Mauritius Diary

Sun, May 11 12:05 AM

I have to say that the first time I came here, I really didn't see the point of Mauritius. It was the year 2000 or thereabouts and I was part of the press party accompanying Prime Minister AB Vajpayee who was on an official visit.

It was not a trip that was expected to generate any news but I went along because I had heard so much about Mauritius. What had I heard? Well, I'd been hearing all kinds of things for years.

In the late 1960s, my father was friendly with a man called Seewoosagur Ramgoolam who had either just become or was about to become (I was too young at the time to tell) Prime Minister of the newly independent country of Mauritius. At that stage, nobody in India knew very much about Mauritius and I thought that old Mr Ramgoolam seemed an odd figure on our dinner table: he looked Indian but talked different.

My father loved Mauritius. It was beautiful, he said, and would develop brilliantly under Ramgoolam's leadership.

I never went along on his trips to the island so I never found out. But I remembered his words.

Then, in the 1980s, I began to hear about Mauritius again. It became Amitabh Bachchan's favourite destination, the sort of place he said was breathtakingly beautiful.

And in no time at all, he began shooting many of his movies there, starting a trend that the rest of the film industry would quickly copy - and continue copying. (If you want visual sightings of Bachchan in Mauritius, you should see the boat shots in 1990's Agneepath or the climax of 1991's Hum).

According to Amitabh, Mauritius was like India - they loved Hindi films and Bachchan himself was sent to campaign for a pro-India party in their general election by Rajiv Gandhi - but it was also different: the French accents and the South African-owned hotels. No matter which island destination you mentioned, Amitabh stuck up for Mauritius to the extent that he almost became brand ambassador for the country.

So, by the time I arrived at Mauritius airport (named for old Mr Ramgoolam) on the PM's special plane (Air India 1, they called it) I was ready for something really special. In my mind, I had already decided what Mauritius would be like.

It would be like the Bahamas or Jamaica out of some James Bond movie. I would be knocked senseless by the natural beauty.

I would gape in wonder at miles and miles of sandy beach-front. I would get caught up in the Creole lifestyle (when I went to Jamaica with Vajpayee, the Prime Minister was received by a reggae band with singers who belted out Bob Marley songs on the tarmac) and I would never want to go back.

Crap! It didn't quite work out that way. Our flight to Mauritius was notable for the revelation that there were no phones on Air India 1.

(There are some, now). Throughout the journey, Vajpayee kept worrying about the no-confidence motion in the Bihar assembly.

This was when Nitish Kumar had briefly become Chief Minister. It wasn't till we landed that we realised that Nitish had lost, much to Vajpayee's disappointment.

(My colleague, Yashwant Raj, then with The Times of India, turned this into a page one story. What if there had been a nuclear war, he wondered.

How would Vajpayee have known? As I had missed the story, I did the next best thing: within a couple of months, Yashwant was stolen by the HT, where he has stayed ever since.) The irony was not lost on the press party.

We were about to visit a country created by expatriate Biharis and yet, the Prime Minister of India was in the dark about events in present-day Bihar! I remember staring out of the bus window, all the way to our hotel, looking for the natural beauty that I had been told to expect or for that Calypso-Creole lifestyle that the flacks had said constituted an integral part of life in Mauritius. All rubbish.

There was nothing to gawk at. At this stage I must explain that I suffer from what you could call Goodness Gracious Me syndrome.

Nearly everywhere I go, I compare the natural beauty to India and more often than not, I conclude: "India is much better." Thus, I have travelled through the hill regions of Thailand (Chiang Mai etc.

) and said: "This is rubbish. The Nilgiris are much prettier.

" (And it's true). I have seen 'historical' buildings in America and I have laughed.

We have office buildings that still function that are much, much older. I have seen chateaus in Europe and thought: our palace hotels are much grander.

So you will understand my mindset when I looked around Mauritius with its over-rated beaches (ranging from so-so to crap) and said "Kerala beats the hell out of this". Or when I looked for the Creole lifestyle and decided that this was no Jamaica: "Goa has more soul", I concluded.

There was nothing wrong with Mauritius. It was pretty enough.

But compared to India?Nah! Nobody who had travelled around our country could think that this natural beauty compared with ours. To think Mauritius was exceptional, you'd have to think that Juhu was the best beach in India and your idea of a hill station would have to be Pali Hill.

I spent much of that trip berating the principals. "Tell me Prime Minister", I remember saying to Vajapyee, "If these expatriate Biharis can do so much with their island, why can't we do more with our own natural beauty?" Vajpayee, who likes Mauritius (he is something of a big hero there) responded: "Where do we have these beaches in India?" This was enough to set me off.

"Beaches! Are you serious Prime Minister? These beaches are nothing compared to what we have and #8230; and #8230; and #8230;." Vajpayee smiled and moved on to talk to somebody else.

I next started on Brajesh Mishra, Vajpayee's all-powerful Principal Secretary. "As pretty as this is," I said, carefully, "it does not compare with the beauty of the Maldives.

