Exploring the Tsingy de Bemaraha

This forest is made of stone. It is in

Western Madagascar and almost no one can walk into it.

It is called Tsingy de Bemaraha, a limestone

massif protected across more than fifteen hundred square

kilometers.

In Malagasy, Tsingy means roughly where one

cannot walk barefoot. The limestone is cut into

blades, sharp enough to cut through boots

and climbing

gear.

It was a seabed once. Rainwater made slightly

acidic by carbon dioxide in the air found the

cracks in it and worked downward for ages.

It widened them into canyons, and what it did not dissolve

was left standing,

thousands of thin walls and needles.

And because of that, large parts of it have never been

explored.

There are a few marked routes crossed on cables

and narrow bridges. Beyond them, the fissures are too

tight and the edges too sharp to get through.

And whenever scientists manage to get deeper, new things

appear.

Plants, frogs, bats, reptiles,

even tiny lemurs, species hidden in a maze people can

barely enter.

Down between the blades, there is a second world, shaded,

damp, cooler, with forest growing wherever the

light gets in.

Lemurs cross above it in jumps, landing on edges

no one could hold on to.

So what is still living inside a forest of

stone that will not let anyone in?