Mauritius Beyond the Beaches | Offbeat Things to do in Mauritius

Mauritius has been a country of surprises for me. One of the things that surprised me the most about the country is the large Indian origin population. Currently 70% of island's population is of Indian origin. But why are there so many Indians in Mauritius? Before I visited Mauritius, I had heard vague comments that Indians were taken there as slaves and that's why they are there in such large number. In my recent visit to the country, I learnt that the answer is much more nuanced than that.

Here's a travel vlog I made about this for my YouTube channel. You can watch it too to learn all about it.

Let's start with the place where it all started!

So what exactly is the story of Indians in Mauritius?

If you have ever wondered why Mauritius, a tiny island nation floating in the Indian Ocean thousands of kilometres from the Indian subcontinent, feels so unmistakably Indian, the answer lies almost 200 years in the past - in the year 1833.

The Great Experiment: Freedom That Created a New Problem

In 1833, the British Empire passed the Slavery Abolition Act, officially ending slavery across its colonies. It was, without question, a moral and historic step forward. But for the British, it also created an unexpected and very practical problem: their vast network of colonial plantations — especially the lucrative sugar estates - had been built entirely on the back of free, forced labour. Without enslaved workers, who would run the fields?

The British needed a new labour force, and they needed it fast. Their solution came to be known, rather clinically, as The Great Experiment a system of indentured labour that would go on to reshape the demographics of entire nations. Workers, mostly from India, were recruited (often under murky and exploitative terms) and shipped across the ocean to work on plantations in exchange for wages, food, and the promise of a return passage home after their contract ended.

This experiment began in one place before it spread across the empire: Mauritius.

Between 1834 and the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Indian indentured labourers crossed the Kala Pani - the black waters  to reach this small volcanic island. Many never returned. Instead, they built lives, families, and eventually an entire culture that endures to this day.

Sugar, Sweat, and the Story Behind the Rum

The reason the British wanted so much labour in Mauritius in the first place was sugar. The island's fertile volcanic soil and tropical climate made it perfect for sugarcane cultivation, and for decades, sugar produced here was shipped back to Britain by the East India Company, generating enormous profit for the colonisers while the Indian workers toiled in the fields under gruelling conditions.

To understand this history first-hand, a visit to one of the island's old, now non-functional sugar factories is essential. Walking through the guided tour of these silent machines - the giant crushers, boiling houses, and rusted pipelines - you can almost feel the ghosts of the labourers who once worked here from dawn to dusk.

But sugar wasn't the only thing these factories produced. Every sugar factory has a twin industry hiding in its shadow: rum. The molasses left behind after sugar extraction became the base for Mauritius's famous rum distilleries, and no visit to a sugar factory is complete without a rum tasting session at the end of the tour. This particular factory went a step further, offering tastings of an entire spectrum of sugars - brown, muscovado, demerara - alongside its rum, turning a history lesson into a genuine sensory experience.

A Culture That Refused to Fade

What makes Mauritius so remarkable is that, over nearly two centuries, the culture brought by these Indian labourers didn't dilute - it flourished. Today, Indian culture stands as one of the dominant cultural forces on the island, existing side by side with the French influence that had already taken root before the British arrived and never quite left.

This cultural fusion is visible everywhere, but nowhere more strikingly than in the island's temples. In Port Louis, the capital city, ornate Hindu temples rise between colonial buildings and modern shopfronts, a living reminder of the faith the indentured labourers carried with them across the Kala Pani and refused to abandon.

Perhaps the most sacred of these sites is Ganga Talao, also known as Grand Bassin - a crater lake considered the holiest place for Hindus in Mauritius outside of India itself. Legend holds that its waters are directly connected to the Ganges, and every year during Maha Shivratri, thousands of devotees walk for miles to reach its shores, recreating a spiritual connection to a homeland many of their ancestors never got to see again.

A Feast Fit for a Homeland

No exploration of the Indian experience in Mauritius would be complete without its food - and this is where the island truly comes alive. Beyond simply tasting the traditional Indian feast, there's something special about joining a local chef in the kitchen and getting your hands into the cooking itself.

The centrepiece of this feast is the legendary seven curries - a spread that has become a cultural institution on the island, typically served on banana leaves during religious and festive occasions. Alongside it, two dishes stand out for their uniquely Mauritian character: the palm heart salad, made from the tender core of palm trees and often dubbed "millionaire's salad" for its labour-intensive preparation, and takker, a rustic accompaniment that rounds out the meal with texture and flavour. Cooking these dishes alongside a local chef isn't just a culinary exercise - it's a hands-on lesson in how Indian food travelled across an ocean and evolved into something distinctly its own.

The Sugarcane Fields: Where It All Began

And finally, no trip exploring this history would feel complete without standing in the very fields that started it all. The sugarcane plantations of Mauritius aren't just scenic backdrops for photographs - they are the literal ground on which this entire story was built. As the popular saying goes, if you go to Mauritius and don't visit the sugarcane fields, you haven't really been to Mauritius at all.

It's fitting, too, that these very fields have found their way into pop culture  most famously as the lush, golden backdrop for one of Bollywood's most iconic musical moments, in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. What began as a site of colonial exploitation and hard indentured labour has, generations later, become a symbol of romance and beauty on the silver screen - a strange and poignant full circle for a story that started with chains and ended, in some small way, with song.

A Living Legacy

From the abolition of slavery in 1833 to the sugarcane fields immortalised in Bollywood cinema, Mauritius tells a story of resilience that spans continents and centuries. The Indian labourers who arrived under "The Great Experiment" didn't just work the land - they transformed it, leaving behind temples, food, festivals, and a cultural imprint so strong that nearly 200 years later, it remains one of the most defining characteristics of this island nation.