Day 15 – 22.10.2026 – Ambalavao

But anyway, the next day we left for our next destination Ambalavao, where we would stay for the night before going to Ranomafana (the rainforest to the east of Tana). On the way we stopped by a little village inhabited by Betsileo people. We were back in the Highlands, so this is where they live. We stopped at their village and took pictures and then we saw how they lived. We were allowed to go into some of the houses and on the second floor of the houses some of them had a cooking pot over fire which created so much smoke that you could barely breathe inside, but they say that it helps disperse the mosquitoes. They don’t like the smoke. And in the houses there would usually be just one bed or sometimes just a mattress and maybe one or two rooms where in one of them the parents sleep and in the other or others the kids sleep. They would have maybe a tiny little table and in general not so many things and in winter they would keep their produce of rice or corn or whatever in the house or in bags and separated by a curtain so you don’t really see it.

It was very interesting to see. On the floor, there was not a carpet, but more of a sisal bag, just a giant bag that you would use for heavy stuff like rice, cut, and placed on the floor. People were drying beans out in the sun because when they dry, it is easier to get the actual bean from the husk. Also, the kids were playing with glass balls and their sort of goal was basically two nails stuck to the ground. I felt a little bit sad about how simply kids are playing there. In a way they never have had or will have good toys or anything like that to play with but on the other hand, I also didn’t and I played outside all sorts of games and it was pretty fun while the kids nowadays they are just stuck on the screen of the phone or tablets all day long and they just go out together sitting on a bench in Bulgaria and stare at their phones and scroll and scroll forever and they’re not really getting to know each other or playing anything together. The only thing they’re doing is just scrolling and eventually showing a video to each other.

That’s all and it’s pretty sad so in some way, these kids are actually happy and connecting on a personal level.

Day 16 – 23.10.2026 – Anja, Ambalavao, Fianarantsoa

So we arrived at our destination for the night after that so it was mostly on the road that day and the next day we went to the local community reserve called Anja where you hire a local guide and that’s how they earn a little bit of money and that gives them an incentive to protect the area and it is not an officially protected governmental area or something like that, but it is just protected by the community, which is actually great to see because there’s not a lot of forest left in the country. Only 10% of the original forest or actually less than that still exists from the time when settlers first arrived until now and this is really sad for me to see. But I’m glad that communities like these exist and I asked them how much they earn from this activity and they said about $10,000 a year which to me sounds very little for a year for all of them, but they said it’s good so that’s a good thing and our guide tips everyone.

In the beginning of our trip, we gave him a certain amount. I believe it was 400,000 ariary per person for all the tips and everything that we would give them and then he was handling that and I would give an extra tip when I would feel the need to, for example, sometimes with porters or sometimes with guides or with my birdwatching trip in the spiny forest earlier I also tipped them, of course, and the driver of the zebu cart as well. So in the park, we saw a lot of lemurs and many of them had babies which was so fun to see, and there was like a puddle of water where all of them went to drink, including the babies and it was just so schattig.

There were also two chameleons there and one of them was green, which is what I wanted to see, which was amazing so then one of the guides took some grasshoppers, put them on a stick and then fed the chameleon with them so I took maybe 20 pictures with my burst option every time he would feed the chameleon so I could get the tongue out and I have pretty cool pictures from that. In the park, we stayed maybe one and a half hours only in one little area, so people are taking a lot of pictures. Eventually I saw everything I wanted to see and then sat down to take a little break until we left. We then went to my favourite part that I was really looking forward to, and that was the Antemoro paper factory.

It was so cool to see how they make paper. They start by collecting the bark of a special tree called the Avoha plant/tree. So the bark is collected and then they boil it for some hours so that the fiber softens. Then they have sort of a hammer with which they break it down into pulp and then they spread it on linen frames. When they have it on these frames, then they would use a spatula to sort of cut it into the desired size for example A4 or small bookmark size or larger, depending on what they want to do and then there were women with a whole bucket of flower petals who would place them by hand and make such beautiful craft out of this. It’s amazing and all the flowers were so vibrant and gorgeous.

After placing the petals, they would pour a little bit of water on top, which brings some of the fibers on top of the petals effectively gluing them to the paper before drying. I just loved it and their process and I knew I would buy a lot there. They also had stacks of just regular paper without the flowers which was going to be perfect for my scrapbooking, but I also wanted the ones with petals. So I went straight into the store and we didn’t have a lot of time so I picked two big books with a cover with petals and also with banana leaves they used to decorate the book covers with things like a baobab tree or lemurs. To finish the book, if it is a book, they would poke holes and sew the pages and also all around the covers with raffia palm tree, which looks like thread, so it’s perfect for sewing.

