August 1, 2004
"Taxis-brousse experience"
by Rahajanirina Léon Pierrot

The term taxi-brousse (bush taxi) is a generic word used by travelers to describe any form of public transport in Madagascar. There are regional and national transportation lines. It covers a variety of vehicles such as 404 baché (a Peugeot open-air wagon with a canvas-covered canopy frame arching over the cargo area), Peugeot 504, large Renault SG 4, large Mercedes and minibuses (Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Hyundai).

Those vehicles generally link every town and city in the country that are accessible by car according to the road conditions.

Taxi-brousse is the most popular and least expensive form of road transport in Madagascar. These taxis-brousse are always slow and unreliable but often great fun. However, if you are on a tight schedule avoid using taxis-brousse as a means of transportation, otherwise you may spend most of your time waiting at the side of the road. We usually take taxi-brousse to go back and forth to Tana and Mahajanga from our field site (Ankarafantsika).

It has been working pretty well because we have Radezy a taxi-brousse captain who lives in Andranofasika or the Malagasy members of the team to help arranging the trips. Don’t you think that is a great fun?