What's inside this crater in Madagascar?

Summary

This story follows a team's journey to discover the mystery behind a remote village on top of an ancient volcanic crater in Madagascar. Using satellite images, internet research, and local contacts, the team struggles to uncover why a community moved to such an isolated location. After several failed attempts, they finally reach the village and learn that its residents, seeking fertile soil and water, migrated to this secluded place for space to thrive. The story highlights the challenges of remote living and Madagascar's broader issues with road infrastructure and isolation.

Takeaways

• 🌍 Madagascar is an island off the coast of Africa, known for its unique biodiversity.
• 🏞️ A mysterious, isolated village was discovered in a crater atop a volcanic mountain.
• 🛤️ The village was established after 2008, despite its remote and difficult-to-reach location.
• ❌ Online searches failed to provide useful information about the village, with many references leading to unrelated content, like 'Attack on Titan' in Russian.
• 🌋 The mountain, Ambohiby Massif, is a 90-million-year-old extinct volcano from the Cretaceous period, connected to the breakup of Madagascar and India.
• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The villagers migrated from a district 380 kilometers away, belonging to the Betsileo ethnic group, and sought better land, water, and space.
• 💧 The crater village benefits from water sources and fertile soil, making it suitable for farming, particularly citrus crops.
• 🚧 Reaching the village requires traversing tough terrain, highlighting the isolation faced by many rural communities in Madagascar.
• 📉 Madagascar has poor infrastructure, with many people living far from reliable roads, limiting access to essential services.
• 📷 This project is one of the first documented explorations of Anosibe Ambohiby, shedding light on a previously unknown community.

Q & A

What initially drew attention to the village on the Ambohiby Massif?

The village was spotted from satellite imagery as a dark, round spot in the center of a massive extinct volcanic crater, standing out due to its remoteness and isolation.

Why was there uncertainty about the village’s existence before 2008?

The village didn’t appear in satellite imagery before 2008, leading to questions about when and why people had moved to such a remote location.

What challenges did the researchers face in trying to make contact with the village using the internet?

Geotagged references near the village on platforms like Google Maps and YouTube were often unrelated, with many locations tagged using references to 'Attack on Titan,' making it difficult to find accurate information.

What geological significance does the Ambohiby Massif have?

The Ambohiby Massif is the remnants of a 90-million-year-old volcanic structure known as an alkaline ring complex, which formed during the breakup of Madagascar and India.

What factors made the Ambohiby crater an attractive place for people to settle?

The crater provided fresh water and fertile soil, making it ideal for agriculture and supporting life, which are crucial in a country where land and resources can be scarce.

Why did the Betsileo people migrate to the Ambohiby crater?

The Betsileo people, who originally came from Manandriana, migrated to the crater due to a need for more space, as the population density in their original home was much higher, making land for farming and living scarce.

What role does the terrain of Madagascar play in the isolation of villages like Anosibe Ambohiby?

Madagascar has a poorly developed road network, with very few rural areas being connected by roads that are usable year-round, contributing to the isolation of remote villages like Anosibe Ambohiby.

How did Lalie's team overcome the physical challenges of reaching the village in the crater?

Lalie's team made several attempts to reach the village, traveling by motorcycle and on foot through difficult terrain, but they were initially forced to turn back due to storms. They finally succeeded after the rainy season ended.

What were the villagers’ primary sources of livelihood in the Ambohiby crater?

The villagers farmed citrus trees, such as lemons and oranges, which were cash crops they sold at markets after transporting the produce down the difficult terrain of the mountain.

What is the significance of Anosibe Ambohiby in the broader context of Madagascar’s rural development challenges?

Anosibe Ambohiby highlights the broader issue of isolation in Madagascar, where millions of people live in remote areas without proper infrastructure, limiting their access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 A Mysterious Village in Madagascar's Volcanic Crater

The script begins by introducing Madagascar as one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. It describes a mysterious village nestled within the crater of a massive, 13-kilometer-wide volcanic mountain. This village, isolated and remote, didn’t exist before 2008. The narrator, fascinated by this discovery, embarks on a journey to uncover why people moved to such an isolated place, starting from scratch with no contacts in Madagascar. The script details various attempts to get in touch with locals via online tools, but most leads prove unhelpful, leading them to experts and eventually to a local filmmaker, Lalie, who agrees to make the journey up the mountain in Madagascar's rainy season. Despite being prepared, a storm forces Lalie's team to turn back, delaying contact until May.

