wild and mysterious beauty, but Tsingy de Naoroka also carries the common concern of the times: Can humans protect those miracles from the pressure of devastation and climate change? Author Mike Carter's journey reveals many interesting things about this land.
The journey to the "green area"
I sat in front of an old pickup truck. Standing between me and the driver was Ed Tucker- brown with his knees squeezed tightly to get the license plate. Ed's job was just to change the number when the driver was on the bus. But he hardly has to move his hand, because the vehicles often only move at the speed of one.
Our vehicle crashed through the mud and then slid down steep, cracked, and patchy rows of land. Vehicles fiercely squeeze through the humid forests. On the way, I saw farmers sitting silently on a trailer driven by Zebu - a local cow with a large butterfly on its back. That was the only wheel-powered vehicle we saw for 3 hours crossing 50km of the forest road.
This trip started from the grassland of Soalala, on the northwest coast of Madagascar, where I landed after a 9-minute flight from Antananarivo, towards Tsings de Namoroka National Park, 220km2 - one of the rare remaining primeval forests in this land.
I read somewhere that, since humans arrived in Madagascar about 1,500 - 2,000 years ago, more than 90% of the island's primary forest area has disappeared. Most of them were wiped out by poor farmers who made a living by burning forests to make nests - a local technique called tavy. People burn forests both to grow rice and make charcoal to sell for a living.
Madagascar is also known by biologists around the world as the "ighth geopark", with up to 90% of plant and animal species here not found anywhere else on Earth. During my week of wandering on the island, I visited two newly emerged resorts with the aspiration to preserve nature and bring livelihoods to the local community, even though they welcome up to 320,000 international visitors each year, while the majority of islanders live on an income of less than 2 USD per day.
There are fewer tourists here than those who conquer Mount Everest each year, Tucker- brown said, while the pickup truck was rushing into a vast field of thousands of wild mint as high as the roof, with a fragrant smell in the car compartment.
Last year, Tucker- brown, a 49-year-old Welshman, opened the Namoroka Tsingy camp - the only resort located right on the edge of Tsingy de Namoroka National Park. From 2019 to now, he said that only about 40 tourists have visited the park.
The camp has seven surprisingly spacious tents, about to become circular, in the middle is an outdoor dining area. The entire area is nestled among sharp limestone blocks, called Tsingy - typical stone structures that create a unique landscape of the park.
Explore the fascinating nature
After washing away the red soil, we began a journey to explore the forest, where 6 different ecosystems are gathered: From the dry, leafy forest, riverine protection forest and bamboo forest, Tsingy forest to the Marosakabe cave system of more than 100km long - considered the largest cave in Africa.
The fascinating scenery in the park seems to make up for the arduous journey we have gone through. The giant bao tree is stunning, the trunk is big and the branches are as short as the hand that reaches out. The land is scattered with elephant feet with large bulbs like gray stones, splashed with clusters of fresh yellow flowers, like living rocks.
The fact that most of the island's plant and animal systems are endemic species is the result of the separation of the Gondwana continent 180 million years ago, when Madagascar separated from Africa, causing plant and animal species to be "stuck", gradually isolated from the rest of the world.
I had intended to name the camp the Noah Ship Project, because I felt like I had a mission to preserve the last creatures on this discreet, remote ship, said Tucker- brown. Since first arriving in Madagascar in 2006, Mr. Tucker- brown has fallen in love with the people and nature here. Now, he has hired more than 150 local Sakalava ethnic people to work together to build roads and build firebreaks to limit forest fires.
We continue to go deep into the forest. The giant velvet embankments of Japan, with patterned scales mixed with tree trunks, make a threatening sound. The space is filled with butterfly sunset Madagascar, the wings are as shiny as the camelelelelel of thousands of flowers. On the trees, the Malagasy flower embankments are up to 60cm long, with rotating eyes like a fireworks tower, following our every step. On the ground, countless snake crabs passed by: Giant snails, snake pencils, land parrots as big as calves - luckily, all are harmless to humans.
And then, as an indispensable part of Madagascar, the lemur butterfly flooded. From above, they look down at us with sparkling amber eyes. They caught 4 or 6 children in a group, with a smooth fur like a teddy bear and black faces, just like the described by writer William S. Burroughs in the adventure novel Ghost of a chance: "The eyes of a sparkling dragon tiger, the brass hanging like a sparkling pearl".
Tucker- brown said that lemur fox is the living fossil, a group of ancient presidential animals that were surpassed by monkeys on the African continent during the environmental process 35 million years ago. They survived by... accidentally "going to Madagascar", can roll in driftwood, and then breed comfortably without competition from monkeys.
We escaped from the forest and entered a vast void filled with Tsingy rocks. The scene looks no different from a giant city on a colorful monsooned planet created by science fiction film artists - the colorful gray limestone spear rising from the cracked ground. Tsingy means where one cannot walk barefoot; it was originally formed at the bottom of the sea, until the seismic activities of millions of years ago pushed up the limestone layer, then the eroding acid rain created a strange sharp shape.
We wind down below the surface, flowing into a deep cague, below are stone structures like giant winged demons. We put a flashlight on our forehead and crept into a cave network that had not been fully discovered. In the soft sedimentary layer, we found the remains of giant lobsters and lemur monkey - both species on the long list of giant creatures of Madagascar that were extinct when humans set foot on the island.
Tucker- brown said that deep in those caves, people believe that there are still giant crocodiles living, and God knows what other species. Maybe they are species that have never been discovered.
That evening, at a simple dinner in the starry sky, Tucker- brown told me about environmental conservation projects funded by a fee of 50 euros per person per night, along with young Japanese researchers from the US nonprofit Wildlife Madagascar, who are currently living in the camp.
Tucker- brown is also building a small runway to completely change travel in the region. He said: "If poverty cannot be solved and education cannot be created, then everything else will be useless. Everyone is working together to preserve this land, maintaining the wildness in the most remote place.
He continued: Thats why this place is like a Noah ship. The entire Japan should have been a Noah. It may be too late to preserve it, but we still have to try.
