It's December, the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky, the temperature is approaching 32 degrees and a couple of herders are driving a herd of black, brown and spotted zebu oxen down the road. The zebu's large horns bob up and down and the characteristic humps wiggle from side to side. The cattle trot closely past our motorcycles parked here on the shoulder of the "Zebu Highway", which stretches from the port city of Tulear in the south to the capital, Antananarivo, located at an altitude of about 1200 meters in the central highlands. "They drive their cattle along this highway, 930 kilometers to the capital, on foot, where the big cattle markets are.

It's too expensive to put them on a truck. If one of the zebu dies along the way, the herders have to take the horns home to the owner of the cattle as proof that they have not sold the zebu in one of the many markets along the route. This is a normal part of the agreement between the owner of the cattle and the herders. The herders sleep along the way at the edge of the ditch and once they have sold the cattle, they take a local bus back to the coast and start again. The trip takes about five weeks. The daily wage is no more than a few euros per day.

Here in Madagascar, zebu oxen are very important to the culture: for example, the Bara people, one of the country's 18 tribes, have a test of manhood where a young boy must steal a full-grown zebu ox to be accepted as a real man. And out here in the countryside, a man's wealth and status is measured by how many zebus he owns. And Madagascar's national soccer team has a zebu ox with a football between its horns as its logo. And when they score, the players dance around the pitch holding their index fingers up on their foreheads to resemble the pointed horns of the zebu." Our motorcycle guide, Nicolas Duclos, tells us about everyday life here in Madagascar in English, but with a distinct French accent, reminiscent of the TV series 'allo 'allo. And he knows everyday life very well, because although he is of French descent, he has lived all his life in Madagascar and speaks two of the local languages. He has two small children with a local woman on the island of Nosy Be, located off the northwest coast. Here he runs a resort for tourists from all over the world, when he's not roaming the roads as a motorcycle guide.

A little wiser to the hard life of the local traders and the importance of the zebu to life in this country, we hop on our motorbikes and head south in the direction where the zebu and herders came from.

Soaring through the landscape like black kites

Riding a motorcycle through the mountains of Madagascar, you'll feel the wind's interplay of warm and cool breezes and quickly feel free as a bird as you sail through the landscape, leaning from side to side on the motorcycle as it curves. The smell of wood smoke and grilled chicken from the street kitchens reaches your nostrils here on the motorcycle, where you're not protected by the air conditioning and comfort of a coach, but are the master of speed and freedom. On the other hand, you also have to pay special attention to your responsibility to others in traffic and keep an eye out for potholes, of which there are many.

Just as there are many of the overloaded and densely packed taxi buses with local travelers. The roof of these small local and colorful buses looks like a traveling storage room filled with bicycles, big yellow water cans, suitcases and large circular wicker baskets with chickens and turkeys gasping in the heat. Occasionally, a four-wheeled circus comes racing straight towards us, in our lane, signaling with their lights that we should watch out and move over, because they have just changed lanes to avoid the worst potholes. The traffic rule here is that the biggest comes first, so we considerately and indulgently pull over to the shoulder.

After all, we are the guests in the country and on the road. Out in the countryside, we overtake home-built soapbox trucks loaded with charcoal and pushed by four or five big kids, and in the cities there's a jumble of old Asian rickshaws - still running barefoot on the burning asphalt, just like in old black and white photos from French Indochina. On the way out of the capital, fat foie gras geese waddle along the roadside alongside black piglets that occasionally dart across the road, and in the middle of a bend, dogs of all sizes, lean and well-fed, are sleeping for dinner, so traffic has to weave around them. Black kites hang above our heads and play in the wind, just as we play a more serious game, here with our motorcycles on the asphalt, and when a column of smoke rises from a field burning, the kites fly there and circle around in the brown smoke to let off steam.

Tongasoa, vasaha! - Welcome to Madagascar!

When traveling by motorcycle, there's no time wasted in train stations, parking lots or tourist buses, because the whole point is to ride a motorcycle, and the greatest experience is getting from A to B with all that happens along the way. And as a motorcyclist, you're not relegated to the usual tourist stops during breaks. We stop at a random village or marketplace to see the local people up close. Everywhere we stop, we attract a lot of attention and as soon as we take off our helmets, we're almost surrounded by interested villagers. The children in particular are curious and sometimes even look a little scared.

Understandably so, because we probably look like a paramilitary unit with all our security equipment and Go Pro cameras on our helmets. The greeting, "Salama, vasaha! Tongasoa", we are greeted with in many places and we quickly learn that it means: "Hello, foreigner. Welcome!" And when we try to respond with the few phrases in Malagasy that our guides have taught us, we get big smiles and bursts of laughter from the locals. They are obviously used to white people speaking French and not necessarily trying to speak the local languages. If you take a picture of the children and show it to them on the display, they laugh. Maybe they've never seen themselves in a photograph before? - In no time at all, a contact has developed between the tourist and the local, the boundaries between who is looking at whom become fluid, and we are invited into the small huts and shown around the village and some of the children shake hands with the female motorcyclists and they have really become friends.