05:02

⛈️ Foiled by a Storm: The First Attempt to Reach the Village

Lalie’s team gets close to the village but is stopped by a massive storm just as they prepare to descend into the crater. The journey must be postponed until the rainy season ends in May. In the meantime, the narrator reflects on what they’ve learned so far, including the remote and difficult terrain around the village. Through further research, they discover that the mountain is an extinct volcano, millions of years old, dating back to the Cretaceous period. This discovery raises new questions about the geological significance of the mountain and its role in shaping the region.

10:02

🗺️ Uncovering the Ancient Volcanic Origins

The narrator deepens their investigation into the mountain’s volcanic origins, discovering that it is part of an alkaline ring complex, a geological formation left behind by volcanic activity when Madagascar and India broke apart 90 million years ago. This leads them to experts in continental drift and volcanic geology, who explain how the volcano formed and eventually became extinct. Despite this deeper understanding of the land’s ancient past, the narrator is still unsure how this connects to the current village in the crater. However, they finally learn the mountain's name: Ambohiby Massif, thanks to an old mineral database.

15:04

🚶 The Journey Begins Again: The Second Attempt

With the rainy season over, Lalie and her new team set off for the Ambohiby Massif once more. This time, they gather more local help, including a guide named Johary, who has never visited the crater village despite being an expert on the mountain’s water resources. They begin their journey from the nearby town of Antaniditra, interviewing locals and learning more about the community’s relationship to the land. The journey is difficult and remote, but the crew is determined to reach the crater village and understand its significance.

20:14

🏞️ Arrival at the Village: Water, Soil, and Space

The team finally arrives at the crater village, Anosibe Ambohiby, but faces tension as some villagers view them as potential spies. After a long wait, they are able to meet a village elder who explains the community's origins. The villagers, part of the Betsileo ethnic group, migrated to this remote location from over 380 kilometers away in search of better water, soil, and space. They have made the most of the fertile land by cultivating citrus trees, creating a self-sustaining village, albeit one still isolated and difficult to access.

🚜 The Challenges of Isolation: Madagascar’s Rural Roads

The script concludes by reflecting on the challenges the village faces due to its extreme isolation. Despite their success in cultivating the land, the lack of road infrastructure in Madagascar makes transporting goods and accessing essential services extremely difficult. This problem is widespread across rural Madagascar, where many communities remain disconnected from the rest of the country. The narrator emphasizes how this remoteness, which initially intrigued them, plays a central role in shaping the village’s story. Through Lalie’s footage, they capture the uniqueness of the village, marking its first appearance on the global internet map.

Keywords

💡Ambohiby Massif

The Ambohiby Massif is a volcanic mountain located in Madagascar, identified as an ancient geological structure. In the video, it plays a central role as the location of a remote village, with the video's narrative exploring why people chose to settle there. It is revealed to be part of a volcanic ring complex, formed during the breakup of Madagascar and India.

💡Alkaline Ring Complex

An alkaline ring complex is a type of geological formation associated with extinct volcanoes. These formations are significant due to their unique chemical makeup and are typically formed when continents break apart. In the video, the Ambohiby Massif is identified as an alkaline ring complex, helping to explain its rich soil and the decision of villagers to settle there.

💡Geotagging

Geotagging refers to adding geographic coordinates to online content, like images or videos. The video’s researchers use geotagging on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to locate the remote village near the Ambohiby Massif. Despite initially being led astray by fictional tags, geotagging ultimately helps guide them to people familiar with the area.

💡Migration

Migration in the video refers to the movement of the Betsileo people from Manandriana to the remote crater village. This journey covered over 380 kilometers, highlighting the reasons behind their relocation, such as the search for better water, soil, and space. Their story of migration is crucial in understanding the human aspect of settling in isolated regions.

💡Hotspot

A hotspot is a region of Earth’s mantle where molten rock rises to the surface, forming volcanoes. In the video, the Ambohiby Massif formed over a hotspot during the breakup of Madagascar and India, helping explain the mountain’s volcanic origin. The concept is key to understanding the geological history of the region and its current landscape.

💡Remoteness

Remoteness refers to the extreme isolation of the Ambohiby village, both geographically and socially. The video explores the difficulties the villagers face in terms of connectivity, especially when transporting goods to the nearest market. This isolation shapes the lives of the villagers and is a significant theme throughout the narrative.

