Ambalavao

Ambalavao grew where the highlands end. The site — a valley among granite domes on the route between the Betsileo rice country and the cattle plains of the Bara to the south — made it a meeting place for two ways of life long before there was a road. Herds were walked north to be sold to the highlands, and highland rice, cloth and iron went south in exchange.

The Betsileo kingdoms of the region were absorbed by the Merina in the early 19th century, and Ambalavao came under the same administration as Fianarantsoa, the new Merina seat to the north. The making of Antemoro paper, a craft of the Antemoro of the south-east coast, where it had been used for sorabe manuscripts written in Arabic script, came to be practised in the town, which is known today for its flower-pressed sheets. Silk weaving, supplying the silk lamba used as burial shrouds, became the town's other trade.

The RN7 runs straight through the middle of the town, and colonial buildings stand along it, among them the Bureau de la Zone Administrative of around 1920. In 1942, during the Allied campaign in Madagascar, the town briefly served as the Vichy administration's capital. The cattle market grew into one of the largest in Madagascar, drawing herds walked for days across the plains. Since independence the town has stayed what it became: a trading and craft town on the highway, now with a steady traffic of travellers heading for the lemurs at Anja and the mountains of Andringitra.

Ambalavao is Betsileo, and Betsileo life turns on the ancestors. The tomb is the family's most important building, famadihana — the exhuming and rewrapping of the dead in fresh silk — is held every five to seven years, and silk lamba of the kind woven in the town serve as the burial shrouds. To buy a lamba here is to buy an object with a specific ceremonial meaning, a point guides usually make.

Craft is the town's public identity. Antemoro paper is made by pounding and soaking the bark of the avoha shrub, spreading the pulp in frames and pressing flowers and leaves into the drying sheet; visitors can watch each stage in the workshops behind the main street. Silk, from silkworms fed on the leaves of tapia trees, is woven at a mill in the north of the town.

The other institution is the cattle market. Zebu are wealth, status and sacrifice across Madagascar, and a market day brings Bara and Betsileo herders, brokers and buyers together in an event as much social as commercial, with its own etiquette about handling and inspecting animals. Christianity is strong, Sundays are church days, and the large Catholic church of Saint Joseph, built in the early 20th century, stands in the town.

Roughly 30,000 people live in Ambalavao, in the houses along the RN7 and the lanes behind it, and many thousands more in the villages of the surrounding valley. Rice is grown on terraces and valley floors, with maize, cassava, beans and vegetables on the slopes, and the vineyards of the southern highlands reach towards the town from the north.

Trade is the town's living: the cattle market, the produce markets, the paper and silk workshops, transport and small shops along the highway, and a growing business in guiding, lodging and driving visitors to Anja and Andringitra. Anja in particular is run by the neighbouring community, and was set up in 2001 to bring employment and income to local people.

Days begin early and cold in winter, with people wrapped in lamba on the way to the fields or the market; the town is at its busiest on market mornings, when carts, herds and loaded taxis crowd the main street. Water and power supply are unreliable, erosion has stripped much of the surrounding hillside, and young people leave for Fianarantsoa or the capital for work and study.

Meals follow the highland pattern: vary, rice, at every sitting, with a laoka of zebu, pork, chicken, freshwater fish, beans or leafy greens in a light broth, and sakay, a chilli paste, on the side. Ravitoto, pounded cassava leaves cooked with pork, and romazava, beef with leafy greens, appear on every hotely menu. Beef is a town speciality for obvious reasons, grilled over charcoal or stewed slowly.

Breakfast is vary sosoa, soupy rice porridge, often with kitoza, strips of zebu dried or smoked over the fire, or mofo gasy, small rice-flour cakes cooked in moulds and bought hot at a stall. Koba, the log of ground peanuts and sugar in sweetened rice paste boiled for hours in banana leaf, is the standard snack, and the market piles up highland fruit and vegetables with peanuts and beans grown across the valley.

Wine is the regional peculiarity: Haute Matsiatra is Madagascar's leading wine-producing region, with vineyards at Ambalavao itself, and local bottles are easy to find in the town's shops. Ranovola, one of Madagascar's most common traditional drinks, is the everyday one, with beer and toaka gasy, the home-distilled rum, in the bars.