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By the time you reach the east coast this most wonderful island country from the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport located on the southern coast (in what, like two hours?), memories of a terribly long, eighthour flight from Delhi are almost forgotten. Actually, that's a lie. The flight is forgotten as soon as the plane has touched down and you've made your way past the skywalk and have taken a look out of the nearest window. You're already in love.After a couple of days on the south-western coast's Tamarin Bay, we were headed to the east coast, where we were to stay at the Beau Rivage, literally translated as 'beautiful shore'. The hotel, located on the Belle Mare beach, boasts the second largest pool in Mauritius — it was the largest in the country till it was upended about a year ago by another hotel — though, frankly, it didn't look that imposing. We happened to catch the Indian buffet on one of the two nights that we spent there and it turned out to be, well, slightly amusing. Everything was excellent, except the desserts. The rasgulla looked exactly like a gulab jamun, but tasted nothing like it — it was a ball of friend bread, soaked in sugar syrup. The gulab jamun meanwhile, looked like miniature croissants gone wrong. But the quaintest part was the sweet lassi, served in shot glasses.The Indian connection continued into Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, which looks much like Gurgaon, with all its traffic and none of its dust. Soaked to the skin, we had to leap across the Le Caudan at the Waterfront, the pretty-looking main shopping centre, to get to Grand Ocean City restaurant that serves (almost) Indian Chinese food.The shopping centre is a bit of a tourist trap, with an in-house crafts market where you can find everything from little Dodo bird souvenirs to fragrant soaps that you can pick for your girlfriends. But save your money (a Mauritian rupee is equal to the Indian Rs 1.44, but God help you get that exchange rate) and head to the market across the street.The market is superbly busy till about 5 p.m., at which hour everything comes to a crashing halt. There's a little walkway, much like Janpath where you can find cheap Mauritius tee shirts, bags and towels — the use-and-throw variety — but walk through it only if you have a strong stomach and high tolerance levels for the fragrance of dried fish, squids and assorted crustaceans. Also beware of taking pictures because the shopkeepers will either ask you for money or insist you buy something from them in exchange for snapping them. An indoor fruit and vegetable market is the picture of organised chaos. One of the most unusual things I came across in the market were wooden plaques bearing the flag of a country and the name of a disease. So you had Japan's Rising Sun and the word 'dysentery'. I tried asking the seller about them, but it was all lost in translation.Don't miss a visit to the Aapravasi Ghat, across the market; but at the same time, do not expect too much. The Ghat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a memorial to the thousands of indentured labourers who arrived after an arduous two month-long journey from India. It is still work-in-progress, but remains a morbid reminder of 70 per cent of Mauritius population's antecedents. The guide took us through the erstwhile 'Coolie Ghat' where sanitation amenities were remarkably woebegone, even by 1849 standards.The area was a stop-gap arrangement for the labourers; almost 200 of who were housed in a tiny area, at a time, before they were deemed fit to start working primarily in sugarcane fields.The following day, we proceeded on a most pious Indian pilgrimage — shopping at the Centre de Flacq market. We picked the wrong day, however, when Flacq's Sarojini Nagar equivalent was closed.But you could still pick up fake Rip Curl and Billabong tees, trawl the streets where dal-faratha shares space with flan stalls, look at latest Bollywood posters deified on the walls and pick a few pirated ones from the '80s and generally, be.Another great place to do all of this is the Grand Baie market. We happened to be there after an aborted attempt at an undersea walk and a sub-scooter safari took us into the middle of the ocean, but left us high and dry. We were told the currents were too strong —which prompted our boatman to joke, "Here there is a strong current and there, we have no electricity." Grand Baie is the place to act like a tourist, but remember to halve the price cited by the shopkeepers who always promise to "make a good price only for you". Shop after shop sells beachwear, cheap dresses and jewellery.About 15 minutes away is the Mon Choisy beach, where there is nothing to do except watch till the blue leaches out of the sand. And that's not a bad thing to do all afternoon. The real adventure came with a trip to Ile aux Cerfs, an island about twenty minutes away from the east coast. On an allexpense paid ticket, you get to take a ride on a speedboat, see a waterfall, go banana boat riding and parasailing, followed by lunch at another tiny island.The speedboat ride is the funnest of them all — the boatman makes the boat leap and bounce on the surface, so use one hand to tightly grip your hat and clutch the side of the boat with the other to prevent from flying off. AFTER parasailing, which was woefully short — remember to never close your eyes while in the air for that free-fallin' feeling, despite the temptation — we headed for lunch at a smaller, ancillary island. It's so small that nobody told us its name; it's small enough to run across in five minutes. Lunch was massive — chicken, fish, oysters and beer, which proved too much for our frugal Indian appetites. An impromptu Sega performance by a bunch of youngsters was the best part of our meal — the seduction of the happy, free island culture that continues to lure tourists from Europe. A bunch of Indian honeymooners, however, not having got their money's worth presumably, managed to pick up a fight there as well.Almost every resort hotel in Mauritius offers in house water sports activities — our hotel, Legends, on the north coast was no different. We set aside one afternoon to explore these, starting with a glass-bottomed boat ride, which is intriguing for precisely five minutes, after which, one phytoplankton looks the same as the next. I, on the other hand, continued to gawp at a big, beautiful German man sitting opposite me. Post that lazy outing, we were ready to kayak and paddle boat, both of which were minor disasters given our shortchanged lungs — but yielded many miss-your-boyfriend moments.But even if you go without him, the romance of Mauritius is enough to keep you occupied.Follow us on Twitter!
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