💡Betsileo

The Betsileo are one of Madagascar's 18 main ethnic groups, originally from the central highlands. In the video, it is revealed that the settlers of the Ambohiby crater village are Betsileo migrants, who have become an ethnic minority in the region. Their cultural identity is an important factor in their migration and settlement in this remote area.

💡Volcanic Geology

Volcanic geology is the study of landforms created by volcanic activity. The video delves into this field to explain the origins of the Ambohiby Massif, a volcanic structure. Understanding the geological history of the mountain, including its formation and eventual collapse, helps explain the unique features that attracted settlers.

💡Tomography

Tomography is a technique used to create detailed images of the internal structure of objects. In the video, seismic tomography is used to map Madagascar’s geological features, revealing the volcanic origins of the Ambohiby Massif. This scientific approach helps uncover the history of the region, dating the formation back to the Cretaceous period.

💡Rural Isolation

Rural isolation refers to the physical and infrastructural detachment of rural areas from developed regions. The video highlights how the villagers in Ambohiby are isolated from basic amenities due to Madagascar’s underdeveloped road network. This theme underscores the challenges of living in remote areas and the broader issues of accessibility in Madagascar.

Highlights

Madagascar is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, with plants and animals not found anywhere else.

A massive, perfectly round, 13-kilometer-wide mountain crater in Madagascar was discovered via satellite imagery, with a mysterious village inside.

Research showed that before 2008, the village did not exist, raising questions about why people moved to such a remote location.

Attempts to use the internet to gather information about the village failed, as most location tags were linked to unrelated content like Attack on Titan references in Russian.

A production team in Madagascar, led by Lalie, set out to reach the village in January, but was forced to turn back due to a storm.

The mountain, known as the Ambohiby Massif, was revealed to be a 90-million-year-old extinct volcano, likely formed during the breakup of Madagascar and India.

A geological survey confirmed the mountain is an alkaline ring complex, a rare volcanic formation.

Many similar formations exist around the world, but few have villages built in their craters like the one on Ambohiby.

Historical records revealed the presence of fresh water in the area, a possible reason why people moved there.

The village was confirmed to be called Anosibe Ambohiby, meaning 'Big Island Ambohiby.'

The villagers, identified as the Betsileo ethnic group, migrated over 380 kilometers to settle here, becoming a minority in the area.

The main reason for their migration was space: the region provided ample land for farming and livestock, which was scarce in their original home.

The village relies on farming, particularly citrus fruits, but transporting their crops is a challenge due to the remote location.

Madagascar's poor road infrastructure leaves many rural communities isolated, limiting their access to essential services and markets.

The discovery of this village and its story was a reminder that some places remain hidden or unknown on the internet until someone goes there to ask questions and learn from the people.

Transcripts

Madagascar. 

An island off the coast of Africa. 

It’s one of the most biologically diverse places in the world.

Almost all of its plants and animals aren’t found anywhere else on Earth.  

And when we looked at it from space,

we saw a spot.

A massive dark circle,

almost perfectly round,

over thirteen kilometers in diameter,

and big enough that roads are diverted on either side of it. 

Looking at it from the side, we could see

it was a mountain.

And if you zoomed all the way in, you could see a village

nestled in the crater at its center. 

8 kilometers from the closest labeled town on Google Maps. 

Isolated in a remote part of a remote region of a geographically isolated country. 

It looked like it could have been there for generations.

But if you looked backward through time … 

… each year … 

… it gets smaller and smaller … 

… and before 2008, there was no one there at all.

I wanted to try to answer one question:

Why did these people move to such

an incredibly isolated place?

I was really starting from zero here. 

I didn't know anyone in Madagascar.

I didn't know that much about Madagascar. 

But the question was: could we get in touch with the people living here just by using the internet? 

The closest location tags were on the edges of the mountain: a butcher shop, a playground,

and a historical landmark. 

But none of them were real — they all seemed to be random references to the popular Japanese

manga and anime series Attack on Titan, written in Russian. 

The ones that did look real — churches, hospitals, schools — didn’t have much

of a presence on the internet.  

So we looked at content that had been geotagged nearby. 

First on Twitter: using the coordinates of the village, and a search radius. 

Until finally at 12 kilometers away … 

… we found someone. 

