![\"Childhood](\"http:\/\/duffssuitcase.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/noonoo1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNevertheless, one day we rented a tiny roofless jeep and drove around the island, forgoing the resort\u2019s scheduled activities. I remember driving through fields of cane sugar that were higher than the car, passing street food stalls redolent with the smells of frying samosas and curry and markets thick with people and exploring the somewhat grimy streets of the capital, Port Louis. I decided then that this was the kind of travel I wanted to do (despite rather enjoying lying next to the pool drinking sugary concotions out of pineapples).<\/p>\n
Twenty years later I went back to Mauritius on assignment for the travel magazine I worked for, along with a photographer.\u00a0Turbulence somewhere over Madagascar had me gripping his hand in fear – my flying phobia still unabated despite my otherwise rational adult mind. By this stage, however, double gin and tonics had become my prescription-free panacea.<\/p>\n Another thing that hadn\u2019t changed was my travel philosophy rooted in an avoidance of the generic. Hiring a car with a radio tuned to the wailing hits of Bollywood movies, we set off in search of a story about the Indian Ocean atoll that hadn\u2019t been covered \u2013 one that would not include lengthy descriptions of beach loungers. Trying not to be a tourist on an island covered in resorts is the kind of travel assignment challenge I relish. In a week we crisscrossed Mauritius and discovered more of the place I\u2019d had a glimpse of on one day in a mini jeep.<\/p>\n We drank vanilla tea with an eccentric Franco-Mauritian who owns a colonial mansion filled with antiques that smelt like a history book in an overgrown garden that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Filling our bellies with as much gourmet culture as we could fit into each day, we tucked into cheap and tasty street food \u2013 fried chilli noodles, curry-filled rotis, chilli cakes and all manner of sweet coconut-covered treats \u2013 Cantonese dim sum (skipping the stewed chicken feet) and a Creole feast prepared by a mother and daughter in matching hibiscus-print outfits. Beyond taste, Mauritius presented a cornucopia of olfactory pleasure: brewing tea at the Bois Cheri factory, kumquat-infused rum, a vanilla plantation and fresh produce markets effulgent with the scents of incense, pineapple and herbs.<\/p>\n Learning about the dark side of the island\u2019s history, from natural pillaging by Dutch sailors to two centuries of cruel slavery, provided a contextual backdrop that changed the way I started to look at this piece of tropical paradise. We photographed Le Morne rock, learning its sad legend of runaway slaves leapt to their death from its height to avoid capture, explored ramshackle cemeteries under stormy anti-cyclone skies and visited a beach called \u2018Black Magic\u2019 when winds threatened to send us over the edge down to a tumultuous sea crashing on rocks \u2013 nothing like the serene image plastered on brochures. We wandered through the 150-year-old Chateau Labourdonnais\u2019 orchards and grand lavender-and-cream mansion straight out of Gone with the Wind<\/i>, and imagined the lives of early French plantation owners and their families on this isolated, disease-riddled island of mutinies and cyclones.<\/p>\n I realised that when I came back from the assignment and shared my out-of-resort experiences with friends who had no idea of the cultural depth, historical breadth and sensually layered texture of the island, that this is what inspires me to travel. It’s not just an exploration of the new, for me it’s about finding (and telling) the stories of a place, looking beyond the obvious and the adjective-awash brochures.<\/p>\n The trio of photos of me are by photographer Russell Smith<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n