Mauritius

Mauritius caught me off guard. I expected resorts and postcard beaches — and yes, those exist — but the island kept offering something else the moment I stepped away from the tourist trail. The north coast around Mont Choisy had this wide arc of white sand fringed by palms, water so clear and shallow you could wade out fifty metres and still see every black lava rock under your feet. The light in the late afternoon turned the whole lagoon a colour that didn't feel real.

Port Louis was where the island's layered history actually made sense. Standing on the ramparts of Fort Adelaide with an old colonial cannon in front of me and the whole city sprawling down to the harbour below, I could feel how many different hands had shaped this place — Dutch, French, British, then the island's own. The old Dutch windmill tucked into a courtyard nearby felt like it had just forgotten to fall down. Then out at Grand Bassin, the crater lake up in the hills, there were enormous Hindu deity statues rising out of the grey water — Shiva, Ganesh, Durga — and the clouds sat low and the whole place felt genuinely sacred rather than just decorative.

The food was unapologetically mixed-up in the best way. A red-bowl of beef noodles at a no-frills Chinese-Creole spot, a can of local Blue Marlin beer with calamari at a beach bar playing something vaguely reggae — nothing felt performed. On one of the rougher southern beaches I found a dark cowrie shell in the driftwood and pocketed it. Small thing, but it felt like the island handing me something to remember it by.