The Seychelles are also known as ‘The Islands of Paradise’. And rightly so. The Seychelles were once a part of the mainland, or more accurately, to the supercontinent Gondwana. Approximately 160 million years ago, the region was unsettled by powerful earthquakes and Gondwana was broken up into what we now know as South America, Africa, Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent, Australia, and Antarctica. As the supercontinent was pulled apart, water flowed in and created the Indian ocean.
Present-day India was separated from Madagascar, and individual pieces of land between the drifting land masses were left behind. These islands of granite now form the Seychelles. For thousands of years, they were forgotten and it was only around 1750 that the French, and later the British, annexed the islands. The Seychelles have been independent since 1976.
In the middle of the Indian ocean, 1,200km from mainland Africa, this paradise of about 115 islands extends over an area of many hundreds of square kilometres. Roughly 90,000 people live here. There are neither tropical diseases nor cyclones, and no poisonous creatures live here. The warm water that makes the Indian ocean a veritable bath, the dream beaches, the outstanding infrastructure, and the friendliness of the natives fascinates many people. It is not for nothing that you often hear the ‘warning’ that you might fall in love with the islands forever, and the large group of visitors who return again and again is proof enough of how often this really happens.
