1. For most visitors it’s a trip of a lifetime, a dip into an earthly
paradise. But for Tim Ecott, a first Seychelles experience
spawned 47 others and a total immersion in a world that is
more complex, and less sandy, than you might imagine
Seychellesunplugged
PLACES
127
SAMANTHAOWEN

2. PLACES
Sunday best
Women and children throng
to mass, and smart dresses
and hats are de rigueur
>In the shallow waters of Baie Ternay off the
island of Mahé I came face to face with my first turtle,
ancient eyes in a wizened face that made me feel like
crying. It was the week my mother died, but under-
water my mind was newly occupied by wonderful
things. I peered into orange sponges where dark red
brittle stars hid. I saw 30 eagle rays flying into the
safety of the blue. There was the sense of something
new on every dive, a trepidation about what might
appear from the darker water away from the reef, and
a compulsion to go there. I became addicted to being
underwater,obsessiveaboutlearningthenamesofthe
fishIsaw.AndIfelldeeplyinlovewiththeSeychelles.
It was not my first visit to the islands. I had
passed through in 1988, en route to reporting for the
bbc on the turbulent politics of Madagascar and the
Comoro Islands. As the aircraft doors opened, the
sweet dampness of the tropical air stirred memories
of my childhood in Malaysia. The twin forces of rec-
ollection and discovery created an emotional link, a
passionthatwasasinvasiveandtenaciousasatropical
vine clinging to the trunk of a sandragon tree.
I became intrigued by this line of reefs, islets and
atolls stretching across the western Indian Ocean.
Even the names were poetic: rocky Frégate and
Félicité to the east and north
of Mahé, southwards the
Amirantes–corallinespecks
like Desnœufs where the
harvest of birds’ eggs was
awaited as a delicacy on
Mahé tables. And far away,
below the African Banks,
sailors talked of Providence,
Farquhar and mysterious,
uninhabited Aldabra.
I determined to visit as
many of the 115 islands as
possible. I wanted to discov-
er what each was like, and
what it was about the country that kept drawing me
back. Over 24 years, through a combination of deter-
mination and serendipity, I have returned twice that
many times. For a while I lived there. Seychelles holds
the most vivid memories of my life.
Mahé is the largest island, not quite 20 miles long
and five at its widest point. Along with nearby Pras-
lin and La Digue, it’s home to over 90% of the popu-
lation – though Victoria, with its single set of traffic
lights, has something of a Toytown feel. The capital
sits in the shadow of the Trois Frères, granite peaks
covered with dense forest, a sharp-edged, prickly
placethickwithhumusunderfoot.Giantmillipedesas
fat as Cumberland sausages crawl through the leaf lit-
ter. The air is heavy with the scent of rich decay, and
pitcherplantswaitforinsectstocrawlintotheirsticky
maw. Cinnamon trees and vanilla vines escaped from
ancient plantations survive, away from human inter-
ference. Mahé’s luxuriant interior remains a secret,
accessible only to the adventurous few who brave
the 90% humidity and the sloping, slippery terrain. I
was once lost up there, with a local pilot who claimed
he could navigate among the trees by compass.
After nine hours we found our way back, scratched to
pieces, dehydrated and munched by mosquitoes.
As years passed my tally of islands grew, and each
one taught me a little more about the country – and
about myself. Inextricably linked to my emotional
life, the visits gave me adventures and exotic memo-
ries. I considered spare money not spent on a ticket to
Seychelles wasted. I returned to dive and, for about
a year, combined an obsession with the liquid world
with a love affair with a diving instructor. It was a
relationship built upon getting close to fish. Under-
water, I believed we were united in spirit, and I barely
noticed our total failure to communicate above water.
Each island had its own character, its own story:
Aride with its rocky shores, where elegant red-tailed
tropic birds and scythe-winged frigate birds breed;
the crumbling mausoleum of a planter family on Sil-
houette; half a million mobster sooty terns on Bird.
Four hundred and fifty miles south of Mahé, on
Farquhar, home to a few workers harvesting copra,
bleached turtle bones were laid out like a jigsaw in the
sand. At sunset on Frégate, flying foxes glided above
the forest canopy in search of ripening mangoes. On
Curieuse (once a leper colony), I heard the grunting
lovelamentofmalegianttortoisesastheyhauledtheir
heavy-toed limbs aloft to mount the fortress of their
mates.Iatefreshwahoominutesafteritthuddedonto
the bouncing deck of a wooden schooner in a rolling
sea.Igorgedoncrispsmadefrombreadfruitandeven,
ashamedly, tasted fruit-bat curry.
