Port Louis: Street Food & City Tour

In the district of Port Louis, lies the 1,640 m2 site where the modern indentured labour diaspora began. In 1834, the British Government selected the island of Mauritius to be the first site for what it called ‘the great experiment’ in the use of ‘free’ labour to replace slaves. Between 1834 and 1920, almost half a million indentured labourers arrived from India at Aapravasi Ghat to work in the sugar plantations of Mauritius, or to be transferred to Reunion Island, Australia, southern and eastern Africa or the Caribbean. The buildings of Aapravasi Ghat are among the earliest explicit manifestations of what was to become a global economic system and one of the greatest migrations in history.

The Jummah Mosque (Jummah Masjid; formerly Mosquée des Arabes, “Mosque of the Arabs”) is a mosque in Port Louis, Mauritius dating from the 1850s. The building combines Indian, Creole and Islamic architecture. The Jummah Mosque houses the remains of Jamal Shah (a pir from Kutch, India) in a marble tomb next to the mosque.

China Town is filled with shops, many being over a hundred years old. Some chinese families have been running their businesses for generations and would rarely opt to upgrade to newer building structures. We came across quite a few tiny and dark retail shops. These were the ones that gave us the Chinese- Orient feeling. China Town does have new generation buildings as well where some businesses operate.

Trade has always been part of the Sino-Mauritian culture. For long China Town was the trade center in Mauritius but this declined with the introduction of supermarkets on the island. China Town declined as a commercial hub and lost its former glory- many of the Chinese shops (we lovingly call them “la boutik sinwa”) were abandoned which left China Town desolate.

This bustling, lively open-air market offers a variety of goods for sale including fruit, herbs, spices and potions.

Jardins de la Compagnie is the city's most attractive garden, with its vast banyan trees, huge number of statues, quiet benches and fountains. During the day it's perfectly safe and even rather appealing, but avoid it at night, when it's a favoured hang-out for sex workers and drug addicts. In early colonial times, the garden was the vegetable patch of the French East India Company. Today, it's known for statues of local sculptor Prosper d'Épinay and much-loved musician Ti Frère.