Seychelles

There are 115 islands in the Seychelles, and every trip starts on the same one: Mahé, which has the airport and Victoria, the only place that amounts to a town. Mahé, Praslin and La Digue are granite, their boulders worn smooth into the shapes most photographs of the Seychelles turn out to be of, backed by forest. To the south-west, around forty low coral islands and atolls sit alone in open ocean.

The archipelago lies outside the cyclone belt and leaves its weather to two monsoons. The north-west one, November to March, drops its heaviest rain in December and January, which is hard luck on anyone who had the Seychelles down as winter sun. The south-east monsoon, May to September, is drier, but its trade winds rough up the sea, hardest in July and August, when swimming and snorkelling suffer most. Between them, April, May, October and November have calmer water and less rain, and November is as close to winter as the good months get.

The coco de mer, the world's largest seed, still grows wild in the Vallée de Mai on Praslin, a UNESCO-listed palm forest that takes a couple of hours to walk. Boats leave Baie Sainte Anne's jetty for the bird sanctuary on Cousin Island and go on to Curieuse, where the giant tortoises range free. Anse Lazio, on the north-west coast, has the same granite boulders as everywhere else, which in the Seychelles is a recommendation. On La Digue, the ten or fifteen minutes from the jetty at La Passe to Anse Source d'Argent go by bicycle or by ox-cart, and the only question is whether to pedal or be pulled. Victoria's covered market is best early, and the rest of the day goes up or down: up into the Morne Seychellois National Park for the west coast below, or down to Beau Vallon, Mahé's largest beach.

Mahé's resorts are spread along its west and south coasts, and sharing an island with the airport counts for most on the first night and the last. Praslin is 20 minutes on by light aircraft or an hour and a quarter by ferry, and La Digue 15 minutes beyond it by ferry. The Outer Islands have no scheduled transport: 20 minutes by boat from La Digue to the nearest, 45 by charter flight from Mahé to the furthest. Some are a sandbank with a single resort on it, and on those the tour of the hotel is the tour of the island.