If diving was crucial to falling in love with the
islands, what was born in the water soon moved onto
land. It became apparent that this was not some pass-
ing romance: while I still notice their beauty, Sey-
chelles’ lingering charm is something deeper, more
complex and, ultimately, more earthy. “You will only
understand this country”, a Seychellois friend told
me, “when you have made love to a Creole girl in an
old house with a tin roof when the monsoon rains are
drowning out the sound of everything else.”
Seychelles is sexy. Sexual conquests here are a
badge of honour and sign of strength – certainly for
men. Once, after interviewing a local bishop about
the church’s stance on something political, I lingered
for an informal chat. Seychelles is nominally Roman
Catholic, but it’s the women and children who make
up the majority of the Sunday-morning congregation.
Immaculate dresses, smart shoes and a hat are still the
church uniform. “Women have much more of an obla-
toryspirit,”thebishopexplained.Hesighedandfixed
me with an enquiring gaze. “Tell me, my son,” he said
casually, “how long have you been living here?”
“Almost a year,” I replied, “with my wife and
baby daughter.”
“And do you have a local mistress yet? It’s only a
matter of time you know. I advise you to leave before
the year is out, for the sake of your soul and to avoid
eternal damnation.”
I have resisted the urge to take a Seychelloise mis-
tress, so far, though it hasn’t stopped colleagues, even
friends, believing I have one. These islands intox-
icate. The first European to fall under their spell was
Lazare Picault, who claimed the previously unin-
habited specks of land for France in 1742. There was
a half-hearted attempt to set up a plantation culture,
and various African, Malagasy, Indian, Chinese and
European traders, planters, freed slaves, sailors and
colonial administrators made their ways to settle the
128
CORBIS,ANZENBERGER
islands; you can see their mixed influence on the face
of every Seychellois today. After the Napoleonic
wars,SeychellesbecameBritish,butthecolonialmas-
ters were distracted by their possessions in east Afri-
ca and India and, while it was strategically convenient
to own Seychelles, they were run as part of Mauritius
until the early 20th century. A small, largely French
landowningclassdominatedthecultureoftheislands;
the native Creole sounds French, perhaps the reason
people still seem to think the islands were a colony of
France until independence in1976.
That’s when things became really interesting.
Seemingly removed from mainstream politics, but
scattered across almost half a million square kilome-
tres of crucial shipping routes, Seychelles became
alluringtothesuperpowersduringthecoldwar.Soviet
and Western nuclear submarines played hide and seek
inSeychelloiswater,whilethegovernmentcapitalised
onitsnon-alignedstatus,stayingpartoftheCommon-
wealth and renting out a mountaintop to the United
States for a satellite-tracking station with one hand,
whilepocketingEastern-blocaidwiththeother.
Seychelles only enjoyed one full year of democrat-
ic statehood, under the leadership of “Jimmy” Man-
cham, a London-educated, self-styled playboy from
a wealthy trading family. His plan was to make Sey-
chelles an Indian Ocean tax haven for the jet set. Peo-
ple like Peter Sellers and George Harrison had been
seduced into buying land in the 1960s and the early
1970s, and Mancham wanted more like them. But it
didn’t match the ideals of his prime minister, France-
Albert René, who stormed the police station armed
with a pistol and told the radio station to announce a
curfew.HehadsomeEastern-blocsponsorship,train-
“You will only
understand this
country when
you have made
love to a Creole
girl in an old
house with a tin
roof when the
monsoon rains
are drowning
out the sound of
everything else”>
Tropical punch
The Seychellois people are a
cocktail of different races

3. >
130
ing and weapons. Like Mancham, René was a lawyer,
but from a poor family and with a grudge against the
old “grand blanc” landowners. He confiscated the
properties of foreigners and set about turning Man-
cham’s pleasure dome into a socialist, one-party state.
It’s not just the sharks, the giant millipedes, eagle
rays and gentle chittering fruit bats. I have formed a
deep attachment to the Seychellois. I respect their
ability to carve nationhood from a population – and a
landmass–notmuchbiggerthantheIsleofMan.Col-
leagues who reported from the hotspots of mainland
Africa were sometimes dismissive of my determina-
tion tofolloweachtwistandturnintheislands’politi-
caldevelopment.Theyaccusedmeof“reportingfrom
the beach”. I couldn’t see the problem.
“Sir James”, as Jimmy Mancham had become, was
already in exile in Putney, south-west London, when
I first met him. I had just returned from interviewing
his nemesis, President René. Although I had moved
freely around Mahé, people warned me that I was
being followed, and that I should be careful. They
spoke of people disappearing in the dead of night, and
one prominent opposition activist in London had re-
centlybeenmachine-gunnedtodeathonhisdoorstep.
