The island you land on
Mahé
The airport, the capital, the mountains and over sixty beaches, on an island you can drive around in an afternoon.
Mahé in short.
Every trip from India starts here, because every flight lands here. Mahé is twenty-eight kilometres long, holds around eighty per cent of the country's people, and still manages to have beaches with nobody on them, because the mountain in the middle keeps the west and the east apart and the roads over it are slow. You can be in a working capital city and on empty sand within the hour.
Mahé, in six frames.
Harvested from this island's own Commons categories and its named beaches, and checked one frame at a time.
Photographs, under Creative Commons: dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 A.Savin, FAL A.Savin, FAL NorbertNagel, CC BY-SA 4.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0
A working island, not a resort
Victoria is a real capital: a market, a clock tower, government offices, banks, traffic at five o'clock. That surprises people who arrive expecting a private island, and it is the reason Mahé is the easiest island to hold a normal holiday on. There is a hospital. There are pharmacies. There are shops that sell something other than sarongs.
It also means Mahé has the widest food of any island here, which for a family keeping vegetarian or Jain is not a small thing. Victoria has Indian restaurants and Indian groceries because there has been an Indian community on this island for a hundred and fifty years.
The mountain decides everything
Morne Seychellois rises to 905 metres in the middle of the island and the national park around it covers a fifth of Mahé. That is why the drive from the airport to Beau Vallon takes forty minutes for fourteen kilometres, and why the west coast feels like a different island from the east.
It is also why Mahé holds its weather unevenly. The east can be grey while Port Launay is in full sun, and the twenty minutes it takes to cross is usually a better answer than waiting.
Two coasts, two seasons
From December to March the north-west monsoon blows and the calm water is on the south and east coasts. From May to September the south-east trades blow and the calm water is on the north and west. April and October are the slack windows when every coast behaves.
Nobody tells you this at the hotel, and it is the single most useful sentence in this guide. A beach that is unswimmable in August is glass in January, and it is the same beach.
What to see on Mahé
Twelve things worth a morning each, in the order a sensible week takes them.
Victoria
The smallest capital in Africa: the market, the clock tower and the botanical gardens, in a morning.
Beau Vallon
The long north-west beach, and the one place with an evening.
Anse Intendance
Open surf and no hotel on it. The south west at its emptiest.
Anse Takamaka
Palms leaning over white sand on the south west coast.
Anse Royale
The east coast's swimming beach, sheltered when the west is not.
Port Launay
Marine park water in the north west, calm most of the year.
Morne Seychellois
The national park over the middle of the island, and its trails.
The Sainte Anne park
Eight islands and a marine park, ten minutes off Victoria.
The wild south
Baie Lazare, Anse Soleil and the road that runs out of tarmac.
Anse Major
A walk-in beach on the north west with no road to it.
The rock pools
Freshwater pools in the granite above Port Glaud.
Eating in Victoria
Creole, Indian and Chinese, in a capital that actually cooks.
How you arrive
Every international flight into Seychelles lands at Seychelles International Airport at Pointe Larue, on the east coast, ten kilometres from Victoria. The Air Seychelles nonstop from Mumbai takes about four and a half hours.
From the airport, a private transfer or a taxi is twenty to forty minutes depending on which coast you are staying on. Hire cars are handed over at the airport, at the Cat Cocos jetty in Victoria or at your hotel.
The fast ferry to Praslin leaves from the Cat Cocos jetty in Victoria and takes about an hour. Domestic flights to Praslin take fifteen minutes.
The sheet.
- Area
- 157 km², the largest island
- Morne Seychellois
- 905 m, the country's highest point
- Beaches
- over sixty
- Airport
- Seychelles International, at Pointe Larue
What people ask.
How many days do we need on Mahé?
Should we hire a car on Mahé?
Is Victoria worth a day?
Where should we stay on Mahé?
Is Mahé safe to walk around at night?
Can we swim everywhere on Mahé?
Building a trip around Mahé?
Send the dates, the number of people and what you want out of it. Meera answers with a plan and a price, not a brochure.