Dhanya Damodaran

Jun 1, 20224 min read

Seductive Seychelles

Updated: Jun 2, 2022

Visited In April 2022

Bienvenue aux Seychelles!!

Seychelles was my last trip as a resident of the charming city of Dubai! Well, this might sound a bit dramatic, but for someone who has spent almost 15 years enjoying the life in Dubai, will definitely find it a bit saddening to leave this place. I am sure a lot of you who have experienced this city will agree with me :) So, to give it a beautiful ending, I decided to travel to Seychelles.

This trip was totally unplanned! Due to certain reasons, my hubby was unable to join and my son and I decided to do this just the two of us. That's when my dear friend Dhanya and her daughter Nidhi were happy to join us and then off we flew together to Seychelles.

Post pandemic, with eased restrictions at borders, the only pre-requisite was covid vaccination certificate and a travel form which took close to 2 hours for approval after online submission. It was just a 2 days trip and there was no itinerary apart from enjoying as much as we could :)

Airport in Mahe island

We hired a taxi from the airport and drove to our hotel in Takamaka, located in the southern side of Mahe. While the room was getting ready for check in, we enjoyed the waves of the Indian Ocean and later plunged into the pool overlooking the ocean. We were dead tired by then. As soon as the room was ready, took a shower and had a nice nap.

Endless stretch of sand, clear turquoise water, mesmerising tropical greenery, hills, tea estates, view points, water sports...Seychelles provides endless list of activities to do and makes us feel totally spellbound.

We explored the beautiful island

Coco de mer is a nut found in Seychelles and has kind of turned to be so iconic that we keep seeing several souvenirs depicting it. Its the symbol of the island nation. Apart from its extensive use and being the largest seed, the interesting fact about it is the unique shape. There are male and female plants and surprisingly, the male resembles the human penis and female the butt of a woman :)

In the evening, we visited Victoria, the capital town of the island and its lively neighbourhoods.

Feel the tropical sun, white sand and rhythmic waves!!!

Seychelles is expensive. Afterall, it is a favourite destination for all and the island is heavily dependent on tourism. While the regular restaurants are expensive, you can find many food joints where we can take away food in very reasonable rates. We took a parcel of idly sambhar from OM foods and it was very tasty. It made our next day's breakfast too.

Our day 2 was dedicated for exploring the Marine National Park. We started our cruise in a glass bottom boat, followed by snorkeling, hop and walk around an island with giant tortoise, hike to the hill tops with breathtaking views of the ocean, barbecue lunch at island beach side with music and dance... a day well spent!!

The crew on the boat were exceptionally friendly and they made the entire day lively and enjoyable for us.

I particularly enjoyed snorkeling in the warm water on a partially cloudy day. The untouched beauty beneath the water in the form of coral reefs, with a huge variety of school of fish swimming all around...there were thousands of them in colours ad designs par excellence. The nature and it residents are such a priceless gift from the Almighty which we are lucky to enjoy. All of us should be responsible enough to make sure we do no harm to these invaluable possessions of this planet and take enough steps to maintain them for generations to come.

After snorkeling, we had our expedition on to the island where there were several giant tortoise roaming around freely. They are so giant and equally cute. The island also has a hatchery and nursery to take care of the young ones until they are ready to live on their own. Its really interesting to see the giant creature slowly crawl its way around the island, eat leaves and pose for photos for us :)

We hiked the island to a few really amazing view points. The grand ocean and its awesomeness was unparallel.

After hiking up and then down to the beach side, we had a sumptuous barbecue lunch with guitar strumming and music played... The locally produced Seybrew beer added to the energy levels post lunch :) It was cloudy earlier in the day and a light drizzle made the evening even more charming. We all jumped from the boat and enjoyed the rain while sitting on the sand banks.

We sailed back in the evening and back at the beach in the resort, there was awesome golden sunset rays adorning the beach in shades of orange giving a magical effect.

We drove to the airport, had dinner there to catch our early morning flight back to Dubai. By the way, we did enjoy the trip very well. It was first time for both my friend and me to travel without our hubbies with us. Well, should we make it a habbit?? Lets think about it :D