Mancham offered me whisky, which we sipped
as he talked about the events of the coup. It happened
during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Commonwealth
conference. He was asleep when the phone rang at
3am. It was Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi billionaire,
who broke the news. “I wasn’t alone,” Mancham
recounted with great seriousness. “There was a beau-
tiful blonde sleeping peacefully in the bed beside me.”
Unable to return, he stayed in exile in London,
trying to drum up support from the British govern-
ment and influential friends. When a reporter from
the Evening Standard was sent to interview Man-
cham, he clasped her hand and recited some of his
poetry. She became his second wife. At the end of the
cold war, when Seychelles went back to multi-party
politics, Jimmy returned to challenge René at the
polls. He stepped off the plane to the strains of “Una
Paloma Blanca”, the song he had adopted as his infor-
mal theme tune. His political star had waned, how-
ever, and René won decisively at the polls, leaving
Mancham to a graceful retirement.
Over the years, I met René several times and
found him courteous, quick-witted and pragmatic.
But many Seychellois found life impossible under
his Cuban-style regime. About 15% of the popula-
tion went overseas, many of them coming to Britain,
where a large exile community sprang up in Houns-
low. It was as bitter a contrast to life in Seychelles as
you might imagine. But for many, especially the Cre-
ole majority, René came to symbolise a freer, fairer
Seychelles, and when he finally stepped down from
the presidency in 2004, he was the longest-serving
head of state in the Commonwealth.
After that socialism waned, the economy was lib-
eralised,thecelebritiesreturned.Privateislandswere
available for rent, helicopters and yachts became part
of the scenery. The arrival of the Duke and Duchess
ofCambridgefortheirhoneymoonlastyearsprinkled
a new dash of stardust. As they left, President James
Michel gave them a coco-de-mer. It was an obvious
souvenir for a young couple fresh from a fortnight on
a private island. The coco-de-mer is a giant coconut
which, when de-husked, resembles a plump female
pelvis. Some call it the love nut, although I never hear
the phrase without thinking of the unromantic bar of
that name in Victoria, popular with visiting sailors.
I have my own coco-de-mer, but it is kept out of
sight in a box made from veined calice du pape wood.
Occasionally, my 11-year-old son will lift the lid and
encourage a friend to peer inside. Adults and children
alike often recoil from its erotic form, complete with
tufts of vegetative pubic hair attached to the rotund
seed of Lodoicea maldivica. But when I show the coco-
de-mer to visitors it is not with prurient intent: I want
them to marvel that this is the largest seed in the plant
kingdom and that it comes from a perilously endan-
gered tree found only on two islands in Seychelles. As
my son says: how cool is that?
On the surface, the end of the cold war restored
tranquillity to the Seychelles. Yet scratch a little, and
notmuchhaschanged.Thecurrentpresidentwasone
of the original band of a dozen men who helped René
stage the coup. There are democratic, free elections,
but the ruling party always holds sway.
Seychelles draws modern adventurers, just as it
oncedrewpirateslookingforsomewheretoburytheir
treasure.Topreservethehigheststandardsoflivingin
Africa, it has welcomed property developers, foreign
potentates and an ever-increasing number of tourists.
But some recent foreign visitors have been unwel-
PLACES
Pirates of the Indian Ocean
ABOVE Coastguard marines step
over two Somali pirate motor skiffs,
captured in Seychellois waters
BELOW One of the 100,000 giant
tortoises that rule the roost on the
coral islands of Aldabra
come: the Somali pirates. They have hijacked not only
foreign yachts and cargo ships, but local fishing boats
too. Astonishingly, Seychelles has become the hub of
the fight against modern-day piracy. Jean-Paul Adam,
the world’s youngest foreign minister when he was
appointed in 2009, aged 32, has managed to attract
financialandmilitaryaidfromAmerica,theEuropean
Union, China, Russia, the Emirates and Britain to
build an anti-piracy command centre and a new prison
to accommodate pirates who are caught, tried and im-
prisoned or repatriated. I remember when Jean-Paul
wasaschoolboyontheSeychellesswimmingteam.
It is those kinds of realisation that underline how
well I know the islands. I feel as at home in Seychelles
as I have ever done anywhere. No longer just a series
of tiny dots on the map, it has become a self-contained
universe. From here, it is the wider world that seems
chaotic and impoverished. I have found balance here,
an emotional centre on islands where the forces of
nature are still untamed, and where people are domi-
nated by their landscape and not the other way round.
Last year I finally made it to Aldabra, 700 miles
southofMahé.Itwasaculminationofyearsofhoping
and dreaming that I could one day set foot on the giant
coral necklace. The lagoon in the middle of the coral
islands could hold Manhattan – twice over. A few
scientists are allowed to stay at a small base on short-
term research projects, but no tourists. Here there are
100,000 giant tortoises, about ten times the number
in Galapagos. It’s the last place on earth where giant
reptiles dominate an ecosystem.
