Nosy Iranja

Nosy Iranja lies off the north-west coast of Madagascar, an hour and a half by boat from Nosy Be. It is two islands — a larger inhabited one and a smaller uninhabited one — connected by a sandbar around a kilometre and a half long that emerges at low tide and submerges at high.

The crossing is the whole experience. At low water the bar is a strip of white sand with clear shallow sea on both sides, wide enough to walk comfortably; a few hours later it is under water and the two islands are separate. Boats time visits around it, and the walk out and back is what people come for.

The larger island has a village of a few hundred people, a lighthouse built by Gustave Eiffel's company in 1909, and a working community that receives visitors rather than a resort economy. The smaller island is a hawksbill and green turtle nesting site, and the sand there is protected during the season; guides manage access and the rules are worth following because the nesting here is genuinely significant.

There is very little built. Lunch is usually cooked in the village as part of the trip, and a small number of simple rooms exist. Madagascar's tourism infrastructure is thin generally, and Nosy Be is the exception rather than the rule. Nosy Be itself is the base for all of this, and Nosy Komba between them is the lemur island — the archipelago is visited as a circuit rather than as separate destinations.

Two islands joined by a sandbar you can walk at low tide and not at high, which is the whole visit and is timed by the boat. Turtles nest on the smaller island and the marked ground is not to be walked on. An Eiffel-company lighthouse from 1909 stands above the village.