Travel planner - TREASURE
CHEST Seychelles
It's not just a quiet
beach destination.
From the `smallest' to the
`biggest', `oldest' to the `rarest', Seychelles adds a lot of superlatives to
your travel journal
Think of turquoise water. Put a
million corals as underwa ter baubles. Sprinkle silver dust as sand on the
shore. Imagine the swaying palm fronds as dinner quintet. The shadow of a
jellyfish tree, one of the rarest trees in the world. A heavy seed as an appetizer.Warning.
Do not try cracking this one. The seed of the Coco de Mer, a coconut giant, is
the world's heaviest nut. Bring along Bond. James Bond. For it was here that
Ian Fleming wrote For Your Eyes Only after a swig of gin and tonic. If Bond is
too beefy, get along a dainty, but insolent, Queen. Marie Antoinette shacked
here before her death.There's a moustachioed pirate -and his treasure chest
-lending intrigue. The booty of notorious pirate Olivier Levasseur worth
$160,000,000 is still buried in Bel Ombre. So, while you do a quick 160,000,000
mathematics, let me sneak in a quick fact. All this and much more is true about
Seychelles, a county comprising 115 coralline islands that are considered one
of the oldest on earth. So, shed that cliched notion of Seychelles merely as a
beach destination. There are so many world's largest, biggest, rarest things in
the island that you'll probably lose breath counting superlatives.
Lost your breath? Want something for
your parched throat? Perhaps coconut water from Coco de Mer, an endemic coconut
that takes 6-7 years to mature and its seed weighs about 18 kg (the world's
largest). You sure cannot hold it in the palm of your hand the largest
recorded Coco de Mer weighed 42 kg! One giant coconut this; its only natural
habitat being the Vallee De Mai palm forest in Praslin island, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site. Want to stick a straw and quaff the Coco de Mer water?
Loosen purse stings, please. One Coco de Mer costs roughly 50,000 Indian Rupees. One would rather chew gold than drink off this nut! This coconut is not the only case of island gigantism. There is the big, fat, brown Aldabra tortoise, the world's largest land tortoise. Their home: Aldabra island, the world's largest raised coral atoll and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the biggest, fattest amongst them all is Esmeralda (it weighs 304 kg). This big boy faces stiff competition from a 9ft 6-inch human giant that lies buried in Bel Air Cemetery, Seychelles' first public burial ground.In the deserted cemetery is an elongated graveyard legend has it that the nearly 10-feet human giant died at age 14.
Loosen purse stings, please. One Coco de Mer costs roughly 50,000 Indian Rupees. One would rather chew gold than drink off this nut! This coconut is not the only case of island gigantism. There is the big, fat, brown Aldabra tortoise, the world's largest land tortoise. Their home: Aldabra island, the world's largest raised coral atoll and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the biggest, fattest amongst them all is Esmeralda (it weighs 304 kg). This big boy faces stiff competition from a 9ft 6-inch human giant that lies buried in Bel Air Cemetery, Seychelles' first public burial ground.In the deserted cemetery is an elongated graveyard legend has it that the nearly 10-feet human giant died at age 14.
It might seem like an oxymoron but
all these large, big things live and grow in a small country. Really small
country. At the last count, Seychelles has 90,000 inhabitants of which 90 per
cent live in Mahe, the largest island.Of the 115 islands that string to make
the archipelago, only four are inhabited Mahe, Praslin, La Digue and
Silhouette.
However, nothing beats the tininess
of Victoria, the capital.Walk into the world's smallest capital and before you
know where to start sightseeing, it ends.Rather abruptly. You could walk it in
10 minutes and been-thereseen-it-all in another 15. An old church stands like a
relic of the colonial age. A Hindu temple shimmers in vibrant colours by the
arcade. A cinema resembles a refurbished pigeon-hole. The monotony broken by
Victoria market where the air is redolent with the whiff of fresh soursop,
cassava, mangoes, vegetables, cinna mon, vanilla and a green leaf that car ries
the aro ma of four spices in one. The crown jewel is the Big Ben. The Little
Big Ben, actually. A tiny silver replica of London's Vauxhall Clock Tower that
was erected in the central roundabout to mark Seychelles' new status as the
Crown Colony. You might smirk at how little this Big Ben is, but do spare a
look for the nearby traffic light. It is the only traffic light in Seychelles.
`Paradise' is the permanent suffix
of this island. I am not sure which gods live in this paradise.
Smallest.Largest. Biggest. Rarest. Oldest.These superlatives certainly live in
Seychelles
|
Preeti Verma Lal
|
TL14JUN15
No comments:
Post a Comment