As you are probably aware, Lakshadweep, which is part of India, is really an extension of the Maldive atolls. Why can't we develop Lakshadweep for tourism?" Brajesh Mishra gave me the standard answer.

The Defence Ministry believed that allowing foreigners into Lakshadweep posed a security hazard."Is it likely, Brajeshji," I remonstrated, "that the security of India would be seriously damaged by an American diver in Lakshadweep when the same man could go diving in the Maldives, fifty miles away?' Brajesh moved on to talk to somebody else.

Nevertheless, I have some warm memories of that trip. The official delegation stayed at the Royal Palm Hotel in Grand Bay in the north of the island (the media got the crappy Maritim) and everyone soon tired of the hotel.

At the Prime Minister's official banquet for Vajpayee, a Mauritian minister got talking to Vasundhara Raje, then a minister in the Vajpayee government and a member of the delegation. She indicated that she was still to be impressed (in the nicest possible way, of course) and the minister said that Raje and her friends should visit the glamorous Ile Aux Cerfs.

He would make all the arrangements. So, the following day, Vasu and her friends (including me) went in a carcade (complete with motor cycle outriders) to the Le Touessrok Hotel on the east of the island.

We were taken by boat to the Ile Aux Cerfs, which resembled nothing as much as a Southern European beach during peak season. Scores of fat French and English people lay in the sun, slowly turning red while their half-naked children pranced around.

The Mauritius government had laid on the protocol for Vasu. A police boat patrolled the island to deter would be assassins and we did our best to enjoy ourselves.

It wasn't bad and Vasu persuaded me - a natural coward - to go para-sailing. I was not over-impressed by Touessrok (which owns Ile Aux Cerfs) either.

Despite its prominence in English glossies, where it is pitched as a luxury, glamorous destination, it struck me as being your average beach hotel. ("The Aguada/Holiday village is far better and #8230;.

").

So, I returned to Mauritius with mixed feelings. This time, however, I bothered to read up a little about it.

Mauritius is a tiny volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, not far from Madagascar and the coast of Africa, which was discovered by the Dutch (whose principal achievement seems to have been to kill off the dodo), settled by the French and then finally, colonized by the British. Old Mr Ramgoolam took over from the Brits (he is the father of modern Mauritius) and his natural constituency consisted of the Mauritians of Indian origin.

Most of them were the descendant of labourers from Bihar imported to work on the sugar plantations, but there were also Maharashtrians and Tamilians. Mauritius is so small that it takes you an hour or two to drive across the breadth of the whole island and only a little longer to do it from top to bottom.

It has very strong links with India - forged by old Mr Ramgoolam - and there was a time when you could legally spend Indian rupees there. Even today, Indians do not need visas, Indian movies are all the rage, Indian movie stars are venerated (though none as much as Bachchan) and Indian politicians possess a credibility that we deny them in our own country.

It's a long flight from Delhi to Mauritius (over seven hours) and only Air Mauritius operates on the sector. Fortunately, Air Mauritius is a good airline, seats are comfortable, and the cabin crew are attentive even if the food is truly dire (which is odd since the airline seems genuinely proud of the rubbish it serves, even running videos praising the food.

) It did not help that when our plane landed in Mauritius, it took them twenty minutes to fix the aerobridge, or that there was no air-conditioning at the airport (perhaps it had broken down) or that my bags took an hour to arrive on the carousel. Though everyone was warm and friendly (unlike say, the Maldives where they keep blaming you for not being a white tourist), there was a distinct sense of having arrived in Patna.

But as my car sped off on the world class motorway, I recognised that things had changed in the eight years since I had last been here. There was much more prosperity, everything seemed a lot cleaner than any place in India, and the destination had gone seriously upmarket.

Part of the transformation to the top end of the market is the opening of a luxury, boutique hotel run by the Taj group. Unlike the big beach hotels, this is a quietly expensive small property which consists only of 65 villas each with its own plunge pool, huge bathrooms, individual gardens, and the usual top-end accessories (DVD players, plasma TV, espresso machines etc.

) It is an Aman resorts/Banyan Tree style experience with the emphasis on discretion and privacy. The hotel's star attraction is an astonishingly luxurious spa, run by Kelly Chodon, a Banyan Tree veteran whom the Taj poached from Bangkok's The Oriental, where she played a key role in the opening of the hotel's renowned Ayurvedic Pavilion.

Every kind of massage is available, ranging from the ayurvedic to the trendy and the ambience is both peaceful and deluxe. Its other claim to fame as the quality of its Asian fusion cuisine.

In the time that I was there, I had astonishing Sichuan-crusted tuna, Thai accented squid and mussels and a Thai salad made with better beef (Australian) than you will usually get in Bangkok. On my first full day in Mauritius, I enjoyed the hotel.

I checked out the beach, resolved to drink only Southern Hemisphere wines (a foolish conceit based on the argument that Mauritius is so far south of the equator that this is their autumn/summer). I ate gorgeous steaks with meaty South African merlot, read magazines by the pool and watched my West Wing DVDs at night.

