34 min
The Gardens Of Mars. Madagascar With John Gimlette Books And Travel
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- Places & Travel
An island nation off the coast of Africa, Madagascar has an incredible diversity of unusual landscapes and wildlife, of which lemurs are the most famous but by no means the only ones! 90% of its flora and fauna are endemic, found nowhere else in the world.
While there are some resorts, much of Madagascar is remote and escapes the influence of modern life with unique religious and cultural practices, as John Gimlette talks about in this interview.
John Gimlette is a multi-award-winning travel writer. His latest book is The Gardens of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story.
Show notes
* Unique aspects of Madagascar including the landscape and wildlife
* Influences of Borneo, Africa, and France
* The beliefs about ancestors that guide the Malagasy life
* Food and drink in Madagascar
* Recommended travel books
You can find John Gimlette at JohnGimlette.com and on Facebook.com/JohnGimlette.
Transcript of the interview
Jo: John Gimlette is a multi-award-winning travel writer. His latest book is The Gardens of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story. Welcome, John.
John: Hi, Jo. Nice to be here. Thanks.
Jo: Welcome to the show.
Where is Madagascar and what are some of the unique aspects?
John: Well, yes, let’s place it first. It’s in the Indian ocean, about 240 miles off Africa adjacent to Mozambique. But the thing to really get about this place is that it’s enormous.
It’s the fourth largest island in the world. Just to put that in perspective, if you were to lay it across a map of Europe, it would stretch from London to Algiers. And yet it’s got a smaller road network than Jamaica, where there are roads but tend to get washed away every year.
Now it’s unique because it was separated from Africa during the great tectonic shifts of the earth, about 150 million years ago. And then after that, India and Sri Lanka also broke off from it and they floated off to the North. But the plants and animals that you have in Madagascar are really survivors from a much earlier age.
So whilst there were once lemurs everywhere, even in South America, now they’re really only here and there are 107 species of them. In fact, 91% of the wildlife of Madagascar is endemic, you will only find it here.
In cross-section, the Island looks a bit like a wedge, and oddly, most of the people live right on the very top of the Ridge and on the steeply sloping sides of the East coast. Why do they do that? Because that’s where the water is.
And the capital is up there. It’s a sort of Shangri-la city, if you like, on a group of islands rising out of the rice and it sits at 3,000 feet
Beware to the South and the West it gets much drier. And some of the people there, one group I’m thinking of in particular, the Antandroy where their whole life is a struggle for water and they’ll walk up to 40 miles a day just to get at what they need.
In that vast area of the Southwest, others really only went there for the first time at the beginning of the 19th century. So yes, it is in a sense, a lost world or a real-life Jurassic Park.
Jo: Wow. I’ve seen it on maps and I was saying before we started recording that I worked there remotely, but I’ve never been. I just didn’t realize it was so big. It’s like it always gets missed off things that people don’t even realize it’s there.
Would say that it’s more influenced by Africa, or you mentioned India, is it more Asian?
John: Do you know,
An island nation off the coast of Africa, Madagascar has an incredible diversity of unusual landscapes and wildlife, of which lemurs are the most famous but by no means the only ones! 90% of its flora and fauna are endemic, found nowhere else in the world.
While there are some resorts, much of Madagascar is remote and escapes the influence of modern life with unique religious and cultural practices, as John Gimlette talks about in this interview.
John Gimlette is a multi-award-winning travel writer. His latest book is The Gardens of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story.
Show notes
* Unique aspects of Madagascar including the landscape and wildlife
* Influences of Borneo, Africa, and France
* The beliefs about ancestors that guide the Malagasy life
* Food and drink in Madagascar
* Recommended travel books
You can find John Gimlette at JohnGimlette.com and on Facebook.com/JohnGimlette.
Transcript of the interview
Jo: John Gimlette is a multi-award-winning travel writer. His latest book is The Gardens of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story. Welcome, John.
John: Hi, Jo. Nice to be here. Thanks.
Jo: Welcome to the show.
Where is Madagascar and what are some of the unique aspects?
John: Well, yes, let’s place it first. It’s in the Indian ocean, about 240 miles off Africa adjacent to Mozambique. But the thing to really get about this place is that it’s enormous.
It’s the fourth largest island in the world. Just to put that in perspective, if you were to lay it across a map of Europe, it would stretch from London to Algiers. And yet it’s got a smaller road network than Jamaica, where there are roads but tend to get washed away every year.
Now it’s unique because it was separated from Africa during the great tectonic shifts of the earth, about 150 million years ago. And then after that, India and Sri Lanka also broke off from it and they floated off to the North. But the plants and animals that you have in Madagascar are really survivors from a much earlier age.
So whilst there were once lemurs everywhere, even in South America, now they’re really only here and there are 107 species of them. In fact, 91% of the wildlife of Madagascar is endemic, you will only find it here.
In cross-section, the Island looks a bit like a wedge, and oddly, most of the people live right on the very top of the Ridge and on the steeply sloping sides of the East coast. Why do they do that? Because that’s where the water is.
And the capital is up there. It’s a sort of Shangri-la city, if you like, on a group of islands rising out of the rice and it sits at 3,000 feet
Beware to the South and the West it gets much drier. And some of the people there, one group I’m thinking of in particular, the Antandroy where their whole life is a struggle for water and they’ll walk up to 40 miles a day just to get at what they need.
In that vast area of the Southwest, others really only went there for the first time at the beginning of the 19th century. So yes, it is in a sense, a lost world or a real-life Jurassic Park.
Jo: Wow. I’ve seen it on maps and I was saying before we started recording that I worked there remotely, but I’ve never been. I just didn’t realize it was so big. It’s like it always gets missed off things that people don’t even realize it’s there.
Would say that it’s more influenced by Africa, or you mentioned India, is it more Asian?
John: Do you know,
34 min