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Ambanja → Vohemar (Iharana) transfer

Ambanja to Vohemar is 255 km on two roads with two very different histories, and the second of them is the reason this journey is now worth making at all.

Two roads

The first hundred kilometres run north on the RN6 to Ambilobe. This section is inside the Colas rehabilitation funded by the European Union and the European Investment Bank, reported 96 per cent complete in January 2026 — but it is the weaker half today, which is the opposite of what older advice says, because it carries two river crossings whose bridges have not been rebuilt.

The remaining 152 km run east on the RN5a from Ambilobe to Vohemar. This was the piste de l'enfer. It was rebuilt and tarred by China Road and Bridge Corporation with five new bridges and ten renovated ones, and inaugurated on 9 September 2022. L'Express timed private cars over it that day at three to four hours.

Plan four and a half to five and a half hours in total, and understand that the honest answer depends less on the tarmac than on one river.

Ifasy, which decides the day

About 31 km before Ambilobe the road crosses the Ifasy river at PK 537. The bridge has been gone since Cyclone Gamane in March 2024. Traffic crosses on a ford, or by bac when the water is high — a second ferry was added there in early 2026 precisely because one was not enough.

In the dry season this is a brief water crossing and nothing more. In the rains it is the whole journey. This is exactly the kind of thing a driver checks before setting out, and exactly the kind of thing a traveller in a hire car discovers on the bank.

Why people make this journey

Almost everyone starting in Ambanja has just come off the boat from Nosy Be at Ankify, 22 km away. Ambanja is the first real town on the mainland — the cocoa capital, sitting in the Sambirano valley, with a hospital, a court and two markets.

Vohemar is the northern anchor of the vanilla coast and the base of this service. From here the RN5a continues south to Sambava and Antalaha, and Daraina — the only place on earth with golden-crowned sifakas — is an hour inland.

For a traveller who has finished with Nosy Be and wants the vanilla coast without flying, this is the road. Four years ago that sentence would not have been true.

Timing

Darkness comes between about 17:30 and 18:30. With four and a half to five and a half hours of driving and a river crossing that can add an unknown amount, a 07:00 departure from Ambanja is sensible and 11:00 is the realistic last one.

If your journey started that morning with the ferry from Nosy Be, remember that the last vehicle bac from the island leaves at 14:00 — and landing at Ankify in the afternoon means this drive belongs to the next day.

Price per person

* Travelling alone? The whole car is yours — a private trip costs the same in total. Bring a travel companion and the price per person halves.

Zebu on the road are part of driving here. Herds cross the national roads and rest on the warm tarmac, and after dark they are genuinely hard to see even on full beam — which is one reason we do not drive between towns at night. A zebu is worth around 400,000 to 500,000 Ariary, more than a month's wages for most people in this region, so an animal on the road is somebody's livelihood rather than an obstacle. Knowing which stretches carry herds, and at what hour, is exactly the kind of thing a driver who runs these roads every month knows and a rented car does not come with.

Chameleons cross these roads, slowly and without looking, and your driver will stop for them. In much of northern Madagascar it is fady — taboo — to kill or even touch one, and that belief is the reason the big Oustalet's chameleon is still common here when it has thinned out elsewhere. In many villages they are held to carry the spirits of the ancestors, so harming one, even accidentally at the wheel, is not a small thing. One piece of advice a visitor would never guess: in traditional belief even pointing at a chameleon is a bad omen, and the misfortune is held to fall on the person and their family rather than on the animal. Admire it, keep your hand down, and let your driver decide what happens next. Fady varies from region to region and sometimes from village to village, which is another reason to travel with somebody who knows which one he is in.

Prices are per person. Full car = cheapest per seat. Children under 3 travel free on a lap. The price covers the booked travellers only — every traveller in the car pays.

Read first: driving in northern Madagascar — night, zebu, fuel and the rains →

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