Chris Robinson travels. A lot. So, it made sense for us to ask the popular travel industry figure and long-time radio host of the Travel Show where he plans to travel when the Covid crisis abates. His choice is Madagascar – a destination he was on his way to when the pandemic intervened:

“On Feb. 20 this year I boarded the Azamara Quest in Cape Town for its 26-day ‘Indian Ocean Adventure,’ in part as research for future travel articles. Uh-oh, I hear you muttering: I know where this is going…

Which is more than the guests aboard the Azamara Quest did when Indian Ocean ports began to close to cruise ships just one week later. The subsequent peregrinations of the Quest across the ocean and the final race to Muscat in Oman by our heroic Captain and his crew have been described in a previous Travel Industry Today article by Dara Beard.

But our missed ports make this an easy question to answer, as I suspect it is for the many other travellers aboard re-routed cruise ships this year – I want to go to those wonderful destinations that we missed out on due to our current worldwide dislocation. To Mumbai and Kochi in India, to Columbo in Sri Lanka where we docked for replenishment but could not explore, and to Oman, the desert Sultanate on the Arabian peninsula which we glimpsed on our rapid transfer from ship to airport at the end of the adventure.

But above all, I want to go to Madagascar, the first place to deny us entry and the most anticipated destination on the originally planned journey. I want to spend time with the lemurs on one of the most extraordinary evolutionary backwaters on the planet. A place where 80 percent of the plant species are unique to the island and towering baobab avenues line dusty roads to nowhere. To seek out the fossa, a cat-like animal, and the delightfully named aye-aye and sifaka. And to meet the Malagasy people and experience their culture on the edge of the African continent.

That will do for a re-start…”

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