About Seychelles
The map shows the Inner Islands of Seychelles, a remote island nation in the western Indian Ocean.
The archipelago covers a vast area between Africa and Asia. The main islands are located 500 km south of the equator and about 1,700 km east of
Kenya's coast, northeast of
Madagascar between the Somali Basin in the northwest and the Mascarene Basin in the southeast, two big oceanic basins in the western Indian Ocean.
Seychelles
consists of 115+ islands spread over an area of more than 1 million km². The country's total land
area of 444 km² is as big as
Andorra, or 2.5 times the size of
Washington, DC.
Seychelles has the smallest
population of all sovereign African countries, with only 98,000 inhabitants (in 2021). The capital and largest city is
Victoria on Mahé, the largest island. Spoken
languages are Seychellois Creole 90%, English and French (all official).
More about Seychelles
On January 19, 1609, the British ship Ascension, part of a British East India Company expedition, reached the main island group of the Seychelles. The crew mistakenly thought they were on the Amirantes. Provisions and drinking water were supplemented, various islands were visited, and maps were made.
It took another 133 years before the Seychelles came back into the focus of the Europeans. In 1742, the governor of the then French colony of
Mauritius, Bertrand Mahé de La Bourdonnais, also sent an expedition there. The main island Mahé received its name in his honor. Finally, a second French expedition in 1756 formally took possession of the archipelago for France.
Seychelles Inner Islands
Aerial view of the Aldabra Islands, an atoll consisting of four large coral islands enclosing a shallow lagoon; the islands are surrounded by a coral reef.
The largest atoll in the Indian Ocean is part of Seychelles' Outer Islands. The Aldabra Atoll is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Due to the remoteness of the atoll, Aldabra is protected from human influence and is home to about 152,000 giant tortoises.
Photo: Simisa
The main islands, the Seychelles Inner Islands, also known as the Mahé group, consist of 45 islands. The largest are Mahé, Praslin, La Digue and Silhouette Island.
The islands are the tips of the Seychelles Microcontinent rising out of the water.
They are surrounded by coral reefs and have narrow coastlines and ranges of hills in the interior that rise up to 900 meters.
Morne Seychellois, at 905 m (2,969 ft), is the highest peak of the archipelago.
The Mahé group lies about 1,000 km northeast of the northern tip of Madagascar and 1,800 km east of
Mombasa (
Kenya).
Seychelles Outer Islands
The Seychelles
Outer Islands are a chain of coral atolls, such as the Amirante and Alphonse Islands, mostly uninhabited.
In 2008, the
Islands Development Company (IDC) prepared a program called
1 hotel 1 island.
Each island in the group should be leased to a hotel, which will, in turn, build residential homes and facilities on those islands.
Flora and Fauna
The Seychelles are the oldest oceanic islands that exist on earth. Isolated for 75 million years, Seychelles is home to a distinctive flora and fauna, comparable only in uniqueness to the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar. The archipelago is known for tropical fruits and plants, such as the
Coco de Mer palm trees,
giant turtles, tree frogs like Gardiner's frog, one of the smallest frogs in the world, birds, such as the
Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher, sharks like the
Blacktip, Silvertip and Grey Reef Sharks. Rare and native animals include the Seychelles sheath-tailed bats, the Magpie robin, and the Seychelles White-eyed bird and the Blue Pigeon.