Underwater, Aldabra is equally special. Man-
groves around the islands are a breeding ground
for hundreds of species of fish. Swift tides rushing
throughthenarrowchannelsflushnutrientsinandout
ofthelagoon,attractingbirds,fish,turtlesandsharks.
Floatingovertheseawardreefsfeltlikebeingtheonly
diver in the Indian Ocean. As so often when diving, I
thought of my mother, wishing she were alive to hear
about it. On land, surrounded by the vast blue hori-
zon, I felt the contentment of isolation that is the true
giftoftheouterislands.Isawnightjarssleepingonthe
forest floor, and Aldabra rails – the last flightless birds
in the Indian Ocean – pecking at baby giant tortoises
that tucked their heads inside their shells to escape.
At the western edge of the lagoon, hundreds of red-
footed booby birds soared above the mangrove. I fell
asleep to the skitterings of land crabs climbing the
coconut trees and paddled through a pass in the reef
withlemonsharksfollowinglikepuppiesinthetrailof
bubbles left by my feet. It felt not like the ends of the
earth, but a vision of its very beginning. !
Do as the Berliners do. Rory MacLean, travel writer and
historian, separates the schaden from the freude
Whenin...Berlin
GOING NATIVE
ILLUSTRATION NEIL GOWER
DON’T repeat the fallacy that John
F. Kennedy called himself a jam
doughnut. In one of the most moving
speeches of the 20th century, JFK
said, “Ich bin ein Berliner”. Nothing
was wrong with his grammar, and no
Berliner misunderstood him in 1963.
DO carry a beer bottle on the U-Bahn
if you want to be taken for a local.
DO write a novel. In the cafés of
Prenzlauer Berg, you can’t swing a
copy of “Alone in Berlin” without
hitting half-a-dozen wordsmiths.
DON’T go clubbing before 4am,
especially if headed for Berghain,
the world capital of Techno. In this
converted power station, the bass
beat grips the chest and pounds the
body in waves so powerful that – in
the second they stop – you feel like a
dust mote floating up into the yawning
cavern of the building. Ear plugs are
essential, and not considered uncool.
DO brunch at the Café am Neuen
See, a 1970s glass pavilion dropped
into the Tiergarten park, surrounded
by lush trees, flooded with light and
fantastic nosh in the heart of the old
West. Berliners have refined Sunday
brunch into the planet’s most relaxing
meal with croissants and conversation,
eggs, salmon and contentment washed
down with litres of strong coffee.
DON’T hold hands with your partner
unless you are gay. Heterosexuals do
not hold hands in Berlin.
DO indulge your sexual fantasies. The
city abounds in (legal) sex clubs like
the KitKat, “wellness” pay-as-you-go
brothels such as Artemis and escort
services for busy female execs. Tax
receipts are available on request.
DON’T ask a local guide, as one ill-
informed tourist recently did, “Can
you direct me to the Third Reich?” The
guide replied, “Just walk down this
street and turn right at 1933.”
DO go to both East and West; stay in
either the stylish Soho House (East)
or the soothingly cool and reasonably
priced Ellington (West). In many ways
Berlin remains divided along the lines
of the Wall. Mitte is the hip, post-
communist centre, but its cutting
edge has lately dulled. To the west,
green Tiergarten and Charlottenburg
are reclaiming their glamour. Or head
south to Kreuzberg, neighbourhood of
Turks, thinkers and drinkers.
DON’T come in January and February
unless you are a night owl. Weeks can
pass without sight of the sun.
DO visit the Neues Museum. A
bombed-out ruin for almost 60 years,
it has been recreated by the British
architect David Chipperfield and
can now be read like a book, telling
– through its original walls, surviving
textural details, all-but-lost classical
frescoes and soaring new spaces –
the story of man’s ability to create,
destroy and preserve.
DO eavesdrop in second-hand record
shops, especially the wonderful Long
Player in the Graefekiez. CDs and
MP3 are banned in this oasis of vinyl,
with its special passion for hip-hop,
soul, funk and the blues.
DON’T eat currywurst, the ubiquitous
grilled sausage served in lightly spiced
tomato sauce. Save your euros for the
daring, Michelin-starred Restaurant
Tim Raue: DeSietra caviar on avocado
ice cream, pink shrimps with Chinese
rose wine and shiso and tissue-thin
diamond label beef with Madagascar
peppers. Goat’s milk ice lollies,
covered with white chocolate and
fennel, clean the palate. Only the bill
will be more breathtaking.
GETTY,SAMANTHAOWEN