Seychelles — where to go and when
2 destinations covered
Two granite islands carry the Seychelles here, and granite is the word that matters, because these are not coral atolls but the high points of a drowned continental fragment. That is why boulders the size of houses stand in the water and why forest climbs to real summits. The larger island holds the airport, the capital, the hospitals and a mountain spine that makes its two coasts behave differently on the same day, wind piling weed on one shore while the other lies flat, a few minutes apart over a pass. The second island is lower and quieter, and keeps at its centre a valley of endemic palms surviving from the forest these islands wore before anyone arrived. Costs come in about a fifth beneath French levels, the narrowest gap of any Indian Ocean destination published here, and that figure is the honest headline: self-catering rather than resorts is how most independent travellers make the archipelago work.
When to go
Our comfort filter keeps August alone for the Seychelles, and that says something about humidity rather than sounding a warning. Temperature is near constant, 31.9 °C at the April peak against 28.7 °C at the July floor, but 2426.5 mm of rain falls across 154 days a year, which no filter will ever call comfortable. Read the trade winds instead. April and October are the turns between them, with light air and the clearest water of the year. June to August is the driest stretch, 64.3 mm in August, at the cost of a choppy sea.
Months our records favour across the country
The places we cover, side by side
| Place | Favourable months | Warmest month, avg. high (°C) | Coldest month, avg. high (°C) | Rainy days a year (≥ 1 mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mahe | August | 31.9 | 28.7 | 154 |
| Praslin | August | 31.9 | 28.7 | 154 |
Figures measured at the weather station nearest each place, then averaged over the warmest and the coldest months of the year — not over a fixed calendar season. Each destination page carries its own month-by-month table, its station and its sample size.
Getting around
A fast passenger ferry links the two islands in about an hour, several times a day, and it is cheaper and more dependable than the short flight covering the same 46 km. Each island has an airport of its own, 9 km and 5 km from the places published here. On the larger island a bus network serves the coast roads for very little money; on the smaller one, distances are short enough that bicycles and a handful of taxis handle everything.
Budget
Country price level compared with France : −21 %
Price index for restaurants and hotels, France = 1000, from European purchasing power parities. It is a country average: it says nothing about one hotel in particular.
Destinations in Seychelles
MaheMahé is the largest of the Seychelles and the one that carries the archipelago's infrastructure: the international airport, the capital, the hospitals, the ferry quays. It is also…
PraslinPraslin is the second island of the Seychelles, a low granite ridge with a single loop road around it and a palm forest in its middle. Its two…Frequently asked questions
Can the Seychelles be visited on an ordinary budget?
Possible, with effort. Guesthouses and self-catering flats cost a fraction of the resorts, buses are cheap, and the best beaches are public and free. Food is the stubborn item, since almost everything is imported, and markets and takeaway stalls are how residents close that gap. What does not scale down is the airfare and the inter-island transport.
Which island should a first visit choose?
Both, and in that order if the dates allow. The larger island absorbs the arrival, offers the widest choice of accommodation and the mountain walks; the smaller one gives the palm valley and calmer beaches. Splitting a week four nights to three is the usual pattern, with the ferry taken in daylight so that the crossing counts as part of the trip.
Updated on 21 September 2026