Muddling through Madagascar

With her fourteen-year-old daughter Rachel, Dervla Murphy journeyed across the unique island of Madagascar, neither part of Africa, its nearest neighbour, nor part of Asia, the ancestral home the Malagasy people who live there. Beginning at Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital, they travelled south by foot, bus and truck through the Ankaratra Mountains, marvelling at lemurs in the Isoala Massif, exploring the great rain forests of the Betsimisaraka tribesmen and living briefly with the Vezo fishermen of the west coast. Her vivid account tells of an island of astonishing natural beauty inhabited by ‘the most loveable people I have ever travelled among.’