Visiting The World’s 8th Continent

Visiting The World’s 8th Continent

I’ve been to a lot of places, but I’ve never been somewhere
as unique as this place. Now it’s widely accepted that
there are seven continents in the world. But this place broke apart from the other continents
almost 100 million years ago, and became so different in its isolation that even
scientists sometimes refer to it as the eighth continent. 80% of the vegetation found here
can’t be found anywhere else on earth, and that includes these strange
looking trees around me. And the landscape here looks like
everything is from another planet. and the people also look
nothing like the people from around here. And they have the craziest origin story. 90% of the wildlife in this country
can’t be found anywhere else. and they’re so interesting, they’ve inspired countless
documentaries and even Hollywood movies. 🎵 MOVE IT! 🎵🎵 I like to move it! Move it! 🎵🎵 I’m in Madagascar right now, which is often referred to as the world’s
eighth continent. In this video, I’m going to take you
on a journey with me as I enter this country for the first time, experience this country
and travel around the island for 10 days. I’m going to tell you this country’s story, and what makes the people
and the culture here so unique, and I’m going to show you
why you need to visit this place. It’s 5:18 pm and it’s kind of chilly, and we’ve just arrived in Madagascar. And our tour guide
for the trip has picked us up. This is very different from Seychelles. We came out and it was a
very interesting process. First we had to get a visa sticker, then
we had to get it signed by this officer, and then we came out. It’s pretty easy. Not a lot of questioning
or anything like that. They just wanted to get done with it. Got a SIM card, I think with 20 gigs of data. And then we had to get cash out.
And this is where it gets crazy. The biggest bills that they have are like $5 bills and almost everything you got to pay for
in cash, including our SIM card. And we’re doing this tour for which
we had to do like $1,000 deposit So we spent literally 30 minutes figuring
out how to count the cash for this. And then we finally got it right. And then Manu is getting
malaria spray all over him. – Because this is a high risk area, and we didn’t know. We had no idea
this was a high risk malaria area And he’s a lot more worried than I am. (laughs)
because the mosquitoes like him better. (laughs) Can I have some? – No, no, no.
Just a little bit. If I die, you don’t make it out (laughs)
– (laughs) Now we’re headed to the town
towards our hotel. This looks like a nice hotel. And the language barrier is gonna be
real in this country, especially if you don’t speak French,
which none of us do. But our hotel room looks nice. We have a private balcony, and Manu won’t let me open the door
because he’s afraid of malaria and mosquitoes, and this neighborhood, I think is the old town. But our guide was telling us that this is
also like, where you find prostitutes and Manu already saw a fight breaking out
in, like, a public bus outside. So he’s afraid to go outside. He doesn’t wanna.. – You were afraid a well, ___!
Hey! (laughs) He doesn’t even want to get dinner,
but I want to eat. Umm.. Yeah. I’m afraid. Yeah.
(laughs) We’re out on the streets in this
supposedly dangerous neighborhood and going to the nearest restaurant. Someone from the hotel is actually taking us there. We’re getting dinner at this pretty fancy restaurant,
and every item we got is like, French. Except for Manu who got, like,
a classic Madagascar beef-rice something. But most of the items here are French. Tomorrow we’re going to talk about
why everything here is French. It’s 7 am and we’ve just woken up
getting ready for breakfast and this place looks really interesting. We’re in Madagascar, which is an
island nation in the Indian Ocean that is about 400km or 250 miles away
from the southeast coast of the African continent. This island from the north to south is
around 1600 kilometers or a thousand miles long. And there are 31 million people
living on this island. It is the fourth largest island in the whole world. But interestingly,
the origins of how people came here can be traced back to the third
largest island in the whole world. Borneo, which is in modern day
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, where I just was like two months ago. So apparently the first people
to inhabit this place actually came here it’s estimated roughly between 500 to 700 AD. And it is assumed that they came here
with these, like outrigger canoes that they took all the way from Borneo. So, the Austronesian people
first arrived from Southeast Asia, and predominantly most people