Madagascar lies between Asia and Africa, and this is evident in the highland population, which is dominated by the Merina people, a mixture of Asian and African descendants. The Merina people sailed here from Indonesia and Malaysia around 1500 years ago and settled in the highlands where they have been growing rice ever since. The facial features here in the highlands are also predominantly Asian, with many having high cheekbones and narrow eyes, whereas you can clearly see that people from the African continent have settled along the coast.

At the mountain village of Ambositra, we walk through a grove of eucalyptus trees to a small local school. John, the manager of the small lodge, "Sol de Solair de Madagascar", where we stay for one night, guides us around the school and tells us that the students here mainly belong to the Betsileo people, who are known in Madagascar as experts in rice cultivation. Here, it costs a cup of dried rice a week to send your child to school, because in this part of the country there is an economy in kind, and the school teachers receive some of their salary in rice, which they can then exchange for other necessities on the market. Then we welfare Danes with annuity savings and fixed-rate mortgages can chew on it while we drive further south along the "Zebu Highway".

Foie gras and Ravitoto

After a long day in the saddle of the trusty iron horse, it's good to sit down with a healthy appetite. Madagascar was a French colony from 1986, which is evident from the menu, which often includes classic French dishes such as terrine de foie gras, steak with green pepper sauce and French fries, bouillabaisse, etc. so no Francophile should go to bed hungry here. But if you dare to browse a little further through the menu to the section on African cuisine, you can really broaden your horizons, and isn't that what it's all about when you're traveling in one of the most remote corners of the world? The dish "Ravitoto" is made with crushed green leaves from the cassava plant, cooked with pork and coconut milk and served with steaming rice.

The cassava leaves are a little bitter, but this is offset by the sweetness of the coconut milk and the fat from the pork. Ravitoto is the closest thing to a national dish in Madagascar, says Onintsoa Razafimahaleo, the driver of the tour van. His eyes are filled with longing as he describes how his wife goes to the market early to get the fresh cassava leaves for this dish, which she likes to serve twice a week, and now that he is traveling, he has to go without her caring cooking for two weeks. We also get spicy zebu meatballs served with a hot chili puree and deep-fried watercress balls reminiscent of Indian pakora. All of this is nutritious and rustic peasant food here in the highlands of Madagascar, where rice is eaten three times a day - even for breakfast.

After dinner, we are served flambéed bananas and the accompanying rhum arrange, spiced rum, with exotic nuances of baobab fruit, pineapple or the now exclusive and precious vanilla from Madagascar. After a long day with many intense experiences on the motorcycle, we are so full of impressions and exotic dishes with strange names like omby ritra and akoho rony that most of us are more than ready to cook. However, some of our fellow travelers believe the night is still young and join Onintsoa and Nicolas at a local karaoke bar in the village of Ranomafana. Nicolas and Onintsoa warm up by singing French love ballads while the lyrics are shown on a flat screen. Afterwards, the DJ takes over and pumps Rihanna, Bob Marley and local Malagasy dance music into the tropical night as the dance floor fills up. In this country, you obviously dance with your hips as if you had ball bearings instead of bones: they're hot-blooded.

A dip in the Mozambique Channel

The last stretch goes towards the beach on the west coast, where the temperature is 41 degrees. "It is getting really 'ot", Nicolas snorts as we approach the coast. We shed our sticky, sweaty motorcycle clothes before jumping into the Mozambique Channel, the strait between Madagascar and Mozambique, to cool our overheated bodies, only to be disappointed to find that the sea is anything but cool here south of the equator.

Ah yes, who would have thought you could complain about the heat in December? Soon we have to seek refuge in the shade under the trees by the pool, where we can find some coolness while we digest the impressions of the motorcycle ride across Madagascar, which now runs like a movie on the inside of our eyelids as we blissfully doze off.

Fact box

Where to stay and eat in the capital, Antananarivo: Hotel Belvedere is a comfortable, cozy and quiet place to stay with a three-level terrace overlooking Antananarivo's hilly cityscape. The hotel also has a good restaurant serving delicious dishes from the local Malagasy cuisine. For good French food, you can dine at Restaurant B opposite the hotel, Rossini just down the street or Kudeta around the corner.

Beach time: In Ifaty on the west coast, the Bamboo Club on the Mozambique Channel is a great place to stay. The resort can also organize snorkeling trips, whale watching and tours in the magical forest with its many bizarre baobab trees.

Currency: The local currency is Ariary and is abbreviated MGA: 1000 Ariary is equivalent to approximately 2 kroner.