Allée des Baobabs

The dirt road is red and deeply rutted, running straight between two rows of massive baobabs whose barrel trunks seem too wide for any tree, too round, as if someone had inflated them with air and left them to stand sentinel over the flat rice-field plain.

At sunrise and sunset the baobabs become silhouettes against a burning sky, and this is when photographers and visitors gather in small numbers, watching the light move across the red laterite and the enormous trunks change from grey to orange to deep shadow.

The local name is 'ALlee des Baobabs', French for Avenue of the Baobabs, and the strip is roughly 260 metres long with perhaps 20 to 25 trees, the tallest around 30 metres with trunks that can measure 18 metres in circumference.

The baobabs of Madagascar are endemic species — Adansonia grandidieri — and unlike African baobabs they have smooth, silvery-grey bark rather than rough reddish bark, giving the impression of whitewashed columns when the light catches them.

These trees are living monuments: some individual specimens are estimated to be around 800 years old, their trunks storing thousands of litres of water as a buffer against the long dry season that runs from May to October.

The geology of the region is ancient Precambrian basement rock overlaid with thick alluvial sediment deposited by the rivers that once crossed this plain, and the baobabs sit above a water table that has been declining as agricultural use increases, a slow emergency that does not show in photographs.

Baobabs have no annual growth rings in the conventional sense, making exact aging difficult, but estimates based on carbon dating and historical records place some of the largest trees at between 600 and 800 years old, old enough to have witnessed the first human settlers arrive on the island.

The roots of a mature baobab spread outwards in a radial pattern rather than going deep, sometimes covering an area the size of a small house, which makes them look like giant uprooted trees turned upside down with their roots in the air.

The landscape around the avenue is flat and becomes waterlogged in the rainy season from November to March, when the rice fields flood and the baobabs stand in shallow pools that reflect their shapes perfectly, creating one of the most surreal images in African nature photography.

There is no official entrance gate or visitor centre; the avenue is simply a stretch of public road between Morondava and Belanitra, and the experience is informal, dusty, hot by mid-morning, and entirely dependent on the goodwill of local people who may offer guiding services or small handicrafts for sale.

Madagascar's most globally recognised natural landmark, appearing in countless travel publications and films set on the island.

The ancient baobabs, estimated at up to 800 years old, are irreplaceable living monuments that predate the arrival of most of the island's current human population.

The light at sunrise and sunset produces a theatrical silhouette effect that has made this one of the most photographed locations in southern Africa.