In Singapore I boarded a Royal Interocean Lines freighter bound for Mombasa via the Seychelles. This Dutch shipping company, in common with the Norwegian Asia Line, was still accepting small numbers of passengers for its limited cabin accommodations; a concession designed primarily to provide the crew with company rather than the passengers with a less hurried mode of transportation. Once through the Malacca Straits, pausing only at Penang, it was a long, slow, leisurely voyage across a large expanse of open water until we reached that other port Victoria in Mahe, the Seychelles. Here they were just laying the foundations for the archipelago's first airport, pending which its only links with the outside world were by sea, through irregular arrivals of freighters such as ours -- on average, barely more than once a month.

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