here are still ethnically Austronesian. But after that, people from East Africa
also started to arrive, affecting this place. And after that, people from all over the world
started to arrive. But more on that, in the next place. As we’re going to the next spot, we see the hustle and bustle of Tana,
during the daylight for the first time. Most people seem to be, traveling around
using these public transport vans called taxi B
that stands for like, big taxis. Basically vans,
packed with a lot of people. So, for our first stop at 8:30 am,
we have come to the highest hill in Tana or Antananarivo,
which is the capital of Madagascar. The official number of people
living in the actual city is 1.2 million. But the people living in the metropolitan area around
Tana is estimated to be up to like 3 to 4 million people. It’s a very packed city, very busy city, very lively city,
as we saw when we were on the way here. What makes the city really interesting
is that this is the highest elevation capital city out of all island nations in the world, and I believe there’s like close to
40 or 50 island nations in the whole world. The reason Antananarivo is the capital city
and not some port city in Madagascar, I looked it up last night, is apparently
because it’s so high up, it was easier to defend for the kings
and rulers that used to live here. And that’s why for a while before the colonial powers came,
the different rulers that sort of united much of the island actually used to base
their kingdom capitals from here. Malagasy is the term
used to refer both to the language that is spoken in Madagascar
and to the people, so the people call themselves Malagasy. The language Malagasy is an Austronesian language
and the closest language to this day, that’s surviving, to this language is found
in the island of Borneo, where the people originally came from. The people are ethnically mostly Austronesian, although the percentage of Austronesian people
changes from different region to region. The culture is a mix of Austronesian,
African, Arab and even European influences because of all the different people that interacted with the
people on this island over the years. During the early history of Madagascar,
after it was inhabited and a lot of people lived here. It was ruled by a series of kingdoms
and chiefdoms. Some of the kings or queens managed to actually
unite much of the island together. And on this hill where
we are standing right next to us is the Queen’s Palace or the Royal Palace, which is called the Rova of Tana, which is what we’re going to go
explore right now. So we’re outside the Rova of Tana,
or the Royal Palace, which was built in the 17th century
by a king from Madagascar. Interestingly, it’s called the Queen’s Palace
because back in the 19th century, or near the end of the era of kings and queens
or local kings and queens in Madagascar, it was mostly dominated by a few very notable queens.
That’s why it’s called the Queen’s Palace. But like that era didn’t last too long. The European powers started
showing interest in building a colony or having influence here
like 500 years ago, or a bit after that. Then around 1896 to 1897,
it finally officially became a French colony. What’s interesting is when you go inside
the palace, it’s a museum now, and you can see a lot of royal regalia,
and you can actually see pictures of the last queens, I believe, of Madagascar. So we’ve come to the very
bustling actual center of Tana, with a lot of markets that we saw
on the way here and the big avenues and the former big buildings
and currently important buildings as well. And behind me is this train station
that was built in 1910 called Gare Soarano. So, this was built when this was a French colony. And that is very much reflected
in the architecture of this place. It looks like a train station
that you would find in France. And interestingly, this is not an active
train station anymore. Now we’re going to go through the street,
the biggest or main street of Tana, you could say, called Avenue de L’Independance. Over there we can also see a lot of,
like, French colonial remains. So on this main street in front of us is the
mayor’s office of the current mayor of Tana. So this street does indeed
have a lot of very important buildings. There’s a lot of cops sitting outside it
who are dressed in military uniforms. So you probably figured it out by now,
but, the Plaza de L’Independence actually was renamed to commemorate
independence from French colonialism. That happened in 1960. But something very interesting
that happened was that the French did not completely leave this country
alone, even after independence. The French actually did this with a lot of their..
