Surprisingly, this is a question that still gets asked quite often. On a number of occasions, when Seychelles has come up in conversation, people have asked if it’s located in the Pacific Ocean. I’m not too sure why many believe this to be the case. I can only assume that it’s because when you think of tropical islands, your mind immediately tends to conjure up images of places like Hawaii and Samoa.
In any case, we’re going to clear up all of the confusion in this post.
Seychelles on the Map
First off, it’s important to note that Seychelles is actually made up of 115 islands. Altogether, they occupy a land area of about 455km² and have an Exclusive Economic Zone of about 1.4 million km².
The Seychelles islands are stretched between 4° and 10° south of the equator, hence the lovely tropical climate.
The islands themselves are positioned in the Indian Ocean, between 480km and 1600km off the eastern coast of Africa. This means that Seychelles falls within the African continent.
In addition, Seychelles is located in close proximity to the islands of Madagascar and Mauritius (among others). It is just under 1900km northeast of Madagascar and approximately 2000km southwest of the Maldives, another popular holiday destination.
The Islands
The 115 islands of Seychelles are divided into the inner islands and the outer islands. The inner islands make up about 54% of Seychelles and the remaining 46% is taken up by the outer islands. You can learn more about all the islands here. The post gives you a breakdown of all the main islands and island groups.
Geografica de Seychelles, No Machine Readable Author Provided, Assumed Plaerdemavida, CC BY-SA 3.0
Most of the islands of the Seychelles are uninhabited. The three most populated islands are Mahé, Praslin and La Digue. Mahé is the main island of Seychelles. It is where the majority of the Seychelles population reside. As of December 2020, the population of Seychelles stood at 98,963 (Seychelles National Bureau of Statistics).
Mahé is also home to the Seychelles International Airport. All flights to Seychelles will touch down on Mahé. It is then possible to travel to other islands via boat, plane or helicopter.
The Seychelles is located in the UTC+4 time zone. For some more useful facts about Seychelles, please visit our Seychelles Fact Sheet page.
I hope this has answered any questions you may have had about where Seychelles is located. If you want to learn more about the islands, its culture, history or cuisine, then navigate to our Discovery Page.
If there is anything that you want to know, feel free to ask us in the comments or send us a message through our contact form.
Featured Image Credit: Flag of Seychelles, Fabio Calamosca, CC BY 2.0, Flickr
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Very cool! Love to learn about new places. Thanks for sharing 🙂
This is a great post as I wasn’t exactly sure before where the Seychelles is. 😀
Thanks Laura. A lot of people still don’t as we’re so tiny and sometimes not even on the map. Lol.