Lemur loving
Wanderlust Travel Magazine|July/August 2020
We travel across southern Madagascar on a quest for the aye-aye, but find plenty of natural distractions along the way
WILLIAM GRAY
Lemur loving

Imagine a lemur drawn by Quentin Blake – all pointy and scratchy, long bony fingers and goblin eyes. That’s what an aye-aye looks like. Apparently, there was one in a tree, fast asleep in a hole 15 metres above our heads. We were waiting for it to wake up. Head torches ready. Necks craning. Just one glimpse and I’d be happy. Just one glimpse of this nocturnal, elusive and most mysterious of all lemurs...

But the forest was flickering with lightning. I could feel the tension building in the muggy Malagasy evening air. Deep bass thunder mingled with the percussion of piping frogs and the whining falsetto of cicadas. The storm was minutes away.

“Wake up!” I silently urged the dozing creature high in the canopy above me. But even as I stared up at the branches, the first drops of rain struck my face, warm and heavy.

The island ark

Not all lemurs are as challenging to find as the aye-aye. Two weeks earlier, at the start of my wildlife odyssey in southern Madagascar, I had barely stepped foot in the rich, tropical stew of Andasibe-Mantadia National Park before indri began calling. It sounded like whale song in the forest: a siren cry, swelling, reverberating, holding the forest rapt with each melancholic note. Following my guide, William, along a vine-tangled path we soon found the singers – half a dozen piebald lemurs clutching tree trunks and fixing us with large, round, lemon-coloured eyes.

This story is from the July/August 2020 edition of Wanderlust Travel Magazine.

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This story is from the July/August 2020 edition of Wanderlust Travel Magazine.

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