almost all of their African colonies. Even post-independence, they tried to,
like forcefully have a lot of influence on local matters. Smaller countries with smaller economies
didn’t have a say. It was like, “My way or the highway”. The French government was like,
we’re gonna ruin your economy if you don’t do things our way and
don’t do things to benefit our country. The local people in Madagascar,
obviously were not happy about that. And then in 1972, they started protesting
and the protests turned violent. On 13th May 1972, some security forces opened fire on the protesters,
led by students, and many people died. And that was a tragic day. And to remember that day
this place is called Kianjan’ny 13 mai, which I guess in a combination of Malagasy
and French, means the 13th May Plaza. But that marked a turning point
in this country’s history. After that, the First Republic of Madagascar collapsed
that was heavily influenced by the French. And they got, like, more independence
from the French, let’s say. Doesn’t mean it was all smooth sailing after that. After that, they sort of slid
into a socialist government for more than a decade, which was in power
until basically the Cold War ended. And there was a lot
more happening after that. But if I start going into details
about all the politics in Madagascar in the last fiftyyears,
that would be a different video. But this is interesting. They made this, statue over here
to remember the people that died, for greater independence from France
and greater autonomy for the nation of Madagascar. So, we’re on the outskirts of Tana,
on the western side, in basically a brick field. Something very interesting about Madagascar
that’s kind of sad, is that 75% of people here
live under the international poverty line, which means they’re basically
living per day on under $2 a day. The GDP per capita for the nation
of Madagascar is just over $500, which makes it of the poorest countries on Earth. Every year, it’s usually ranked in the bottom 10,
but something very interesting is that the GDP, only includes formal jobs
or the formal economy where like the jobs are governed and there’s like
regulations and there’s taxes. But a massive part of Madagascar’s actual
economy is stuff that is not regulated, not taxed, informal jobs
and economists have recently estimated that if they were included in that GDP calculation,
they would make up up to 43% of the total GDP. Now, one of these very important informal jobs is
brick making, which is a highly seasonal job. Brick making is a very important job
in Madagascar, especially around the region of Tana,
where a lot of rice is grown. A lot of these farmers who grow rice
during the wet season.. in the dry season, they basically stop
because they can’t grow rice, because there’s no rain and they use
the clay from their farm’s clay-rich soils to mold them into bricks, then dry them up
and then put them in the oven and create bricks. It’s August right now,
and it’s like peak dry season, which also happens to be peak tourist
season because it’s the least rainy, But the crazy part is that the people that are doing
this really hard work in the sun of making bricks, they’re probably making like $1 to $2 a day
for all this work. So life out here is not easy for a
lot of people. It’s tough. Like on the other side of the river,
we saw people basically washing their clothes in this river
that is basically dark and doesn’t look very clean, but I guess
that’s the only way they can do it. You will see a lot of poverty
in the cities of Madagascar if you choose to explore
beyond your hotel room. So on the way to the city center,
we stopped by this second hand market. They are literally selling everything here. There’s like street food, skewered meat being grilled. There’s like electronics, but parts of it, like every part of a phone that you can think about. There’s even a drone that I saw
that looked a bit like a DJI model. So I guess this is where you come to get a
certain part for electronics if it’s missing it. And it’s pretty cool. So, when I was talking about the informal market, the kind of jobs where things are not regulated, this is what I was talking about. These vendors are definitely
not using any licenses to set up shop. Speaking of informal markets, we’re now going to go to the
biggest market in Madagascar. We are in an Analakely street market,
which is the biggest market, the most bustling in Antananarivo, and it is literally on
Avenue de L’Independence, where we were at earlier, and they’re selling everything
from jewelry to clothes to football jerseys that are definitely fake, to like some guy walking with bags of fruits to
I don’t know what else, but we’re just going to go exploring
and see it a little bit. Now we have come to the fruit
corner of the market where they are selling like fresh strawberries,
bananas, and literally every other fruit you can find in Madagascar. What is crazy is that there’s
hundreds of people right next to me lined up for taking their version of the taxi B or the busses that I told you about earlier
that locals mostly use. What’s your name? We’re back to the same viewpoint
we were at this morning, next to the Queen’s Palace
because this is the highest point in Tana and this is the best place to catch a sunset. And the sunset is pretty sick indeed. So far on the video,
we’ve talked about the people and the culture and what puts Madagascar
in a very unique place in the world. Now we’re going to talk about everything
that’s unique about this country that’s not about the people
and the culture. So we’re going to talk about the nature,
the wildlife and the plants. And for that, we’re going to go to a
completely different part of this country. If you come to Madagascar or
anywhere else in Africa that has malaria, try to get your medication in advance. We didn’t and we came here and we coundn’t find the best pill that
we wanted and the one that we’re taking, we have to keep taking it for like,
28 days, even after we leave. And this has a lot of side effects. So get your medication in advance. In other news, we are on the
other side of the country from Tana. We’re on the west coast
in this small town, it seems like. called Morondava. We took a flight earlier, which was only like a little over an hour. And now we’re going to see probably the most, iconic thing about Madagascar,
except for the lemurs. Okay, one fascinating thing about
this place is that they have rickshaws like we do in Bangladesh, where I’m from
and they call it push-push. And I’ve never seen this anywhere
outside of South Asia in my life before. And it looks exactly the same..
