Kirindy Reserve is a privately managed forest in one of Madagascar’s most threatened ecosystems: its dry deciduous forests. There are many animals with 31 different mammals with 8 species of lemur and it is the best place to see the elusive fossa. There are also 50 different species of reptiles. We highly recommend a visit to Kirindy. If you don’t have time to drive out to Tsingy, a good alternative would be to drive from Morondava to Kirindy, stay one night, do a night walk that evening and a morning walk the next day. After that drive back to Morondava stopping off at the Alle des Baobabs for an amazing sunset. Many tourists visit the Baobabs but if you squint you may just be able to pretend all the other ‘Vazah’ are not there.

We really enjoyed our night walk in Kirindy, we saw several nocturnal lemurs and reptiles. The morning walk was also good, where we saw many diurnal lemurs. We saw a few fossa as well as they come into camp for a drink as water is very scarce in this forest. The forest is certainly dry, don’t expect any lush green rainforests here.

Our only ‘gripe’ about Kirindy was that were were practically forced to stay at the Reserve in a room for 120 000 Ar per night, which was high compared to other accommodation we were staying at in the region. We had wanted to camp, but were told that the fossa will eat our tent…hmmm. We felt like the staff took advantage of the tourists and were ripping us off a bit. No cheap accommodation was available, we had to eat at their restaurant and they would add on small prices for many things. Perhaps you could try camp Amoureux instead only a few kilometres away, which is camping, but may be better value. All in all, it was well worth it as Kirindy is an excellent forest teeming with wildlife.