Antananarivo

Antananarivo — 'the city of the thousand,' for the garrison Merina kings posted on its ridge — climbs a long granite crest above drowned valleys of rice, a highland capital of brick houses with wooden balconies, purple jacaranda Octobers, and staircases that do the work streets do elsewhere. At the top stands the Rova, the queens' palace, burned in 1995 and patiently raised again; below, the city descends by steps through markets to Analakely's arcaded pavilions and the heart-shaped lake Anosy.

The traveller walks downhill by design: from the Rova and the Andafiavaratra museum's salvaged crowns, down the sacred stairways where vendors set vanilla, embroidery and wild silk on the steps themselves, to the valley of arcades. Zebu — the humped cattle that are wealth, dowry and dinner — anchor both the market and the national dish, romazava. And everywhere there is the strangeness the island insists on: this is a country where the trees, the tenrecs and eight of every ten living things exist nowhere else.

The Guide's practical counsel: Tana asks the usual capital wisdom — pockets light in crowds, taxis by night, and a check of the political weather before travel, as the island occasionally runs a fever —; French and Malagasy share the streets, and 'misaotra' (thank you) earns smiles; the city is the nation's front hall, not its treasure room — the lemurs of Andasibe, the baobabs of the west and the stone forests of the tsingy all begin with a dawn departure from these hills, and each is worth the road it costs.