A nonprofit worker who had posted from a nearby village in 2014. 

We asked if he knew about the village on the mountain. 

But he never got back to us. 

On Instagram, we looked for pictures tagged in the nearest town, Antaniditra

and found an aid organization that had posted pictures taken there.

We asked, but they didn’t know. 

They’d never actually been on the mountain at all. 

And finally we looked at geotags on YouTube. 

And there was a video.

Geotagged right next to the village on top of the mountain. 

But, then…  

It was just more Attack on Titan stuff.

Also written in Russian.  

After a while, it felt like the internet alone was not going to tell us very much. 

So we started reaching out to experts who had worked in Madagascar.

Experts in agriculture.

 And experts in biogeography.

Madagascar is a country of almost 29 million people: slightly more than Australia, slightly

fewer than Texas. 

A majority of the country's population — over 60 percent — lives in rural settings a lot like this one. 

But this village was particularly remote. 

If you zoom out, the closest major city is a place called Tsiroanomandidy. 

18 kilometers away, with a population of over 44,000.  

At this point in the process, it felt like we might need to take a more drastic approach. 

Maybe we could hire someone to make the journey up the mountain to the village itself. 

Someone in Madagascar. 

That’s how we met Lalie. 

Hi Christopher. 

Lalie runs a production company in Madagascar, in the capital city of Antananarivo. 

She was down to make the trip. 

She started to gather a crew… 

… make local contacts … 

… and figure out how to get from Antananarivo all the way here. 

They weren't exactly sure yet how they'd get up to the village.

Or how they’d establish contact once they got there.  

But they knew they were going to have to do it in just a few days in the middle of

Madagascar’s hot rainy season. 

And early one morning in January, they went.

This is Toussinah. She’s going to be our guide. 

This is Haja, he’s an historian  This is Vahambola, our fixer. 

This is José, our very focused driver. 

And this is me, you know me already. 

As they approached the mountain, Lalie sent us messages every step of the way. 

Until, finally, 

After traveling 10 kilometers by motorcycle and on foot …

they made it to the top of the mountain.

But when they got there

and were about to descend to the village in the crater … 

… a massive storm appeared on the horizon. 

And they had to turn back. 

They got extremely close.

But making contact with the village would have to wait until the end of the rainy season.

Which was … 

... in May. 

Four months away. 

Still, all the research we’d done so far gave us a detailed idea of what this place

looked like. 

What Lalie’s team did see looked green, lush,

and clearly extremely difficult to access.

But there was so much we didn’t know. 

Before Lalie went in January, she wasn’t convinced that anybody lived there at all.

There’s the small group of houses at the very top in the very middle

that we’ve kinda been interested in. 

So I turned to some very basic Googling.

And I found an article about earthquakes in Madagascar.  

The article described how a team of researchers mapped Madagascar via seismic tomography. 

That’s "tomography" not "topography," because it’s mapping the Earth’s interior, not

exterior, like a CT scan for the planet.

All of these measurements produced this final map of the entire island.

With colors labeling the different ages and kinds of rock. 

And here, in the center of the map, I could see one perfectly circular dot…

I pulled it into Photoshop, overlaid it with the map…

And it lined up with the mountain exactly.

According to the key, that meant that the mountain dated back to the Cretaceous Period:

sometime between 66 and 145 million years ago. 

And ...

... it was volcanic.

This looked like a very, very extinct volcano.

But we wanted to know for sure. 

So I started looking for a volcano expert from Madagascar who could explain it to me. 

And that led me to Tsilavo Raharimahefa. 

He showed me a map 

from a detailed geological survey of the area. 

90 million years old. 

Older than Mount Everest.

The Grand Canyon.

Vesuvius.

This thing was ancient.

90 million years meant that this thing had been extinct for a very, very long time. 

But that number was significant for another reason.

Okay. 

Tsilavo is talking about this moment, right here.

When India broke apart from Madagascar. 

Because these rocks are 90 million years old, 

it makes sense that the volcano might have something to do with this massive separation

of continents. 

So we went looking for experts who knew more about the breakup of Madagascar and India. 

And we found Joe Meert.

A geology professor who’s written a bunch about

the movement and formation of continents. 

This was a real crash course on volcanic geology,

so I asked our motion designer Matt to help me make this a little bit easier to follow.

Madagascar and India happened to be located beneath this really deep-seated mantle source,

they're called plumes.  

