makay is home to the last large wild population. It is in this gallery forest that we have the best chance of seeing lemurs, in the early morning or late afternoon.

The bivouac is set up on a white sand beach. The afternoon is a moment of sharing with the team, then we gain height to see the cliffs light up in the setting sun over the valley.

This morning, our caravan makes its way at the foot of the cliffs, then reaches the plateau. The view opens up again over the immensity of the massif: tabular buttes, rounded domes, cracks filled with shadow. Our objective is a narrow gorge, covered with pandanus, palms and ferns, which opens the passage towards the Manampanda basin.

We descend into this gorge with pandanus, once again with our feet in the water, in a lush vegetative environment. Lemurs disappear into the canopy at our approach.

In the river bed, petrified wood bears witness to a fossil forest. These trunks, buried in sediments millions of years ago, have had their matter replaced, molecule by molecule, by silica. They have kept their rings and their bark. We look at them, we photograph them, and we leave them in their place: this heritage must be protected.

Further on, our tributary joins the Manampanda, swollen with all the waters of the canyons, wide, clear and powerful. Birds are numerous along the banks, and the traces on the sand tell of the valley's nocturnal life.

It is a long day, without technical difficulty, at the pace of the caravan. Our last camp is established on a beach by the Manampanda: one last evening around the fire with the entire team.

For a good hour, we continue to follow the Manampanda in the cool of the morning, then we reach the plateau. From the ridge line, we take one last look toward the heart of the massif. The Makay recedes, and with it the silence of the canyons and the nights on the sand.

We descend toward the bara villages north of the massif. The trails widen, herds of zebu cattle graze on the slopes, and children come to meet us.

At Tsiazorambo, our vehicles are waiting for us: our drivers have been waiting for us at the village throughout the trek. We share a final meal with the team, then comes the time to take leave of the porters, the cook and the local guide. Their wages, the trek bonuses and the work they find with us each season are an important resource for these families. The bags of waste leave the massif with us: nothing remains there.

By the track, we reach Malaimbandy across the savanna, then the western road, toward Mahabo and the Menabe plain. The cliffs of the Makay fade behind us, sakalava villages succeed bara villages, and rice paddies reappear in the irrigated plains.

Before Morondava, we turn north. We stop at Kirindy at the end of the day, which shortens the road the next day to the Tsingy.

We leave early, as the Western trail requires time. It heads north through the Menabe plain, between savannas, rice paddies and dry forest. Sakalava villages succeed one another, with their wooden houses and palm leaf roofs, their grain stores on stilts and their herds of zebu.

Menabe is the birthplace of one of the great Sakalava kingdoms, which dominated the west of the island from the 17th to the 19th century. Royalty holds an important place here, and the fitampoha, the bathing of the royal relics, is celebrated every ten years at Belo-sur-Tsiribihina.

We cross the Tsiribihina by ferry, amid pirogues and transport boats, then we stop at Belo, a small trading town on the river bank, for a meal and a look at the activity of the port.

In the afternoon, the trail continues north, long and often bumpy: floodplains, dry forests, rivers to ford. Gradually, a long bar of grey cliffs emerges on the horizon. It is the edge of the Bemaraha limestone plateau, our third massif.

At the end of the day, we cross the Manambolo by ferry to reach Bekopaka, at the foot of the Tsingy, where we settle for three nights. After granite and sandstone, limestone will show us another way for water to sculpt stone: no longer by digging, but by dissolving the rock.

We leave Bekopaka after breakfast. The ferry takes us across the Manambolo one last time, and we take one final look at the grey cliffs of Bemaraha.

The track heads south again. We return to the plains of Menabe, the Sakalava villages, the rivers to cross and the dry forest. The road is long, but it gives us time to observe the country with the perspective gained from our days in the massifs: children waving at cars, ox carts laden with rice and wood, women carrying water on their heads.

At Belo-sur-Tsiribihina, we cross the river by ferry once more and stop for lunch. Then the track continues towards Morondava, across a plain where baobabs become more numerous. Madagascar is home to six endemic species of baobabs, several of which grow in this region. These trees are now threatened by the pressure of cultivation and fires.

In late afternoon, we arrive at Morondava, on the edge of the Mozambique Channel, where fishing pirogues line the beaches. Dinner is an opportunity to celebrate the end of our adventure with our guide and drivers. We reflect on these three weeks: the granites and lakes of Vavavato, the canyons and nights on the sand of Makay, the needles and gorges of Bemaraha.

We take advantage of a last morning in Morondava, on the edge of the Mozambique Channel. Depending on the flight schedule, we can take a walk on the beach, among the fishing pirogues leaving or returning from the sea, visit the market or simply enjoy a moment of calm facing the ocean.

These last hours in the West are an opportunity to reflect on the journey traveled: the volcanoes of Itasy, the granite chaos and lakes of Vavavato, the descent towards Betafo, the canyons of Makay, the long track of Menabe, then the Tsingy and the gorges of Manambolo.

We then head to Morondava airport for the flight to Antananarivo. This domestic flight is not included in the price of the trip: its rates vary greatly, and we book it separately, at the best time. From the window, we fly over the plains of the West, then the Highlands and their rice paddies: in less than an hour, we retrace backwards the path traveled for days on foot and on the track.

Upon arrival, our team welcomes us and accompanies us to our hotel for the first night. The rest of the day is free.

Domestic flights sometimes change schedules, and they are sometimes delayed. This is why we keep an entire day in Antananarivo before the international flight: it allows us to absorb any possible delay without jeopardizing the return.