morne blanc

This is a short moderate trek up to a viewpoint where you will have an excellent view of the western side of Mahé during good weather. It's quite a steep climb for those of us that favour Beer over Burpees. If you are lucky you will also see fruit bats perched (if that's the right word) in the trees on your way up to the top. It takes about 30-45 minutes to reach the top. Just abandon your car near the start on Sans Soucis Rd - everyone else does!The viewing platform needs some work although I'm sure it's perfectly safe.

We went there as a group of 3 and it took us 30 minutes to get there. Once we arrived at the top, you can see a very nice and beautiful view, you can see Port Glaud, Grande Anse Mahe, Anse Boileau and other little district. the view is marvelous.

It took us 45 minutes to reach the summit, good trek, really enjoyed it. Worth the hike to see the views of the island.

The hike itself is really short (30-60min depending on your fitness/interest of the surroundings..). The view on top is among the best in the indian ocean. Really worth it !

The view and lookout point on top is so worth it, you would probably not stop if you knew how awesome it was.Having a picnic at the top allowed my friends and I to truly take in the sunshine. Bring plenty of water.

We really enjoyed the lush surroundings and stunning views at the top of this hour long hike and would well recommend it. Trainers or walking shoes are a must. We only saw 3 other hikers on the whole route, which is steep and a bit slippy in places but very manageable and we had the viewing platform at the top to ourselves. On the way there is much to admire and photograph including lots of indigenous plants, skinks, bird life (including gorgeous tropicbirds) and we even managed to spot a couple of elusive Tenrecs (look a bit like a cross between a hedgehog and a shrew). We parked on the road near the starting point, which is close to the Seyte tea factory. The shop here stocks amazing locally produced Vanilla tea which we would highly recommend as the perfect inexpensive souvenir/gift for family/friends.

This moderately-difficult hike was definitely worth the sweat we put in! The views at the top are stunning, even on a cloudy day. It is a fairly steep incline, but with natural steps added for the trickiest parts, and it is not too long. We are fairly fit, and did the entire trip ( including a few minutes snapping pictures at the top) in about an hour.

If you are the normal traveller, taking things easy on your holiday , the hike is quite difficult but it does not go on for very long (45 mins average).The view is more than worth it. Go on a sunny day, preferably in the morning

To an avid and serious hiker/short-term-visitor in Seychelles, the dilemma remains whether to go up this highest mountain at all (I talk of the Morne Seychellois – the 905m highest peak of Mahe) and if to go, go with a guide or just take to the route with the help of the markings, imagining the markings were to exist.With this in mind and somehow getting to know the starting point of the trek, we took a stand to accomplish this once and for all. But the idea remained that some research and patience should be invested into this venture before we really do it. To assuage our feeling, we did a half way uphill trek to ascertain what is the route like; is it doable within the confines of the daylight without a guide; are there markings; does it involve rock climbing in the end and some more such questions. The assurances on these above points received by us on our exploratory visit were good enough to enroll us for the task; so we set out to do this when the weather presented itself clear.Since the route (at least till the half way) is confusing in parts and one could end up elongating one’s journey by going various ways, even sometimes coming back a certain length to get on the right path uphill, we decided to go with our own set of yellow ribbons. This is not to say we did not find any markings; we did find many yellow and red paint markings on the rocks/trees, but many were found hidden - probably taken over by vegetation as time passes. But they still were helpful.We did learn that the route is confusing not only while going uphill, but also while coming back downhill. Well from our side, we have situated approximately 85 yellow ribbons on the route, which would help anyone daring to go up that mountain. Of course, one should take the help of those yellow and red paint markings as well. A common mistake, done by the people marking the paint, has been done only on one side of a tree or the rock; hence these signs are mostly visible while going uphill and only a few visible while coming downhill. On that day of our touching the top, we hoped that the paint marking could have been made as a full circle on the tree trunks so that the mark is seen from all sides. Hopefully, our yellow ribbon shall help do this job for the seekers, at least for some time in the open nature.The route can broadly be divided into four parts. First is steep uphill confusing path. Second a flat wooded forest (again confusing). Third is also steep uphill through moist thick forest. The last leg is some zig-zag of uphill walking. In the third and fourth legs of the route, fallen trees hamper the walk compelling one to sometimes take a circuitous route which needs to be done carefully. The first, third and fourth leg will also manyatimes require one to use all-fours. If it starts raining, the complexity is increased; well, in our case, it did rain while we were on the third and fourth leg of the route at both times going uphill and coming downhill. It was very cloudy, moist and rainy at the top also on that day. The first and second leg route was completely dry – we were lucky that way. Incidentally, in the third and fourth leg of the journey, there are very few paint markers (if only, they are near the very top); or maybe we could not find them.I must mention that on our first exploratory visit, we came across snakes four times at different venues; twice going up and twice coming down. It looked the same species on all four counts – a black one, approximately half meter in length and about one inch in diameter. This is the only hike done by us wherein we have encountered snakes and well people say there are no poisonous snakes in Seychelles. I wouldn’t say it led to any cause for panic for us.Overall, the views while on Morne Seychellois are awesome if it is a clear sunny day. The feeling and partial views are superb even on a moist rainy day; but the terrain becomes dangerous that way. Its approximately 3.5 hours uphill to the top and more or less the same time to come downhill. The starting point is at exactly four kilometer drive away on chemin sans souci (the road which goes to Port Glaud from eastern side), i.e., driving towards Mont Fleuri from Victoria and (after the Citimart round-about) taking the right turn on sans souci road. At exactly four kilometer mark on that road, there is an old road-barrier pillar on the left hand side of the road. The hike starts right in front of the barrier pillar across the road.Enjoy the Bliss of this Journey while in this island Paradise…

It wasn`t that easy to follow the route for untrained person but the views were incredible! Drizzling was the only thing that didn`t give me the opportunity to fully enjoy the trial.