An elevated vantage point sometimes offers an interesting, “different” view of human activity, and the opportunity to record it, candidly.
As the featured activity would suggest, I was looking down to a very “modest” street.
However, my vantage point for all images in this post was the most “desirable” location in Madagascar’s national capital – the royal palace complex, which sits atop the city’s highest hill.
By far the largest Madagascan metropolis, Antananarivo – aka ‘Tana’ – is home to circa 4.5 million people.
Of all island nation’s capital cities, it is the most elevated.
Tana’s average altitude of 1280 metres ASL is not “extreme”, but is sufficiently high to moderate the climate; to date, the city is yet to record a “40 degree day” and most daily maxima are 20-something degrees..
In other respects, however, Tana is a city of extremes: its air quality is generally terrible, traffic congestion is atrocious, infrastructure is very poor (sometimes virtually nonexistent) and corruption is rampant.
Most Western visitors are much surprised to discover that Madagascans, on average, are among “our” planet’s materially poorest citizens. (unsurprisingly, income distribution is starkly uneven)
According to World Bank estimates, Madagascar’s per capita annual GDP amounts to rather less than six hundred USD – a deal less than one quarter of Bangladesh’s.
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