Fianarantsoa sits in the middle of Madagascar's southern highlands, and the name is usually translated as the place where one learns what is good. It is the capital of the Betsileo people, a population of rice farmers whose terraced hillsides you will have been riding through for the last hundred kilometres, and the old upper town, perched on a ridge above the modern one, still has the stone houses and church spires that the nineteenth century left behind. About 167,000 people live here, which makes it one of the larger cities on the RN7, and it is the proper stop for fuel, cash and a real meal before the road runs south toward the drier country.
The riding is the reason most people come. The RN7 from Antsirabe has been climbing and dropping through villages built of red brick and clay, with rice paddies stepping down every slope, and from Fianarantsoa it continues through hills toward Ambalavao and then the open plateau. The tarmac is narrow, patched and shared with pousse-pousse, bush taxis, zebu carts and lorries that do not hurry. Ride slowly. Potholes appear around blind bends, and children and chickens treat the verge as a living room. Daylight is short in the tropics, so aim to be parked before dusk, because nobody enjoys this road in the dark.
The town is also the starting point for the little train that runs east to Manakara, the old French line that goes down through the forest to the coast, a trip that people often tell you is more journey than railway. Tea and coffee grow on the hills nearby, and the area has a long history of wine production, thin and sweet, from vineyards that missionaries started. Whether you want to drink it is a personal matter.
Keep the bike somewhere secure at night, the guesthouses in the upper town can usually arrange that, and treat the highlands cold seriously from May to August. At more than a thousand metres the nights get properly cold, and the mornings can be foggy until the sun reaches the valley floors.