INDIA GUIDE
TRAVEL DESK
EVENTS
AIRLINES
SEARCH

Photgraphs and text: Dilip D'Souza

Which resolution, I will admit, I came close to ruing. Many times.

The trail to Ampokafo was almost perversely hard. It was an endless series of long descents to a small stream that had to be crossed, followed by a hard climb to the top of the next hill. I nearly wept several times at how difficult it was.

But a memorable day, otherwise. It began gently enough: an hour's easy walking brought us to the banks of a fast flowing stream. In the bright sunshine, we washed off the grime and mud and sweat of yesterday, skimmed stones across the stream, ate bananas for breakfast, bantered with several women washing clothes.

From there, though, the trail ran seemingly straight up the hill. Soon we were trudging through thick forest. Trees loomed above us. Creepers wound up the trunks, bushes brushed our sleeves. The hillside dropped away sharply to one side in wild lushness. Jack fruits hung low over our heads, some squashed on the trail as well.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?", I asked, pointing to a peculiar fruit. "Ananas sauvage", Theophile replied in his laconic style. "Savage pineapple?" I wondered to myself, smiling at the image, before realizing it was a wild pineapple. From time to time Theogene would vanish -- he was adept at it, I was coming to realize -- and return with a few absurdly long sticks of sugarcane. We chomped at them steadily as we hiked on.

The lushness was regularly interrupted by the terminal sadness of large, bare areas. Even here, in this inaccessible part of the country, the forest was being eaten away by loggers and villagers in search of fuel. Huge trees lay on their sides, rotting forlornly. We had to repeatedly clamber over such felled trees, which sapped large reserves of my energy. Sometimes, entire hillsides were brown, treeless. Across the valley, I could see men hacking at the vegetation. Acres of forest were being lost before my eyes.

Suddenly, the women from the stream that morning chugged past us. Which was not quite the morale booster I needed, in my quest to prove something to myself. I watched them sail ahead in some mortification.

Our long descents usually brought us to a bridge across a stream. Now when I say "bridge", that's a description of its function. What it really was, every time, was a long log thrown across the stream. Which was sometimes 50 or 60 feet below. The two Theos pranced across without hesitation, sure- footed as mountain goats. Me? I preferred the ignominious way: straddle the log and inch across on my behind.

The regular ups and downs took a toll of my knees. By late afternoon, they were aching badly. My socks felt like sandpaper against my soles. The backpack was a dead weight. And while everyone we passed told us Ampokafo was only "un kilometre" away, we were just not getting there. A kilometre in Madagascar is a remarkably elastic distance, I reflected, the tears welling up in my eyes.

We did stagger into Ampokafo at dusk. Or I did. Theos -gene and -phile sauntered around, looking good for several more hours. Once we sat down, I turned to Theophile and told him what had been in my mind all day, what had kept me going all day: "You make sure you tell that Marofinaritra headman that the "karan" -- the Indian "vazaha" -- made it to Ampokafo in a day."

While I tried not to think of waking up the next morning to press on, Theogene wandered off in search of a shop to get us some drinks. When he came back, he had this phlegmatic comment: "Il n'existe pas une boutique." "There does not exist a single shop." That, it occurred to me, about summed it all up.

Courtesy Sanctuary Features

Tell us what you think of this feature