Anja and Ambalavao
Families of ring-tailed lemurs sunbathing beneath granite cliffs: Anja is the trip's surest, most joyful encounter — and an exemplary village success story.
Suggested stay — 1 night
At the foot of granite domes that close the horizon like sugarloaves, the small Anja reserve is run by the villagers themselves — and it has become the country's model: the income funds a school and reforestation, and the ring-tailed lemurs, protected for a generation, go about their business three metres from visitors. A one-to-two-hour loop is enough to watch them bound between the boulders, striped tails aloft, babies clamped to the females' bellies — the most guaranteed lemur watching in Madagascar.
Ambalavao, twelve kilometres on, deserves more than a drive-through: the last big town of Betsileo country, it makes flower-inlaid antemoro paper by a sixteenth-century craft of Arab origin, and its Wednesday and Thursday morning zebu market is one of the island's largest — thousands of animals, herders arrived on foot after days of walking. Climbers will push on to the neighbouring Tsaranoro valley, its 800-metre walls and its camps at the foot of the cliffs.
Don't miss
- The Anja loop early in the morning, when the ring-tails warm themselves on the rocks
- The Ambalavao zebu market (Wednesday and Thursday mornings) — arrive before 9 am
- Ambalavao's antemoro paper workshop and its flowered sheets drying in the sun
- The Tsaranoro valley on a day's detour: cliffs, villages and natural pools
Our tips on the ground
- Visit Anja before 10 am: the ring-tails nap in the shade through the hot hours, and the site, very accessible from the RN7, receives the tour groups late morning.
- Time your Ambalavao passage for a Wednesday or Thursday for the zebu market: it is a raw, authentic spectacle that does not replay on other days.
- Anja's local guide is compulsory and included in the ticket: ask about the village management — that is the real story of the place.
Our flagship guide — €29
Guide available“Madagascar on Your Own Terms”, the complete edition, is out
10 chapters: day-by-day itineraries, driving and transport, a costed budget and checklists — the same method as our Namibia guide.
The guide is currently written in French — an English edition is in the works.
Before you go
Readers' questions about Anja and Ambalavao
Is Anja worth the stop if you're already going to Isalo?
Yes, precisely: Isalo's ring-tails are seen from afar and by chance, Anja's from three metres and for certain. The two-hour visit slots effortlessly into the Fianarantsoa-Ranohira drive, and your ticket funds the village directly — the best emotion-per-effort ratio on the RN7.
Can you sleep nearby?
Ambalavao offers a few simple, decent hotels (around €15-30) that put you at Anja for opening; travellers aiming for the Tsaranoro will sleep in the valley camps, two hours down a track. Otherwise, many pair Anja in the morning with the long drive to Ranohira in the afternoon.