Little-visited and otherworldly, Madagascar feels less like an island nation off the African coast and more like an alternate reality.

It may be dwarfed by its continental mothership but Madagascar is still the world’s fourth-biggest island, and is home to some very weird and wonderful terrain: limestone mountain ranges sharpened to razor edges by the elements, high plateaus that plunge into semitropical rainforest, a fantastical spiny desert, and along the coast, mangrove swamps, coral reefs and sandy beaches. Those who fly overall these natural wonders will spot another, more sinister, feature: serious deforestation, which is gouging canyons into the earth and bleeding Madagascar’s red soil into the sea.

So otherworldly is this odd, benign, enchanting isle, that if you visit, you may well wonder afterwards if you dreamt the whole experience. Were the Ankarana limestone massif’s eerie caves, canyons and fields of razor-sharp pinnacles for real? Did that bone-shaking ride through red-earthed plains studded with baobabs or the thermal bath in the rainforest really happen? Yes, but just to be sure book a return trip.