a bit more rectangular. And I guess they don’t have it in Tana
because like it’s a very hilly place and you can’t really carry passengers up
a bicycle sitting on your back. We see the first ever baobab tree,
which is pretty big and we are with a lot of kids
who know how to dance, apparently. Wanna say hi? – (foreign language) – (laughs) I have no idea what she’s saying. – (foreign language) Say Salama.
– Salama. So the baobab trees are very unique trees
that are not found in a lot of places. The ones in Madagascar are actually only
found in Madagascar, and they’re very big, and they can grow up to like 30m or 100ft
and go up to 800 years old. All these kids are like, standing
behind me to watch the video. (foreign language)
– (foreign language) So we have arrived at the avenue of the baobabs. And this is unlike anything
I’ve seen before. These trees look so weird. None of the ones here are 30m high. I know that for sure,
because, I was flying my drones at 30m, and I was going above them,
but they are pretty high, and they are just the weirdest shaped
trees you’ll never see anywhere else. We were just going through this walk.
This concentration of trees lasts maybe, like, 500m
from what I gathered from the drone. But there are, like, baobab trees
spread out in every direction all the way to the horizon. Man, the transportation here is wild. There’s like packed busses going.
There’s like vans going. Sometimes there’s carts carried by cows. And we just saw like a push-push
or a rickshaw with a pig tied up in the back that was like squealing. The day is coming to an end. We walked through the whole thing,
and I just remembered we saw these baobab fruits in Tana, the market yesterday,
which looked really interesting and we didn’t have a chance to eat it. But maybe we’ll check it out when we’re back. Okay. We’re still on the
west coast of Madagascar, but we have come here
Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. If I’m pronouncing that right. This place is like a 10-hour drive from Morondava. And it comes through the avenue of the baobabs
that we saw the day before. But it is the bumpiest ride ever. It’s like proper off-roading, even though
it’s called like a national road. It’s like you need a 4×4 and you’re
just like constantly jumping around. So we did that all of yesterday, and today
we’re in Tsingy National Park. We’re going to do this
hike called the Grand Tsingy, which is a bit of a via ferrata
at some places from what I understand. So we have like harnesses and everything,
but it’s supposed to be really cool. So we started our hike in this jungle basically,
because most animals are only there in the jungle
at the start of the day, and then it gets too hot and then they hide. Right after we started the hike, like 10 minutes in,
we saw our first ever lemur. It was like a very small lemur. It’s like a nocturnal lemur, apparently. And apparently it grows up to like 350g. That’s like 0.7 pounds. It’s a really tiny one
and it was like just staying still there and occasionally moving around.
But it was so cool. We saw our first ever lemur in Madagascar.
It feels like, the trip is almost complete. By the way, I think there’s around
100 species of lemurs. The big ones, we’ll hopefully see later in this video. Okay. We just saw our first bigger lemurs of this trip. I think it’s called Decken’s sifaka. They can go up to 4.5kg
and they’re not nocturnal. So apparently they were just
having their breakfast, like eating all these berries
and fruits and seeds. Something very interesting about
these lemurs on top of being super cute is that they are, monogamous. Like, I think they pick one partner
and stick with them. Our guide was telling us, apparently, if
the partner dies, they just, stay single Our guide was telling us, apparently, if
the partner dies, they just, stay single for the rest of their lives which is pretty crazy. I don’t think that’s common
among most animals. And he was saying the lemurs don’t grow
any bigger on this side of Madagascar, at least. We see the first famous limestone
formations of this national park. I think this is the part where
we start hiking because we’ve been, like, walking in mostly flat train for,
like, a kilometer so far. I was right. The climbing begins right now. – Then I can go first, huh? Now we’re going through this really tight tunnel that I wasn’t expecting to go through. It’s quite a labyrinth. – Because of the sun oxidation.. Okay, we just walked out of like, a dark cave
where we actually needed torch lights to see anything. These rocks are actually super sharp
and they’re hard to hold. I can’t even imagine what walking on these
would be like back in the days. People were having a hard time
back in the days, walking through these things
without, like, hurting their feet. And that somehow inspired the name Tsingy. Basically in their language, walking tip toe sounds like “tsingy”.