Then, on the morning of the second day, I remembered a conversation I'd had with Kurt Wachtveitl of the Oriental who had complained that luxury tourists went from villa to villa in destination after destination, never bothering to venture out and see the world outside. At the time, I had enthusiastically agreed with Kurt.

Now, I was doing exactly the sort of thing he had complained about. So, I asked the hotel for a car and decided that I was going to venture into Mauritius and see if the observations of my first visit were still valid.

Here in no particular order, are some of the things I learned on my second day in Mauritius.Everybody tells you to expect the sea.

Nobody tells you about the hills. But Mauritius is gloriously hilly.

The roads go up and down, the skyline is filled with tree-covered hills and some of the mountains (oh all right, hills) have the most amazing shapes I've seen. Some look like needles.

Others like fir cones. Some like upturned rectangles.

How had I missed all this the first time? Mauritius may have been a British colony for a century but you'd never know it. It's the French who've had the most impact.

They teach English in schools but most people speak a French patois called Creole. Some understand Hindi but few speak it fluently.

How bizarre do you think it is to approach some Bihari (three or four generations out of his village) and to have him speak to you in a French accent? To come on a group of middle aged Jharkandi ladies in salwar kameezes and to hear then speak what sounds like French? Surreal - for any Indian, at least. Why isn't Bihar so clean? My overwhelming impression of Mauritius was of cleanliness.

It had the maintenance of a First World country. Even the public toilets were relatively clean.

I was right about the natural beauty. I drove to the north of the island (the Taj is in the West) and saw nothing to compare with say, Kerala.

But I had missed the charm the first time around. My driver avoided the motorway and took the small coastal roads.

I could have been in the South of France or in Portugal. There were white-fronted little houses, fishing villages, small bays with sail boats, trees on both sides of the road, street signs in French and a lazy laidback air.

I got out of the car, sat by the edge of the sea, sipped a beer and stared out at the water. Heaven.

The following day, I listened to the Taj. The hotel had told me to go South, not north.

I had argued that I wanted to see real people, not pretty sights. But because you can do half of Mauritius in a day, I decided I'd do the other half now.

It was beautiful and magical. There was nothing that took your breath away; no single sight that was truly spectacular.

But it was the whole island itself that crept up on you and captivated you. The endless acres of fresh sugarcane, burned by the autumn sun; the coral reef that changed the colours of the sea to different shades of blue; the view from a rooftop restaurant in Chamonix where I stopped for lunch and felt as Gauguin must have when he first saw the palms and waters of Tahiti; the yellow flowers that grew wild, blazing all over the island; the red volcanic earth of the South; the waterfalls that poured into the sea; and the point where you looked into the distance and wondered where the sea ended and the sky began.

In the village of Morne, I wandered among the local picnickers by the seaside, happy to have moved away from touristy Mauritius. All around me, families sat on rocks, eating packed meals they had brought from home, then suddenly pulling off their shirts and leaping into the water.

So finally, I saw the point of Mauritius. It's a not a knock-you-dead destination.

They don't have the miles of beaches we have in Goa. They don't have the lush beauty of the Kerala backwaters.

They don't even have the calypso-reggae vibe of the Caribbean. But strangely enough, what Mauritius does have is its own sense of peace and well-being.

At first, I thought it was just the hotel. Some hotels excite you; some pamper you; some overwhelm you.

The Taj's special quality is that it leaves you alone and promotes an air of peace and calm. But later I decided that it was Mauritius itself.

It has a laid back charm that lacks the sudden cheap-date thrill of many other destinations but, if you give it half a chance, then it gets you in its grip. So why had I not enjoyed that first visit? I tried to work it out.

I even went back to the Royal Palm hotel in Grand Bay. Now, it seemed strangely dated, like a Phuket/Pattaya beach resort from the 1980s, a Sheraton Grande or a Hilton resort.

I thought of Touessrok and its slowly roasting sunbathers, white people hungry for days of sun and nights of fun. There's nothing wrong with any of that.

Nor I guess is there anything really wrong with the way that Mauritius's Tourism Board sells the destination to Indians: as a cheap holiday where there are casinos and where you can see the place where Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was shot. In fact, Mauritius is not that cheap.

Take away the filmi locations and Sri Lanka makes a far better budget destination. But I guess that both constitute legitimate holiday destinations.

Either ou take Lanka's sun and fun break or Mauritius's film shooting/honeymoon destination. Neither works for me however.

What I liked about Mauritius was that it got under your skin, crept into your brain and leached out the tension and the tiredness. There's no point going to Mauritius thinking "it'll be crazy and glamorous.

" It won't be that. But provided you are willing to spend a little money (my air fare was a little higher than the cost of a ticket to Singapore) and stay in a quality resort like the Taj, Mauritius can offer you a holiday that's soothing and charming, both at the same time.

I know I'll be back.

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