When that plume reaches the planet’s crust, it forms a hot spot.

As Madagascar moved over the hotspot, it burned a hole through Madagascar

and produced all the volcanics all over the island.

As Madagascar’s continental plate continued to move,

those volcanoes were eventually cut off from the hotspot. 

And without a heat source, they cooled and collapsed.

And then you're left with the plumbing system that was underneath that volcano.  

So that’s what we were looking at: the collapsed remnants of a volcano formed by a hotspot

that had broken up apart Madagascar and India.  

At this point, I had no idea what any of this might have to do

with the village we could see on Google Earth.

But right about then, we heard back from another Malagasy expert we’d emailed.

He sent us a link to mindat.org — this is like the Wikipedia of minerals and mines ...

… and it had a page about the mountain. 

Including its name: The Ambohiby Massif. 

Finally. We knew the name of this mountain that had been unlabeled

on every other map we’d seen so far. 

And we could search for it. 

We found maps from 1899, 1903, and 1916,

where the Ambohiby was always labeled as a lush forest …

… the only one for almost 100 kilometers.

That definitely didn’t seem to be the case anymore.

But maybe these old trees were a clue.

We kept looking. 

And we found old reports.

One from 1933 said that at the “highest part of the massif

there is a very open valley, called by the indigenous Andranomangatsiaka,

or "where we find fresh water."

Water. 

Maybe that's why the villagers chose to move there.

The mountain’s higher elevation meant it got more moisture,

feeding these streams that flowed down the mountain in every direction… 

and making the center a perfect place for a village to thrive. 

Then we tried to find reports that were a little bit more recent.

And on Google Scholar, we found a 2012 paper about the origins of the Ambohiby. 

It covered everything from the geochemistry, to plate tectonics,

to microscopic images of its rocks.

And it included rock samples taken right next to the crater village.

The paper was written by a South African geoscientist named Ndivhuwo Cecilia Mukosi. 

And if she took rock samples from right here, when the village already looked like this,

she had to have been in contact with the people living there. 

Mukosi was busy doing field research for the next few days.  

So in the meantime, we dug deeper into her paper.

And it told us what the formation actually was.

An alkaline ring complex. 

Alkaline refers to the chemistry of the magma. 

It’s the kind of molten rock that appears when continents break apart, like Madagascar and

India did 90 million years ago. 

I took this new term, and looked at dozens more across the world.

In Sudan,

Egypt,

Niger,

Russia,

Namibia,

Zimbabwe,

The United States.

They were everywhere. 

A whole planet covered in circles. 

The remnants of long extinct volcanoes.

I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me why a community of people would want to

live on top of an alkaline ring complex. 

So I went looking for the most famous researcher

of the most famous alkaline ring complex out there.

That’s when this caught my eye. 

The Richat Structure.  

Also called the Eye of the Sahara. 

It’s an alkaline ring complex in Mauritania surrounded by conspiracy theories.

Even on Google Maps, where it’s littered

with comments saying that it's the site of Atlantis. 

And that “nobody knows what it is!” 

But geologist Michel Jébrak does know what it is.

He’s done tons of research there,

and even helped get an illustration of it onto Mauritania’s currency.

Soil. 

Maybe that was why they moved here.

This alkaline ring complex, formed when continents broke apart,

left behind a valley with remarkably fertile soil. 

There was one last person who might know something

about the community living on top of the Ambohiby Complex:

Ndivhuwo Cecilia Mukosi, the geoscientist who had studied it.

When she was back from doing field research, we spoke.

One of the things that really caught us in the first place about this location was the

fact that at the crater of the ring complex there is what looks like a farm right in the

very middle -- do you know what I’m talking about? 

I’d missed this the whole time. 

Mukosi’s research was published in 2012.

But she had actually visited the Ambohiby five years earlier, in 2007. 

Before anyone had moved here in the first place.  

So that was it. 

We’d been trying to learn about an incredibly remote village in an incredibly remote part of the country.

And the one person who had formally studied it most recently

had done so before the village even existed. 

We had all this research. 

And we were stumped. 

But now, the rainy season was over.

And we finally had a chance to send Lalie and her crew to make the journey again. 

Hi Christopher, we are leaving now.

So we are heading to Tsiroanomandidy. 

We are now on the way.

Lalie brought a whole new team, including Rado Andriamanisa, a filmmaker who captured

scenes as they drove through the Madagascar countryside.

