“We’re a bit like a puzzle,” said Santosh, when we reunited on his turf over 15 years later. “There are very distinct pieces. People have held onto their own identities but found a way to make it work, so it fits into a picture of its own.” In the end, it’s that compelling mosaic that lured me to Mauritius’s shores. Scouring social media would lead a prospective visitor to believe that the island ends where the resorts do. I was eager to explore what lay beyond plunge pools and bath butlers. Photo The volcanic isle was first discovered by the Arabs in 975; but when the Dutch landed on Mauritius in 1598, it was uninhabited — aside from wildlife like the dodo, a bird famously rendered extinct by Europeans but still resplendent on Mauritian rupee notes today . The French came in the 1700s, followed by the British. With the 1835 abolition of slavery, migrants flooded in from the east: Indian indentured laborers and Chinese shopkeepers. The Indians’ struggles are chronicled in Port Louis...
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