The Seychelles are suspended in daydream, a sunny, spectral place that bobs over the computer screen, floats in the spume of the sink, shimmers in the exhaust fumes of the rush hour.

The Seychelles exist only on shiny paper in winter brochures, a place made of wistful heat and squeezed fruit.

A reverie of prickly sunburnt shoulders, salty lips, the unaccustomed feel of a sandal strap between your toes, a place where men carry bags full of read-me books, bottles of rub-me cream and the international news with last week’s football results. A place of three-course breakfasts and slippery somnambulant siesta sex.

The Seychelles are lapped by the imaginations of proto-brides, accountants enamoured of their secretaries, molar-gritted housewives staring into the bucket of nappies; a collection of islands that are home to some magical indigenous tribe of waiters and fishing guides and smiling masseuses in tight sarongs.

Seychelles at £1k a night

North Island, the Seychelles’ super-posh £2,000-a-villa resort, has a new rival at half the price. Susan d’Arcy compares the two

Island hopping in the Seychelles

Stephen Bleach discovers the Seychelles archipelago the way the explorers did: by sea; plus more island cruises

BACKGROUND

• The Seychelles in a family guesthouse

• On the up in the Seychelles

• It's full sail to the Horn of Africa

• Where to go for safari and surf

Related Internet Links

• More articles on the Seychelles

Related Links

• Island hopping in the Seychelles

The Seychelles are the perfect holiday destination when you’re not on holiday. They come without baggage to interrupt the daydream of a desert island. How many of us could name the capital or the currency, know what language is spoken or even – and this is a bit of a shock – name the continent they belong to?

It’s Victoria; the rupee; French, English and Creole; and they pertain to Africa, but only just, basking just below the equator, in the Indian Ocean, a long way from the coast of Kenya. They’re part of that shrapnel fallout from the slow collapse of the supercontinent Gondwana, the cluster of bright, odd islands that includes Mauritius, Réunion and Madagascar.

But, like you, when I decided to go there, I didn’t care about any of that. I simply wanted an amnesiac, flat-on-the-back, spread-eagled break. And, more importantly, the Blonde, having produced our twins, pointed out that she hadn’t had a comfortably uninterrupted night’s sleep for well over a year. We both needed seven days’ flat time and a bit of colour.

Almost everywhere I travel is to see something or do something or be someone. It was the utter and pristine, the absolute lack of cultural, political or topographical excitement that first attracted me to the Seychelles. The chance of just staring at the back of my eyelids was heaven – but as no man can be an island, so no island can simply be an empty beach.

The first thing you notice about Mahé, the largest of the hundred specks that make up the place, is that you can get there all in one go, without having to stop off at Dubai or Qatar or Djibouti or Dabadaba Daabi or those places that sound like my twins asking for supper. And there’s only a four-hour time difference.

And then you can notice two other things simultaneously. The first is that it’s very humid, and the second is that it’s very green. Now, these two things often go together. A lot of people don’t like humid; they like their sun like their martinis – withering dry with olives. Hot, dry places are arid and dusty and unremitting.

I like wet heat. I like the way it plumps your skin and makes you feel glossy rather than desiccated. Only with humidity can you be sultry.

And it always comes with greenness. Being on the equator, the Seychelles have only one season – though some months squeeze out a little more wet than others. The forest of the Seychelles is beautiful and broad-leaved and soft, with hugely operatic labial flowers that look like Victorian gynaecological medical illustrations. They are the soft furnishings of the island. It seems to have been designed and decorated by the Douanier Rousseau and the chorus line of the Folies Bergères.

Times recommends

• The 10 best bits of travel gear
• Soho's classy, cheap new townhouse
• Germany's perfect Christmas city