Late last night we were accosted by Pierrot Patrick, a fixer named in the Hilary Bradt book and the only page I’d marked for reference. Coincidence or what? After long negotiations, we agreed a package and off we drove this morning with Souluf, our driver to the east of town. It took three hours to cover 110km, thanks to poorly maintained roads and vehicles, zebu carts and hairpin bends. We travelled through many villages, which became increasingly small and rural as we headed east. Andasibe, where we now are, is a couple of dirt roads and about 200 wooden houses of one or two rooms, on stilts above the mud. There are a couple of standpipes and few shoes, but hundreds of children. And one advert for condoms. There are a couple of dozen tiny shops selling vegetables, dried fish, a bit of fatty zebu in one (enough to turn anyone veggie), tiny packs of a few grains of salt, small (½ kilo ) pyramids of charcoal as well as one radio shack and a haberdashers. The usual range of hotels offer entertainment (samosas and a stew) but they fail to compete with two ‘cinemas’ showing different videos at two hourly intervals. It’s hard to see how anyone can avoid illness, but there’s a ‘niveau II’ health centre – whatever that is, a school and a vast church. The reserve is expensive for foreigners, which isn’t a bad thing, but precious little of the proceeds filter back to the local residents. And how could I forget the Swiss chalet station on the defunct line? The night walk was a wash-out but we saw one woolly lemur and two chameleon. Better luck tomorrow. The bungalows are clean, but now, damp. Yuck.

P.S. But Tana is probably the only capital city in the world where, looking out from the highest point, the sounds of chickens, children, and hymn-singing is louder than the traffic noise.