Even luxury resorts can sometimes feel a bit romance-less. The multiple pools in lurid turquoise, the impersonal buildings and a mish-mash of watersports accoutrements spoiling the seafront views. It can also feel like there’s lots and lots of people there — families and honeymooners vying for deck chair space. Not at Shangri-La Le Touessrok.
Set on its own little promontory on Mauritius’s east coast, the hotel, which had a recent multi-million pound renovation, is ensconced in rainforest-like vegetation and dotted with majestic banyan trees. Far from feeling crowded, it often seems like you have the place to yourself.
The hotel’s five private beaches are spread across the starfish-shaped coastline — one a long stretch with swathes of white sand and squat little veloutier trees as well as smaller, more secluded ones that are often deserted. By late afternoon, the water in the natural bay of the main beach is like a mill pond, perfect for paddleboarding on.
It’s not hard to see why the resort is so popular for honeymoons and anniversaries. Sure, you might see one of the smiley hotel staff raking the sand into a heart shape around a beachside table for two, but there’s a natural romance to the place. The pathways are studded with frangipani flowers, so artfully scattered that I felt sure as I rounded corners that they would lead to someone down on one knee, waiting to propose.
The whole place is redolent of jasmine — even the towels are scented, mimicking the fragrance that the flowers around the pool give off as dusk falls.
The 185 rooms, suites and villas are dotted across the property in whitewashed wings only a few floors high, meaning the landscape is unspoiled.
I stayed in a Frangipani junior suite with sweeping views of the Indian ocean from the palm tree framed balcony.
The bedroom is all natural woods and linens, while the bathroom is more showy, bedecked in marble with a slightly gaudy glass door covered in purple swirls which felt more Austin Powers than island life. No matter, though: I whiled away afternoons in the egg shaped bath, gazing out to sea.
Mornings are spent in the breakfast buffet. There are a dizzying array of options, from shakshuka to pain au chocolat to freshly cut little mangoes. I could spend many happy hours there watching what people piled their plates with. Breakfast is included, and there are half and full board options available too.
One day we cycled a few miles on the hotel’s E-bikes to the Flacq market, a bustling hodge podge of fruit sellers, stalls with knick-knacks and local snacks. We replenished ourselves with freshly cut coconuts and sugar cane juice, before buying fresh local vanilla pods at a fraction of their cost in England, which were handily vacuum packed for my flight home.
The landscape of inland Mauritius is flat and quietly pretty, but I was more interested in the melting pot of cultures. We cycled past a church, an ornate Mosque and a brightly coloured Hindu temple right next to each other, reflecting the island’s multi-faith population. We also saw Macak monkeys and bats co-existing in neighbouring trees.
Back at the hotel, no attention to detail is spared. I was greeted with a cold scented hand towel and some sort of rejuvenating elixir in a little glass bottle, which I was told was a freshly pressed kiwi and cucumber juice.
After the exhaustion of pedalling a hi-tech E-bike I was spirited to Chi, the spa, for an excellent traditional Mauritian massage using hardened young coconuts which felt like hot stones, and fresh coconut oil.
The hotel has an incredibly familial feel, and I was told that the same families have come there for decades. There are lots of French guests, with well-behaved, unfussy children eating the elaborate dishes on offer at the various restaurants.
My favourite was Kushi, an otherworldly Japanese Omakase experience in a screened dining room by chef Harry Dangan. Dish upon dish were presented to us, including an exquisite sea bream sashimi with sharp green chili in the kind of sweet vinegary sauce you want to drink (which I did, when no one was looking).
Days could be spent wandering around the resort, playing tennis or saying hello to the hotel’s three enormous Aldabra tortoises, Fifi, Toto and Lola who live next to the kids’ centre. The oldest of them is 119.
One sunset was spent on the beach with Colin Field, the exuberant former head bartender of the Ritz Paris’s Hemingway Bar who has a residency at Le Touessrok. Field has charm to burn and whipped up extra dirty martinis (his philosophy? “Hold the vermouth”) before regaling us with tales of late nights in Paris with his great pal Kate Moss.
The resort feels like a private island with none of the inconvenience, but in case that’s not enough, there is also an actual private island called Ilot Mangénie. Surrounded by jewel-like waters, there’s a casual beachside restaurant serving freshly caught fish as well as little cabanas to spend the day in.
Shangri-La is the kind of place you where relaxation seeps into your bones. The natural soundscape of birds, the beautifully exotic trees (by the end I was considering a career pivot to arborology) and the heavily perfumed breeze were a tonic for this city-worn writer. The hotel group gets its name from a remote paradise where the people live in harmony. A fictional utopia, perhaps, but Le Touessrok gets pretty close.
Rooms from £421 per night for bed and breakfast; shangri-la.com/mauritius
