Crazy Night in Seychelles

With Srivani and Aravind, Beau Vallon Beach.

Seychelles was a point of transit on our way back from Madagascar. Srivani and I teamed up with Aravind in Seychelles and headed to Madagascar and split with him on the way back. Aravind had the long flight to Addis Ababa and then on to Washington Dulles while we headed to Abu Dhabi and then onto Mumbai. This blog post is about the night of the 30th of December 2016 and the first half of 31st. We had a wild time in the island of Mahe, right from saving the life of an injured bird to spending the entire night on the beach, in bus stops, on the road and on a bench at the airport.

View from the airport terminal, Mahe island

We flew to Seychelles from Antananarivo on the afternoon of 30th December via Air Seychelles. The immigration policy of the country dictates that one should have a hotel booking to get stamped on arrival. We had no intentions of staying in a hotel as hotels were so damn expensive. We had a budget of under USD 80 amongst the three of us, everything included. So we showed the immigration officer a hotel booking which has long been cancelled and he let us in. This was the first scary part on the journey as they are known to phone the hotel and quiz them before stamping passports if they feel something suspicious. That would have been really really messy.

INS Jalashwa, a landing ship dock of the Indian Navy

The island nation of Seychelles is synonymous with the word, tropical paradise. The capital, Victoria, is a tiny city with the population of less than 50,000 inhabitants. This place was an erstwhile British colony and so had a sizeable Indian population. The locals call themselves Creole, a term used to denote island populations in other oceans around the world. Victoria is to the northern corner of the island of Mahe, the largest island in the island chain. Mahe is a few kilometers wide and pretty long. We actually walked the entire width of the island at 12AM that night! The island runs buses built by Tata Motors and all bus services close by about 8 PM. If there is one time when Seychelles should be avoided, its on the New Year's Eve. Hotel prices soar and the islands become a hub for partygoers. The airport is a tiny little thing with a couple of souvenir shops and three gates. There is no concept of an aerobridge or buses to ferry passengers. It can handle the boarding/deboarding of only one aircraft at a time. You simply open a door and climb onto your aircraft. A staff member actually laughed when I asked which gate our next flight would come to. She simply replied, when you see an aircraft painted in Etihad colors, just get in.

The sunrise over the Indian Ocean, clicked after picking Srivani up from the homestay

We walked out onto the main road in front of the airport. I noticed an injured bird which was probably hit by a car or something else. It was struggling to hold on to its life. So instead of leaving it to its fate, I took it into the airport and asked around what to do with it. Luckily, I happened to find a policewoman who was an animal lover and she volunteered to help. She got a cardboard box lined with soft clothes and laid the bird to rest in it. She promised to care for the little bird and nurse him back to good health. We continued onwards and walked around the airport, finally stopping by at a bus stop. We wanted to take any bus that comes and go wherever it went. Luckily for us, we found an Indian couple who were there on holiday. When we told them our plans, they offered to let Srivani stay with them for the night as they felt it was pretty unsafe on the roads. So we went with them to drop Srivani off at their homestay and stocked up on some food for the night from a local supermarket just before it closed for the day. We had no way of contacting them the next morning as we had no local SIM. We had to rely on our abilities to memorize directions at night and follow them the next morning. We took the last bus on the streets to reach their place. We understood it's the driver's last trip as he picked up a prostitute on the way. 

Some random beach.

Dropping Srivani off, we headed to a nearby beach with our heavy rucksacks on us. It was fine for a while, but then we realized that it was getting unsafe. It was around 9PM and there were random drunk dudes walking around. Lights were shone at us and there were crabs in every hole in the ground. So we decided to get back onto our feet and walk around. We found a bus stop and sat there for a while. There was a guy practicing drifting in his car just outside. Suddenly a police car stopped in front of us. We were scared like hell. A cop got out and just walked away. He was probably just going home for the night. Aravind suggested that we shift bus stops every hour. Open Street Maps showed that bus stops are spaced about 600m from each other on that road. It was almost 10PM and we had another 7 hours to kill. So we thought of walking to 3 bus stops on one side of the road and then 3 more on the other side for the rest of the night.

Yet another random beach.

Downtown Victoria.

As we began walking, we understood that bus stops are the usual haunts of drunks and prostitutes. Some of them started teasing us. One said 'good evening, boys' and another said 'your laces are untied'. So we skipped a few bus stops to find a safer one. We took the direction which eventually lead to the airport. Then we found benches to sit on the beach. Again there were crabs all around our feet. So we found a slanting tree and climbed it to stay away from the crabs. Staying on the tree for sometime we again began walking towards the airport. After walking for a couple of kilometres, a creepy guy began trailing us in his car. He followed us for about 500 metres before zooming off. Some more prostitutes on the streets greeted us and we greeted them back. Another creep zoomed by in his car, did a loop around us and zoomed off. It was getting seriously creepy by this time and we decided to leg it on to the airport and spend the rest of the night there.

The capital city of Victoria with misty mountains in the background.

There was not a single shop open on the roads for us to seek shelter. Even petrol bunks were closed for the day. We reached an end of the runway by about 12:30AM to see the last plane for the day, an Air Seychelles A330, line up and take-off. The airport terminal was still a few kilometers away. Aravind was too tired to walk with his heavy rucksack and asked to sit in a bus stop for a while. We sat for a few minutes and resumed our walk to the airport, which we finally reached by 1AM. The terminal closed for the day and a helpful security guard helped us get water to drink. We settled on benches at the airport and slept like rocks, oblivious to the hundreds of mosquitoes which constantly bit us all night. We woke up at 5AM and had Red Bull to stay awake. Taking a cab, we reached the place where we dropped Srivani off the previous night. We walked a total of 8Km that night with more than 15Kg on our backs, after two sleepless nights.

At Beau Vallon beach.

It was a little confusing to find the actual homestay. We found an artist on the road who was helpful in locating their homestay after a short chat on painting. We picked Srivani up from the homestay and set out to the capital city of Victoria by bus. Buses in Seychelles charge a constant amount, regardless of the distance to be travelled. We found an Italian restaurant in Victoria where we had breakfast, our first proper meal in days. The night before, we had food on the Air Seychelles aircraft and the night before that, we had fruits on a bush taxi in Toamasina, Madagascar. We caught a bus to reach Beau Vallon beach, one of the more popular beaches in Seychelles. Spending some time there, we walked part of the way back and caught a bus back to the airport to end our trip. I promptly enquired about the health of the little bird I helped rescue the night before and was informed that he's doing well and is recovering. We walked around the airport for a while and checked in and cleared immigration. As the airport staff rightly said, we found an Etihad A320 on the tarmac and got into it when announced. Aravind had to wait for a couple of hours more to catch his Ethiopian B737 to Addis Ababa.

Aravind at Beau Vallon beach.

Though this trip was just a transit, the experience it gave was anything but that. It was one wild night which literally put us on our toes. I do wish to return to Seychelles sometime soon to actually explore the other islands. 

We slept on trees like these for a while.