They had to walk tip toes through the small flat places like we’re doing right now. We’re doing the last climb to the top. This is basically a via ferrata. The reason we’re doing this on cables
is because the fall from here probably be fatal, definitely not comfortable, We made it to the top and it’s actually insane. It’s actually insane. The climb up was crazy. There were, like, lots of dark parts, dark climbs and really small cracks
that we had to get through and climb up. But this is really cool. Honestly, this wasn’t as hard as I expected. We’ve only walked like 1.5km horizontally
and hiked for like two hours. That’s pretty easy. I guess most people complain about it because
a lot of the tourists here like a lot older, but on the top you can see these like limestone,
sort of like things sticking up and all of this.. if you’ve been scuba diving,
you’ve probably seen this underwater. All of this used to be in the ocean like
millions of years ago and then came up. That’s why it’s so unique. And I guess it used to be white in color
and became like more gray. Now we’re crossing this crazy bridge and it’s insane. Oh, ___. This is actually pretty wobbly. Funny enough, both of us accidentally
cross the bridge without our backpacks, and I had to run back and go get both
of our backpacks again, then come back. So, on the way out, of course, we saw some
more lemurs, and that was the brown lemur. Not one we’d seen before. Now we’re going to go to
another part of Madagascar where there bigger and more interesting lemurs. Okay. So we were in Tsingy, three days ago. And then we spent like a full day
literally, going back to Morondava. So this time it took 11 hours
because we went a little slow. And that journey was rough again. and in Morondava, we actually enjoyed
a really pretty sunset on the beach. That was really nice. Like mostly locals, just like chilling
and playing football on there. And then the next day we took a flight
back to the capital, Antananarivo. And yesterday, same day we did the flight,
we actually came to the rainforest Andasibe, like a protected area or reserve. If you can’t tell, it’s called the rainforest
because it’s raining very hard right now. And yesterday night we actually went
on a night walk to see some wildlife and we saw like a really small mouse lemur
that maybe wasn’t too excited to see us as we were excited to see it,
and some geckos and some toads. And then we went home, slept
and now it’s like 8 am. and it’s raining very hard,
but we’re going to go out and try to see the biggest lemurs in all of Madagascar I was expecting it to be really hot because it’s a rainforest,
but it’s apparently like 1000m up. I realized this morning, so it’s pretty chilly
this morning and last night I’m still wearing a sweater. Okay. We’ve seen our first wildlife sighting. Not properly in the wild,
but like in this fish farm. There’s a boa here. Now we’re going on a little bit of a hike. Manu is not happy
because he’s carrying all my stuff. Sherpa Manu. But we’re trying to find
some big fat lemurs. (lemurs howling) Apparently these lemurs, the big ones that we’re looking for,
don’t really want to move when it’s cold. But, found one, and there were, like,
a million people, surrounding this lemur. But it was an indri indri, and this thing
started howling like crazy, really loud. Apparently there were like
three of them on the trees, and it looked like it was a one-eyed lemur. Our guide was saying maybe
it lost its vision to some predator or something. And these things by the way, weigh up to
like 9 or 10kg when they’re fully grown. Another really interesting thing about these indri indri
is apparently they live up to 45 years, which is a lot of years for something
that weighs only like 9/10 kilograms. I thought the heavier you are, the longer you live,
like heavier on average as a species. We saw some really cool brown lemurs, and then we actually saw the indri lemurs
a couple of them. And this time, these had both eyes. We’ve left the jungle and we’re going to
this place called Lemur Island, where you have to take a boat and cross over and, here,
obviously these lemurs are easier to access. Okay, we are crossing the river. – We just arrived.