I loved that part of the trip. But it was rather short because we had to rush to the silk factory next, and we still had a long way to go as well. So at the silk factory, it was pretty cool to see their process as well. They start by collecting cocoons of the silkworm and they have two options, they farm their own silkworms which produce white thread in the end and also collect from the wild the cocoon which produces more of a brown thread or beige. They first start by stacking six or seven cocoons on sort of a stick. This helps clean the worm from inside the cocoon. Then they boil the thread in order to remove the natural glue of the silkworm that makes the cocoon stick and stay in its shape.

Online it says that they boil the cocoons for up to 60 minutes, but actually what they told us was three days of boiling. It seems that it refers to sun-drying, although they did show us a large pot with boiling cocoons. What they do next is there were women who were sitting in the little room and on their knees they had basically spread the thread, pulling it out of the boiled clump and spreading it out to their feet to create a sort of thread and then putting the thread around a stick to make a roll with it. After that, the thread is dyed. To get different colours, they use beetroot for purple colour. The only synthetic colour is blue. Then they use turmeric to get yellow or golden colours. Then for orange they use henna leaves for oranges, warm ochre, these sorts of colours.

To get pinks or browns they use mahogany, oak, and rosewood barks. And the black one is interesting because apparently they first use mango tree leaves to boil the thread in it and then they use the dark iron-rich mud which makes the colour pitch black. I wonder how they discovered all these things. It’s pretty cool and the silkworms usually stay on tapia trees. That’s where we saw that one in the wild in Isalo. The final part of the process is the weaving. We saw a woman doing that and it takes three days to make one scarf. They also sold these scarves at the store. One of the scarves was 150000 ariary which is about €30. Not that expensive but still I didn’t buy it because for me paper was more important haha.

I later realized that at the paper factory I only spent €30 and if I had calculated that earlier, I would’ve totally bought more. In the end from there I got two big notebooks, one small notebook, five separate pages of plain paper and two postcards. Later on, I found another store where they sold paper and it also had plain sheets embedded with petals, and the paper was white as opposed to the brown one I found in the factory so now I have so much paper and I’m so happy! Can’t wait to use it in my scrapbook spreads about Madagascar and not only.

On that day, we also visited the capital of the Betsileo people, Fianarantsoa. This tribe is sort of the intellectuals of the Malagasy people. Most of their doctors, researchers and other intellectuals are Betsileo people. Their houses and city look different. They have some very old houses and actually the city is a World Heritage site. Their houses are mostly two-story houses as opposed to simple huts made out of bamboo with grass on top that we have seen so far. We took a walk with a guide around the old part of the town and it was pretty cool actually and we went up high to see the whole city from the top and besides the heat it was really cool to see. There were also giant spiders everywhere, which is straight out of my nightmares and it was really horrible to see.

I zoomed in a lot, so I have pictures with basically endless spiders on them. It’s really something. If I walked through at night, I mean through this spiderweb, I would be just there dead from a heart attack, just knowing how many spiders there are makes me shrivel. On the way down from the city tour I saw a tiny puppy and I felt really bad for it because it was hungry so I went to a place where they sold sort of a doughnut thing and I wanted three but they gave me like 10 for super cheap inside the little bag or something so I just went back to the puppy and I gave it one doughnut thingy, and it took it and then I gave it another one and it tried to take both of them in his mouth which he did and then I gave him a third one and then at that point people from all around just came to me saying something.

They are hungry, of course and seeing me feeding a dog instead of them is probably very unusual, but I also feel very bad for the animals. I want to feed the animals. They have no choice. Nobody gives them anything. They’re all so skinny, limping, all scared. It’s really sad. People at least have something to do to get a little bit of money but dogs cannot. But in the end I just gave away the rest of the donuts to people on the street, so yeah, I also found other dogs along the way. I just couldn’t do anything. It made me very sad again. Another sad thing. I feel like this blog is mostly sad but that’s the reality. It was not only sad things of course.

People are very poor, but on the other hand, they were sort of happy, like our guide said. He said don’t feel pity for us because we don’t have much but we are happy with what we have because we know it’s not about the money that brings happiness. It’s the community and how you feel that brings happiness, which is an important lesson and they are indeed all smiling and thankful at whatever you give them. Of course there were some beggars along the way and I gave some of them some money, but it really feels sad when you see them so poor. Well, we eventually reached Ranomafana where we would have two nights. We checked in, had dinner and went to bed. This area was a rainforest so it was cloudy and very humid and a little bit rainy or more like drizzles.

The rainforest is basically a mountain splitting the country into east and west and it is on the east side of the country and that mountain stops the rain in the clouds, which makes the forest a rainforest basically but to the west of it, it is significantly more dry and sunny because the mountain really changes the climate of the country. And the mountain spreads from the north to the south of the country. Before we arrived at our hotel, we stopped at a waterfall along the way. It was a rather big waterfall that you can see from the top. You can also walk to it, but of course we didn’t have any time for that, but it was still nice to get off the bus there to stretch our legs, to see the waterfall and then to walk down the road where we were picked up by the bus again.