Avenue of the Baobabs

The Avenue of the Baobabs near Morondava on Madagascar’s west coast is one of the most iconic landscapes in the world — a dirt road flanked by enormous Grandidier’s baobab trees, some of them 800 years old and 30 metres tall, their bottle-like trunks glowing gold and crimson at sunset. Madagascar’s Grandidier’s baobab is unique to this island and found nowhere else on earth. The Avenue is the remnant of a once-dense tropical forest, now surrounded by farmland, making the surviving trees all the more striking. The sunset light here between April and September is extraordinary — plan to be in position an hour before dusk.