Madagaskar

Southern Madagascar is a wide-open adventure among some of nature’s most dramatic forms. The stark desert canyons of Parc National Isalo rival those of Arizona. The west coast offers gorgeous coastal settlements that serve as gateways to the fifth-largest coral reef in the world. And vast kilometres of spiny forest contain the strangest and most formidable plants on earth. The cape is also the last stop before Antarctica. There are two scruffy cities, Tuléar (Toliara) and Fort Dauphin (Taolagnaro), but that's not why you come. The question is how to tackle a region of this size. For many, a lodge in Isalo and a slice of beach are enough. But for others, the south is the perfect recipe for off-road exploration, when the security situation permits. After all, away from the RN7 it's strictly 4WD country, ripe for the adventure of a lifetime.

Café Imperial är egentligen inte ett café, men visst går det att fika här.

En av Prags äldsta rockklubbar, Klub Batalion, har också blivit hemvist för en av de märkligaste konstnärerna i landets moderna historia.

Tana, as the capital is universally known, is all about eating, shopping, history and day trips. Bypassing the city would be a mistake: Tana has been the home of Malagasy power for three centuries and there's a huge amount of history and culture to discover, as well as some unexpected wildlife options.

With its wide streets, old colonial-era buildings, and buzzy atmosphere, Diego is an appealing base from which to explore Madagascar’s northern region. While the city has a slow-moving pace (nearly everything shuts between noon and 3pm while residents indulge in long afternoon naps), there's a plethora of good restaurants, places to stay and plenty of shopping.

Eastern Madagascar is travel the way it used to be. There is a wildness here of primordial allure, from the misty mountains of Masoala, down the huge coastline with its pounding sea and overhanging palms, to the lush waterways of the Pangalanes Lakes. This part of the country is largely cut off from the rest, and from itself, by a degraded transport network, including some roads out of an engineer’s nightmare. Travelling here requires a combination of plane, car, 4WD, motorbike, scooter, pirogue (dugout canoe), ferry, cargo boat, taxi-brousse (bush taxi) and motorboat. This inaccessibility results in isolated communities and, for the traveller, a constant sense of coming upon undiscovered locales, including entire national parks. There’s no doubt it can be frustrating at times, but Eastern Madagascar produces more travellers' tales than anywhere else. If you value that, come here first.

Vad ska man inte missa i Prag? Det här är 10 populära sevärdheter i Prag.

Madagascar's most important seaport, Tamatave is a hot, dusty and chaotic town full of decaying colonial buildings, roadside markets and throngs of pousse-pousse carts. The emphasis is on commerce, not tourism, apart from being an important transit point.

Ifaty and Mangily, around 25km north of Tuléar, are two separate villages 3km apart that share the same beach, confusingly known as Ifaty Beach (the Dunes d’Ifaty, for example, is in Mangily). Ifaty is by far the smaller tourist destination, even while its name continues to usurp the latter. The popularity of this area is largely due to its location close to Tuléar and the excellent paved road that connects them. The beaches are really quite poor relative to other options: rocky at times, very shallow for much of the day and with seagrass beds rather than sandy bottoms. The unkempt villages, saturated by tourism, are not very attractive, either. Nevertheless, the snorkelling is good, the whales come past here and there are a lot of resorts to choose from, including some really good ones.

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