Magical Madagascar: June 6-7-8 - onward to Antananarivo

Three riding days brought us back to Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, or Tana for short. Not surprising, it is a chaotic city. We were bussed in the last 20 km because of the difficulty anticipated navigating late afternoon traffic. A lot of very steep hills, thankfully most of them quite short (like less than 2 km). Sunshine the first two days. Third day into Tana was a brisk headwind most of the day, sunshine until noon, then overcast and a bit of light rain.

Every riding days takes us through more lovely landscapes, people on foot or bicycle or zebu-cart to schools, work, market, etc. As we got closer to Tana, there were more and more electrical wires and electrically-connected houses although many (maybe most) live without electricity and running water.

The plan for our two rest days here is mostly rest. The hotel is pretty basic, but it does, and their wifi even reaches the room - that's a luxury compared with most. We woke up this morning (June 9) to wet roads outside but now midmorning and looks like it's clearing. After we get the blog posted, we'll wander a bit in town.

...a relatively ordinary scene... but look at the contents of the basket on the nearest lady...

see the duck - there are two of them on the right...

...and the chicken on the left.

...you can see two ducks on the right and a chicken on the left, most likely on their way to market and a certain fate.

A frequent seen... bare-footed people well outside town with home-made carts
either bringing in water or crops or going out to get them.

That is likely a heavy load - one person pushing up a fairly steep hill
with a long way to next town

Some fall colours... well into fall and harvest season here

Every bit of space is used, all tended by hand, not a machine in sight

Just about everything travels on these mini-busses that make it through terrible
roads - the bit of road in the foreground actually looks pretty good. We were on
40-50 km of dirt like this one day - terrible road but beautiful scenery.

Despite the isolation, there were some well-built buildings along the way
including the school house in the foreground

The road was bad enough that they didn't even consider trying to drive it with
the support busses. Instead, the busses drove the long way around to the campsite
for the night and they hire a couple of local mini-vans to provide lunch and support
on the dirt road. But eventually this bit of road stopped even the locals. The TDA crew
had to unload all of their material and carry it by hand to the other side and on to where
they could get to with the support bus. Absolutely amazing the amount of effort that
the TDA crew puts in every day to ensure our well-being.

Campsite than night was on a soccer field near the top of a hill - lovely night,
great view, quite cool - reportedly 4 degrees in the morning.

Not unusual that local people would gather to observe us 'wasa' (foreigners).
On camping days, they usually have soup and coffee/tea when we finish the
ride and left-overs are often shared with the local people - here they are enjoying
a bit of soup.

This little one wasn't exactly sure what all was going on

Some nice lighting effects as the sun went down

The next day took us through more well-cultivated fields...

We were heading downhill here, not too fast please for fear of potholes and bad road
surfaces as well as hairpin bends - eventually crossing that bridge way down there
and starting about 15 km of steady climbing, mercifully not always too steep