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Saturday 22 November 2008

Paradise found

Sarah Standing visits the Seychelles

A few years ago I went to Acton to be hypnotised. I sat on a lumpy armchair and was told to close my eyes. ‘As I am talking to you, you will gradually feel your body growing heavier. Allow your mind to empty, and your thoughts to drift,’ I was instructed. ‘You are on a deserted beach. You can hear the waves softly lapping against the sand and your body is getting heavier. And heavier... and heavier. You are letting go of all negative energy and you are feeling relaxed.’ Perhaps it was the grisly thought of being on a deserted beach with a monumentally heavy body that kept me on full alert, but I swear I never went under. I just lay and listened to this man drone on and on for 60 minutes until a bell rang somewhere in the far distance and he snapped his fingers and informed me I was no longer a smoker. If only. I remain convinced it wasn’t my lack of willpower that let me down — it was my infertile imagination. Having just returned from visiting the Seychelles I now think I’m ready to give Acton a second chance. This time will be different, for this time I will have no problem picturing myself in paradise.

The Seychelles is an archipelago nation of 155 islands in the Indian Ocean, lying north-east of Madagascar and about 1,000 miles east of Africa. Mahe is the largest island with a population of 80,000 (roughly the same number that inhabit Twickenham) and it is granitic, mountainous and absurdly green. The landscape is surreally, opulently, insanely lush. It’s as though a Hollywood film director has been instructed to go off and create the perfect desert island. I can only assume the producer must have added, ‘Take your time, get it right and don’t give a damn about the budget,’ for Mahe is what happens when you cross Disney with Mother Nature. It’s the dream ticket — a utopian paradise worthy of several Oscars. It has simply everything going for it. Layer upon layer of tropical vegetation, a textbook blue-skies-and-sunshine climate, trees pregnant with mangoes, coconuts and bananas, pink-tinged sandy beaches, an ocean that’s Hockney-blue and packed with technicolour fish, hibiscus blooms, great food, jurassic-like rocks, no nasty critters and an innate, all-enveloping dramatic beauty. The Seychellois seem to recognise their good fortune and are rightfully proud. ‘We have virtually full employment here,’ boasted my sweet taxi driver. ‘It is a wonderful place because everybody gets on. We mix together so, so happily. We have Catholics, Christians, Hindus and Muslims here, but there’s no bother.’ He turned the radio up a fraction in time to catch the last verse of ‘Hey Jude’. ‘I think right now there are just 80 people in jail. But not for very bad things.’

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