Madagascar

Madagascar split from the African continent 165 million years ago and has been running its own experiment ever since. Ninety percent of its wildlife exists nowhere else - not variations on a theme, but entirely separate answers to the question of what a living thing can be. The baobabs of Morondava, the stone forest of Tsingy, the rainforest corridor of Ranomafana: each is less a place than an argument that the world is stranger and more various than daily life suggests.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: baobab routes, highland guesthouses, pirogue crossings and the roadside cooking that makes the RN7 worth driving in full.