60 pieces · NaturePhoto by Paolo Crosetto (Lonesome:Cycler), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The Avenue of the Baobabs near Morondava, Madagascar, at sunrise — towering Grandidier's baobabs standing in silhouette along the dirt road to Belon'i Tsiribihina, their crowns dark against a sky shading from deep blue to gold around the rising sun.
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Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar
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Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar
The Avenue of the Baobabs lines a short, unpaved stretch of Road No. 8 between the coastal town of Morondava and Belon'i Tsiribihina, in the Menabe region of western Madagascar. Along roughly 260 metres of that road stand twenty to twenty-five Grandidier's baobabs (Adansonia grandidieri), each one rising about 30 metres into the sky on a smooth, swollen grey trunk topped with a flat crown of branches. In this photograph the sun has not yet cleared the horizon, so the trees read as pure black silhouettes against a sky that shifts from deep blue overhead down to gold where the light is about to break — the moment photographers travel here for.
These trees are a remnant of forest that once covered this part of Madagascar. The baobabs did not originally stand alone; they grew within dense tropical woodland that was cleared, tree by tree, as the surrounding population grew and turned the land over to farming. The baobabs themselves were left standing, both because local communities valued them — for food, for building material, and as renala, 'mother of the forest' in Malagasy — and because their dense, fire-resistant wood makes them far harder to fell than the forest that once surrounded them. The result is the avenue as it looks today: a line of isolated giants rising out of open scrub and rice paddy, each one older than any living person. In July 2007 Madagascar's Ministry of Environment, Water and Forestry granted the site temporary protected status, a first step toward making it the country's first natural monument built around a plant species.
As a jigsaw, the photograph is built from two very different zones. The trees themselves are solid black shapes with no internal detail, so pieces from the trunks and crowns are identified entirely by silhouette outline — the gnarled branch pattern at the top of each canopy is the most distinctive shape to match first. The sky is the opposite problem: a smooth, slow gradient from blue to gold with almost no texture to anchor a piece to its neighbours, so the fastest way through that section is to work outward from the tree silhouettes you've already placed, using their edges as fixed reference points, and from the brightest band near the horizon inward.
How to play
- Tap Play Avenue of the Baobabs at Sunrise puzzle to open the puzzle board, then choose your piece count and difficulty.
- Drag pieces from the tray onto the board and snap them into place until the full image is complete. Works with mouse on desktop and touch on mobile.
- Use the Preview button on the play screen to peek at the full reference image whenever you need a hint.
- When you finish, check your solve time on the completion screen and share it with friends to see who can beat your record.
Frequently asked questions
- Where exactly is the Avenue of the Baobabs?
- It runs along an unpaved stretch of Road No. 8 between the port town of Morondava and the village of Belon'i Tsiribihina, in the Menabe region of western Madagascar. The main grove covers about 260 metres of roadside, with roughly 20 to 25 mature Grandidier's baobabs standing along it, and another 25 or so scattered across nearby rice paddies and meadows.
- How old are the baobabs in the avenue, and how tall do they grow?
- The Grandidier's baobabs (Adansonia grandidieri) here reach about 30 metres in height on thick, smoothly tapering trunks. The species is endemic to Madagascar — it grows nowhere else on Earth — and individual trees are widely reported to be centuries old, survivors of forest clearing that removed everything around them while leaving the baobabs standing.
- Why were these particular trees left standing when the forest around them was cleared?
- As Madagascar's population grew, the dense tropical forest that once covered this area was cut down for farmland, but the baobabs themselves were spared. Locally they are called renala, or reniala — from Malagasy words meaning 'mother of the forest' — and communities valued them for food, fibre, and building material. Their wood is also notably dense and fire-resistant compared with the surrounding forest species, making the mature trees far harder to clear even where they weren't deliberately protected.
- Is the Avenue of the Baobabs a protected site?
- Yes. Madagascar's Ministry of Environment, Water and Forestry granted the avenue temporary protected status in July 2007, intended as a step toward making it the country's first natural monument centred on a plant species, and the area has held conservation status since July 2015. It remains one of the most visited sites in the region, and a Malagasy conservation group, Fanamby, has run an ecotourism project there since 2014 aimed at both protecting the trees and supporting the local community.