Of pineapple vendors …  

... basket weavers … 

... and rice farmers. 

We are 1 hour and 45 minutes, approximately, from Tsiroanomandidy. 

Tsiroanomandidy.

The closest major city to the Ambohiby.

When they made it there, they picked up their final crew member: Johary. 

A Tsiroanomandidy local who would be their guide. 

Hello!

Hello! Can you hear me now?

He told me he’d climbed the Ambohiby many times. 

And even wrote his master’s thesis on its water resources. 

But had never been to the village at its center. 

Antaniditra. Just 8 kilometers away.

From there, they could travel to interview people living on the outskirts of the massif.

The crater village's closest neighbors.

The crew asked them what they thought made this place special. 

They’d met the people living closest to the crater village.

But climbing all the way up the mountain would take a full day. 

Early the next morning, 

they set off 

for one last shot at reaching the village. 

What you see behind me, there, this line, there ...

It’s the crater.

It’s like, in the middle of nowhere.

It’s a beautiful nowhere.

But still. 

Until at last … they arrived. 

So we are now approaching the crater.

And they saw the village — up close.

Full of dozens of houses, livestock … and people. 

But as soon as they drove closer, things became tense.

Some people in the village think that we are a team of spies,

coming to take them guilty for something.

We still need to wait.

After two and a half hours, one of the towns leaders came to talk. 

We finally succeeded to find our facilitator. 

More specifically, they migrated from Manandriana, a district in the region of Amoron’i Mania,

in the central highlands of Madagascar. 

A journey of over 380 kilometers.  

Like the majority of people in Amoron’i Mania, the Ambohiby residents are Betsileo. 

The third largest of Madagascar’s 18 main ethnic groups.

Meaning they didn't just migrate to a new home –  they also became an ethnic minority. 

Now living in a place where the Merina people are the majority.

It still wasn’t clear why they chose this place

in particular, somewhere so remote. 

Until they sat down to interview Razafinatiala, one of the village’s elders.

And they gave it a name. 

Anosibe Ambohiby. 

Anosibe Ambohiby. 

Anosibe Ambohiby — or "Big Island" Ambohiby. 

So we had an answer about why they lived here. 

And why they had traveled all this way to live in a place like this. 

It was for the water and it was for the soil. 

But more than anything else, it was for space.

And it’s easy to see why. 

In the entire district of Tsiroanomandidy, there are just over 49 people per square kilometer. 

But in the migrants’ original home of Manadriana, that density is more than twice as high.

And for farmers like them, space

to plant, to breed livestock, to build a life

is everything.

And then the villagers took Lalie and the crew to see what they’d done

with all of that space.

A massive field of hundreds of lemon and orange trees. 

The citrus are a cash crop: fruits grown for the purpose of

selling at a market.

But to sell their produce at a market,

they have to transport it down the mountain to Antaniditra.

The same difficult journey that Lalie and her team had just done.

Remoteness was the thing that first fascinated us about this village.

And it was a central part of their story. 

But it was a story that stretched far beyond this place. 

Madagascar has some of the least developed road networks in the world

with just 5 kilometers of road per 100 square kilometers of land. 

The majority of Madagascar’s population lives in rural areas a lot like this one.

But only a tiny fraction of that rural population lives within 2 kilometers of a road that’s

usable all year long. 

Which means that almost 16 million people live essentially unconnected. 

Having better, more connected roads

means an easier time accessing schools, hospitals, and markets.

An easier time building a better life. 

Hey, hi Christopher, how are you doing? 

We’ve been to the crater finally.

They live in a very, very, very, remote area.

Because, this is like the center of the crater. 

And the way they live in the middle of the crater and they can sustain themselves …

it’s amazing. 

But to access there …

it’s not an easy life. 

When I was going through all the footage Lalie's team sent us after they made it home, 

I couldn’t stop looking at this perfect match to the first image we saw of the village. 

And it struck me…

Apart from a few photos …

taken with cameras hundreds of kilometers up in the sky ...  

… there’s basically no record of Anosibe Ambohiby anywhere on the internet. 

Until right now. 

With the internet, we can look at just about any part of the planet. 

Some of the places we find might be made up.

Or might be surrounded by conspiracy theories instead of facts. 

And some we can’t learn much about at all

without showing up, asking questions

and letting the people there

tell their story.