Twenty-one questions, answered properly
The Seychelles travel guide
Everything an Indian traveller wants settled before they book: what it costs, when to come, how the islands connect, and whether there will be anything to eat.
What this guide is, and what it refuses to do.
There is a great deal written about Seychelles and almost none of it is written for you. The English-language guides assume a European reader flying five hours from Paris. The listicles assume you want a beach ranked out of ten. Neither of them answers the three questions every Indian family actually starts with, which are what it costs in rupees, whether the food problem is solvable, and whether the sea will be swimmable in the fortnight the school gives you.
So that is what this is. Twenty-one articles, each one written because somebody asked, each one carrying the same rule about the wind and the coast, and none of them padded to reach a length. Where we sell something the page says so plainly and then gets out of the way. Where we do not know, the page says the part we do know and stops.
The two questions everybody starts with
Seychelles or Maldives
Two island countries in the same ocean that are almost nothing alike. One is granite, forest and public roads. The other is coral, water and one…
How many days do you need?
The honest version, with the ferry timings and the island-hopping arithmetic that decides it, rather than a number chosen to fit a package.
What it costs, in rupees
Seychelles has a reputation for being out of reach. Some of it is deserved and some of it is a resort brochure. Here is the arithmetic, line by line.
Photographs, under Creative Commons: dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 A.Savin, FAL A.Savin, FAL
When to come, from India
The weather, month by month
Seychelles sits four degrees south of the equator, so the temperature barely moves all year. What moves is the wind, and it decides which beach you…
The Diwali window
October is one of the two months when the wind changes its mind and both coasts go quiet at once. It also happens to be when half of India can travel.
May, June and the summer holidays
The long Indian school break lands exactly as the wind turns. That is not a problem as long as you know which side of the island to be on.
Photographs, under Creative Commons: dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 NorbertNagel, CC BY-SA 4.0 A.Savin, FAL
The trip itself
Seven days, and ten
Both of these move you twice and no more, because a third move on a short trip is a day spent on jetties.
Getting around
Seychelles is small and awkward in equal measure. Nothing is far away and almost nothing is direct.
First time here
None of these is a secret. They are simply the things that no brochure has any reason to mention and every returning visitor already knows.
A honeymoon, planned from India
The islands people picture when they say honeymoon, with the practical shape of the trip underneath: where to sleep, how to move, and what it comes…
Seychelles with children
A country that suits children better than its honeymoon reputation suggests, as long as you pick the right coast for the month you are travelling in.
Snorkelling and diving
The reefs here are not the postcard coral gardens of the atolls. They are granite boulders under water, and the fish life around them is the reason…
Photographs, under Creative Commons: A.Savin, FAL Mozzihh, CC BY-SA 4.0 Didi0032, CC BY-SA 3.0 Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0
Eating, which for many families decides it
Vegetarian and Jain food
Creole cooking is built on fish, and that is the whole difficulty. Everything else about this is solvable and most of it is solvable before you fly.
Creole food
Four kitchens shared one small island for two hundred years. The result reads like a French menu, tastes closer to home than most Indian visitors…
Victoria in a day
You can walk the whole of the capital in an hour. Whether that hour is worth anything depends entirely on when you do it.
Photographs, under Creative Commons: So Seychelles, CC BY 2.0 patano, CC BY-SA 3.0 A.Savin, FAL
Before you fly
Entry on an Indian passport
Seychelles does not issue tourist visas to anybody. What it issues is permission at the border, and that permission has requirements you can fail.
The Dubai stopover
Most Indian routings to Seychelles pass through the Gulf. Whether that is a bonus or a cost depends almost entirely on how many hours you are given.
What to pack
Almost everything is imported here, which makes forgetting something expensive rather than impossible. This is the list that actually matters.
Money, cards and cash
Two currencies are in play and the rules about which one you may pay in are not the ones you would guess.
Staying connected
Coverage is better than the geography suggests and worse in exactly the places you would want to post from.
Safety and health
This is a safe country by almost every measure a traveller uses. The exception is the water, and the exception is serious.
Photographs, under Creative Commons: Remi Jouan, CC BY-SA 3.0 Simisa, CC BY-SA 3.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 mwanasimba from La Réunion, CC BY-SA 2.0 Radosław Botev, CC BY-SA 4.0 dronepicr, CC BY 2.0
What people ask.
Is this guide selling something?
Yes, and it says so on every page. We arrange car hire, tours, transfers, taxis and weddings in Seychelles. We do not sell hotels, flights or meals, and the guide does not pretend otherwise. Where an article touches something we arrange there is one aside in the reading column that says so, and nothing else on the page changes.
Who writes these?
Meera Jha, which is the editorial byline of this site, and the pen name of the editor who writes the guides. The about page explains who we are and how we earn.
How current is it?
Every article carries the date it was written at the top. Where a figure comes from somebody else's published price, the page says whose and when it was checked. We do not restamp a page with today's date to make it look fresh.
Which article should I read first?
If you have not decided on the country, start with Seychelles or Maldives. If you have, start with how many days you need, then the best time to visit. Those three settle most of a trip between them.
Do you cover the outer islands?
Yes, but not here. The twenty-one outer islands each have their own page under the islands, because Aldabra and Alphonse are a different kind of trip from Mahé and Praslin and deserve to be told apart.
Tell us what you are trying to work out
A date, a number of people and the thing you are stuck on. Meera reads it and writes back with the part of the answer this guide does not cover.