It’s raining, wow. That was..
– That was the shortest ride. Wow. Found a big black-and-white lemur behind me. We saw some little cute bamboo lemurs.
That were so cute. The cutest ones we’ve ever seen. (laughs) And then there’s these brown lemurs that look like
terrorists. That have, like, scary eyes. And of course, there’s
the black-and-white raft lemurs that are just, like, huge and have, like,
hands that look like human beings. Oh my God. I’m scared.. of those big hands. (laughs)
– (laughs) Now we’re going to see
the funniest lemurs of them all. (laughs) The funniest thing is
they can’t like, walk normally. They just have to jump
from one place to the other. It looks really funny. Alright. For our last stop of the day,
we’re in a crocodile farm, where they have Nile crocodiles.
Yes. These also exist in the Nile. It’s the same species. And this is the only animal in Madagascar, except for sharks around the island,
that can actually eat humans. My biggest fear in life are crocodiles. And these things, the Madagascar
Nile crocodiles, can grow up to 6.5m, or, like, more than 20ft long
and they can weigh up to 700kg. If you see one
on the water, you’re _____. Okay, it’s our 10th day in Madagascar
and the sun is setting, if you can’t tell from the lighting. And we’re actually going to another
African country tonight at like 3 am. that we have never been to the forest.
So, no sleep tonight. So we came back from Andasibe to Tana
last night, and we’re now by the airport. But I just want to recap on this video
and on our time in Madagascar and the almost 10 days that we spent here. This has really been a very unique place. The nature like Tsingy, the animals like,
all these lemurs and other animals that we saw the plants, baobabs, like all of it is stuff
you don’t find anywhere else. So I see why people call it the 8th continent. It’s been a lot of traveling. We’ve just gone east to west,
in like the top part of Madagascar without even going all the way to the north. And that took a full 10 days. We haven’t had a single day when we didn’t
have to wake up at like 6 or 7 am. to do something until this morning. And even this morning
we had to check out and change rooms. So it’s like a a lot of traveling. We spent a lot of times in vans and it feels rough because the roads are often very rough,
like I showed you earlier in the video. But I think it is worth it. It is one of those places less explored. You don’t see a lot of tourists
anywhere, honestly. You don’t see a lot of young people
traveling the place for sure. We were like the youngest people, not
with their older family members anywhere we went in Madagascar, but that was cool. One last thing I want to say
is that do remember that the people here don’t make much money. The average salary,
I think, is less than $200 a month. People do backbreaking work
and make nothing, and if you book a tour, you’re very likely going to a book a tour that’s owned partly by like, you know,
someone very wealthy, even by like, Western standards or by someone
that might not even be Malagasy. One of the hotels we stayed at
was definitely owned by a French guy. We stayed there twice.
I feel like a lot of the the really big and
fancy places have foreign ownership here. What you can do is tip everyone
that you work with a little bit. Now you don’t have to tip a lot, but
even like, you know, tipping someone $2, $5, $10, if they’re giving you a good tour
that goes a really long way. You have to remember that
the people working in the fields, brick fields, doing all that work,
they often make like $1 or $2 a day. So $10 for them is a lot of money. It’s really good money. If you’re coming from a Western country,
tip a little bit generously. That money means a lot more for them
than it probably does for you. Alright. That is it for this video. If you like this video, don’t forget to like it. If you want to get more real-time travel updates,
feel free to follow me on Instagram. I’ll catch you on the next
video from probably Kenya. Not available in any other country in the world ______ hell. (laughs) 90% of the wildlife found in this country.. (laughs)

I’ve traveled to many places, but nothing compares to this one. Separated from all other continents nearly 100 million years ago, this island evolved in complete isolation – so unique that scientists sometimes call it the world’s eighth continent. In this video, I take you with me on my first-ever journey to Madagascar, exploring the island for 10 unforgettable days. We’ll experience the landscapes and the wildlife, learn about the culture, meet the people, and understand why this place has inspired so many documentaries and even Hollywood movies. From baoba trees, to screaming lemurs in Andasibe, to via ferata hikes in Tsingy National park, to the beaches of Morondava to exploring the streets of Tana, we do a bit of everythinh in this video

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