Ryan Shirley rolled his bicycle to a stop at the edge of a granite-studded beach on a small island in the Indian Ocean, looked out at the sculpted rock formations rising from the shallows, and thought the scenery did not look real. That reaction matters, because Shirley is not easy to impress, and the Seychelles had just done exactly that. An archipelago of 115 islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, this is a country where the beaches are genuinely argued to be the best on earth, and Shirley spent his trip building a personal top 10 to find out if that claim holds up.
La Digue and the beach the whole world keeps talking about
Shirley wanted to visit La Digue more than anywhere else in the Seychelles, and the island delivered from the moment the nearly two-hour ferry from Mahe pulled in. Cars are unnecessary here. Bicycles handle everything, and a 15-minute ride from the ferry harbor through the Union Estate Farm, past a scattering of tortoises, brings you to Anse Source d’Argent, the beach that repeatedly earns the title of most beautiful in the world. The granite formations there are the draw: enormous boulders shaped over thousands of years by wind and water, rising from pale sand and warm shallows. Shirley visited twice, once at midday when the tide was far enough out to walk well into the sea, and again at sunset, when the rocks caught the light in a way that, as he put it, ‘just doesn’t even look real.’ The positioning of the beach means the setting sun lights it directly each clear evening.
A 15-minute ride in the other direction leads to Grand Anse, La Digue’s second famous stretch. It is a bigger beach with white sand, rolling waves, and granite boulders anchoring both ends. Shirley came back from it genuinely sunburnt and warned that the Seychelles ranks among the hottest and most humid places he has visited, with Grand Anse offering little shade. Sunblock is not optional. A restaurant at the beach serves lobster worth stopping for.
The snorkel tour out of La Digue rounded out the island stay. The first stop was a small uninhabited island home to thousands of seabirds, with some of the clearest water Shirley had ever swum in. Turtles moved through the reef alongside fish he had only previously seen in aquariums. The island, he noted cheerfully, smelled strongly of bird droppings, which he took as confirmation that the birds were thriving. A pair of nearby sister islands added more clear water, coral, and a place to anchor and simply watch the landscape.
Praslin, Mahe, and the fruit bats nobody mentioned in the brochure
From La Digue, a 15-minute ferry hop reaches Praslin, the second largest island in the country and home to Coco de Mer, the world’s largest nut. Anse Lazio on the northern shore surprised Shirley with its clarity and the orange granite boulders stacked along its western edge. He ranked it the second most beautiful beach in the country. He deeply regretted skipping a swim there because of his sunburn.
Mahe is where every visitor lands. The capital, Victoria, was founded in 1778. The hike to Anse Major on the northwestern side of the island covers about two and a half kilometers round trip, takes roughly 30 minutes to reach the beach, and rewards the effort with coastline Shirley described as resembling a scene from Jurassic Park. An alternative boat taxi reaches the same beach for those skipping the trail. The drive up to a mountain lodge near Morne Seychellois Peak, the country’s highest point at 905 meters, adds an elevated view of the mountains dropping toward the coast.
The strangest discovery came near a coastal town on Mahe’s western side. Shirley filmed an oddly shaped uninhabited island during the day, returned for sunset, and found the trees completely full of hundreds of massive fruit bats. He spent the entire evening filming them hanging in the branches. It was, he said, a genuine spectacle, and exactly the kind of thing no itinerary prepares you for.
The bat colony nobody warned him about
The fruit bats near the western coast of Mahe were not in any recommendation Shirley had read before the trip. He had gone back to a small uninhabited island purely to catch a better sunset shot.
The Seychelles delivered on every beach the rankings promised and then added a treeful of enormous bats at dusk, which is about as honest a travel summary as anyone could ask for.
