After spending a night and little bit of sightseeing in the morning, it was time to leave Tana. First step to leave Tana was to take taxi to taxi-brousse station (or gare routiere) where we had to take the (in) famous taxi brousse.
Taxi brousse station (especially in Tana) for the unprepared and newcomers can be quite a hectic experience. They are many touts that are just taking your bags and wanting to sell you over price ticket. My suggestion is to ignore them and just talk with the driver or ticket seller that usually sit in the front of the van. The price for one ticket from Tana to Antsirabe is 10 000 AR (in 2016). Don’t listen to different touts that want to sell you ticket for 20 000 AR or even more.

 Taxi brousse experience

Taxi brousse ride is an unforgettable experience. If you don’t want to stress too much, it is necessary to relax and, how Malagasy would say, take it moura moura (slowly, slowly). If you are lucky there would be three person in a row, but usually there are four or more, so you would have to squeeze. Fortunately, Malagasy are, more or less, quite tiny.The ride from Antananarivo to Antsirabe, once you finally leave Tana, is quite interesting, there are rice fields and villages on the way. Antsirabe is 3-4 hours from Tana on a quite good sealed road (famous RN7).
On a half way to Antsirabe there is a brake (or la recreation), with a possibility to buy some snacks and sweets from the street vendors. It is also good opportunity to stretch your legs.
Once you come to Antsirabe you have to hustle again, but this time with pousse pousse riders. Of course, they would try to overcharge you, but the fair price is 2500 AR per pousse pousse to the city center. If you have a baggage, it is fair to be one person/pousse pousse.

 Pousse pousse in Antsirabe

In my opinion, Antsirabe is one of the most pleasant towns in Madagascar; it is flat with large avenues, nice houses, good restaurants, pretty train station and famous Hotel des Thermes. Because of the food industry (Famous THB beer is produced there and dairy industry is strong) it is also one of the richest.

It lies 1500 m above the sea level and t was founded in 1872 by Norwegian missionaries that were attracted by cooler climate and the healing properties of the thermal springs.
A broad avenue links Hotel de Thermes with a Train Station (now mostly dysfunctional). At the station end, there is a monolith that represents Madagascar’s 18 main ethnic groups.
We  stayed at Chez Billy, a pleasant nice motel/guest house in the town center. In addition there is a restaurant and a bar at the premise so there is no need to wonder around a town in the dark. Chez Billy is also famous because you can meet  guides and arrange day trips around Antsirabe and a popular weeklong Tsibirinha/Tsingy  trip.
How I made our arrangement earlier, our guide Emile was waiting for us already at the bus station :). We were ready for the adventure!

If you want to do the same trip I recommend Emile as a guide, he is reliable and a great guide with the large knowledge

You can contact him at this e-mail address: Emileexpedission <emileexpedission@yahoo.fr>