Six Senses Zil Pasyon, Félicité, Seychelles
Where is it?
You take a plane, then another smaller plane, then a cab through the rainforest then a helicopter out to a private island and you’re there. You can’t miss it.
Why so lovely?
There is no shortage of beautiful private island resorts in the Seychelles but this one really does take the totally vegan Party Ring iced biscuit. Jaw-droppingly beautiful, the villas are scattered across the property so you feel almost like you have the place to yourself with golf-buggies – or bikes – to shuttle you between your villa and the restaurants and spa and bars that make up this place. All this in the middle of beautiful nowhere.
First impressions
Whisking into anywhere on a helicopter (speed boats are available if you want the sea breeze) is always going to make a person feel swishy but when you’re greeted by waving staff, handed freshening towels and scooped up to your villa on one of those golf buggies, you really do feel that you’re in a different world altogether.
And the accommodations?
We don’t like to over-egg things when it comes to describing smart hotels but bloody hell. Travelling with a friend who is not a partner, the management have decided to put us in what they modestly call a ‘two bedroom’. What they really mean is a ‘two villa concept joined by a private infinity pool where the water comes out of a rock and down a waterfall surrounded by palms and looking out to sea’. But you can call it a two bedroom if you like.
There are huge free-standing baths (with rubber ducks) looking out on that view, because, I don’t know about you, but I like my super-luxe with a cheeky wink, a sparkle in its eye. And showers you could fit a five-a-side football team in and still have elbow room for soaping, glass doors that slide right back so that inside becomes outside, and you can run from your modern take on the four-poster bed straight into the pool while someone cooks you up a feast on the in-villa barbecue between those two ‘bedrooms’.
And the food?
The inside-becomes-outside thing – quite a theme at this place – continues into the eating areas. We have a vegan creole lunch with miso soup and tofu and a vinegary gazpacho with sweet coconut for lunch one day, a pumpkin, lemongrass and coconut soup with garlic crackers the next in a restaurant with a café feel looking out to sea. And you can have dinner on the beach and, before that, champagne on what’s known as the Passion Deck – some rocks looking out to where a sunset is about to explode all over the sky. If you’re ever going to propose to someone, that’s your spot (be sure to book it for privacy, mind).
What is there to do?
Eat, drink, have a rum-tasting in the colonial-feeling bar where you will almost certainly overdo it… Or get a buggy to take you to one of the beaches, which you might just/mostly probably will have all to yourself. And make sure you splash out on a spa treatment: apart from having the most amazing views of any spa you can imagine with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to sea, there’s a small pool, seemingly carved out of the rocks where you can take in the sunset or watch the huge fruit bats wheeling about in the air.
And the gay bit?
Well, it’s a private island so you might have to take your own gay bit but same-sex activity has been legal in the Seychelles since 2016 and they have workplace protections for LGBT employees that are light years ahead of most places in the region – so while it may not be downtown Mykonos, things are moving in all the right directions.
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