Clearly I was dreaming.

Id drifted to sleep somewhere between Port Louis, the shabby but atmospheric capital of this remote island in the Indian Ocean, and the Grand Bassin lake, rocked into a pleasant slumber as my taxi wove its way down serpentine roads fringed by sugar cane fields. Without warning, the line between reverie and reality blurred as my eyes snapped open to behold a 108-foot statue of Lord Shiva gazing down benevolently at my drowsy figure.

I closed my eyes. I opened them again. Nope. Definitely awake.

My cabdriver, Roshan, led me past an entrance guarded indomitably by Shiva and his colossal trident to approach Ganga Talao, Mauritius answer to Indias sacred Ganges River. The late-afternoon sun glinted off a lake flanked by statues of Hanuman, Lakshmi and Vishnu while services were underway at the temple. This is the holiest site in Mauritius for the nations Hindu majority; every year during the Mahashivratri festival, Roshan told me, he walks here barefoot, three hours from his home in Rose Hill, alongside a half-million other devotees from across the island.

Somewhere not far from where I stood in Shivas shadow, people were living the tropical clich immortalized on office desktops across the globe. Not even a dozen miles away, revelers reclined on the sand, sipping languidly from straws piercing coconuts while they meditated on the color of the ocean. Is it azure? Turquoise? Cerulean? Its a Socratic dialogue that could take a whole day to resolve. Most tourists come to Mauritius for worship of a different sort than I found at Ganga Talao, a pilgrimage to the altar of the sun gods.

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After his visit to the Indian Ocean outpost in 1896, Mark Twain wrote, From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius was made first and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.

This prototype for paradise first entered my consciousness in the 1990s, when Mauritius became a preferred Bollywood dream-song setting. To wit: the hirsute heartthrob Akshay Kumar and the lissome Shilpa Shetty aggressively thrusting their pelvises incongruously to the lilting melody of Churake Dil Mera in the 1994 caper Main Khiladi Tu Anari. My limited impressions of the island were similar to those of the millions who converge on its all-inclusive resorts, only extricating themselves from beach chairs for the occasional constitutional toward the pool.

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As a freshman at Boston College, I befriended my first Mauritian over a shared love of Bollywood films. Santosh became a source of endless fascination: I thought he was Indian, but he spoke English with a French accent, chatted with his parents in Creole and said he was from Africa. Where in the world could so many cultures meet?

Were 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, its that compelling mosaic that lured me to Mauritius 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.

The volcanic isle was first discovered by the Arabs in A.D. 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 poignant Aapravasi Ghat museum, at the immigration depot turned UNESCO World Heritage site where they first came ashore.

Layers of migration have left an indelible imprint; today, nearly 70 percent of Mauritius 1.3 million citizens are of Indian descent, with Creoles, Sino-Mauritians and Franco-Mauritians rounding out the mix. Emerging from Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport on a humid evening, I followed signs that read EXIT in English, French, Hindi and Chinese.

Ultimately, the uniqueness of the place is in its people, Santosh said. Weve evolved our own breed fairly distinct from the origins each one of us came from. You have people who are sort of Indian but not really Indian, sort of African but not really African.

Todays Mauritius could be a role model for racial harmony (in these troubled times, the rest of the world might want to pay attention), but the countrys cultures mingle most effortlessly in the food. Disparate culinary traditions have collided here for centuries, and the result is a cuisine simmering with Indian, French, Chinese and Creole flavors.

But really, what of those beaches? Theres good reason tourists throng Long Beach, Grand Baie, Belle Mare and Le Morne, but the ways the locals experience the ocean is quite different from foreign sunseekers. On a secluded stretch of the beach Flic en Flac, on the islands western coast, I bought hunks of pineapple drizzled in tamarind and chili salt and enjoyed my snack in near solitude. I expected more tourists at Blue Bay in the east, but instead was surrounded by a flock of women singing and dancing to Bhojpuri songs. I struck up a conversation in Hindi with a few ladies swaying shyly at the periphery. Its a day off from the husbands, kids and responsibility, one of them told me of their monthly picnics.

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In Mauritius, Secluded Beaches, Verdant Hills and Harmony - NRToday.com