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The best two months of my life so far were spent in Mauritius in the summer of 2005. Thanks to the amazing hospitality of my client - Bernard, his wife Cecille, their little daughter and all my colleagues, Naveen, especially. I live in Kolkata, in India.

Mauritius: where the water turns clockwise in your basin

Abhijit Bhattacharjee
2006-02-19 13:42:15

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The massive ocean around it on the map may lead you to think that the island nation of Mauritius is tinier than it really is. Just when the tiny specs of white surf tops of the Indian ocean were becoming commonplace and the mind was looking out for something even more exciting below than the occasional tiny passing ship seen from the stratosphere, the monotony was broken before I was prepared to recieve it. I was shocked to find a most surreal landscape before me suddenly. It was like I was flying into a dream as we descended rapidly.

What was before me, filling the horizon was a huge island with a thick sparkling turquoise and emerald necklace of coral reefs all around it. There were black patchy volcanic mountains all over the island. The peaks of them were covered with emerging clouds billowing from the oceans around it, as if fuming silently. And the whole country looked like one huge plantation of what became clear on further descent was simply “sugarcane”. That huge plantation country was crisscrossed with highways and one could see small towns in clusters of villa like houses that grew up almost where the sugarcane ended.

And as soon as you land here you would have realised that Mauritius offers you the opportunity to flying into the middle of winter from a seething summer in India, when the monsoons hadnt yet arrived. Its here in the Southern hemisphere, where the water in your basin goes down clockwise in a chute. Coroilis effect.

After arrival I found a very developed country which was extremely clean, organised and beautiful. It was laid out as if ready for an inspection. The roads were beautiful on which moved nice cars and fashionable people. The houses looked like villas and most had some kind of a garden in which most plants were familiar but once in a while one does come across a flower he hasnt seen before. And you quickly take a picture. The people were prosperous, fashionable and the women beautiful. They were of ...