The hauntingly beautiful graveyards, shrines and crosses that dot the mountaintops throughout the island, are a reminder of the pain and suffering of the Timorese, as are poignant customs like combing the hills for the bones of family members mowed down by militias.

Prabha Chandran describes a posting in East Timor, where peace-keeping officers live in giant containers fitted with air-conditioners, where giant octopuses dangle from palm trees and where the sea dazzles with amazing exotica.

As Indians we are so good at knocking our country that we should all live in a place like East Timor, for a while, to truly appreciate our homeland. So many things we take for granted still remain aspirations for those in poorer countries around the world. The difference between the undeveloped, half-burnt capital of Dili, where I'm now living and the crowded, 'globalising' metropolis of my hometown Delhi, couldn't be starker. After 450 years of Portuguese colonisation and 25 years of brutal Indonesian occupation, East Timor today looks exactly what it is - a place that the world forgot.

When I arrived here on a UN mission just over a year ago, I felt I'd fallen off the map - the air staff at most check-ins didn't know where East Timor was and they searched my passport in vain for a visa, from a country that didn't have embassies to provide them. I finally arrived at Dili's Nicolau Lobato International Airport which, I soon discovered, was a misnomer for a tin shed with a coconut-fringed airstrip. As the hot, wet tropical breeze stirred the dust haze on the tarmac, I queued up for the elusive visa outside a container office.

'Welcome to container city' I thought as we drove into a town where the only habitation, not razed by the departing Indonesians' scorched earth policy, consisted of giant UN metal containers fitted with air-conditioners. The peace-keeping officers lived in barracks made of neatly lined containers and most NGO offices were contained in, well, containers. Giant carcasses of discarded containers lay rusting at street corners like the fingers of the broken pier in Dili harbour that sketched an exclamation against the sky. I tried to summon up a sense of adventure to counter the dismay at the ruination and lack of modern amenities. Suddenly, the creature comforts of home seemed impossibly lavish.

My low expectations hit rock-bottom the next morning when I discovered there were no newspapers in English. English newspapers were simply not available because there was no postal service to bring them in. The little house that was to be our home for the next year was my next disappointment but my 'Oh no! We can't live here', soon changed when I saw what else was on offer. Well, at least the house was on the beach and after we'd fixed and painted it, it became quite atmospheric with dramatic sunsets, islands and palms spread outside our window like a dynamic wallpaper for our interiors. In which capital can you walk out of Parliament into an exotic reef?

But there was a flip side to my beach home as I discovered one morning when I awoke to find a giant octopus dangling from the palm tree outside my window. . How on earth did it get there? "It is for sale, mana," said my diminutive Timorese maid explaining that the big banyans and palms on the beachfront doubled as sales outlets for fishermen and up-country farmers. Soon, I stopped balking at the sight of the rainbow hue of parrot and coral fish, even a giant turtle, pigeons and other fauna for sale on the trees. The turtles here are prized for their meat and eggs and haven't escaped the ravages of a hungry population known to stir up strange stews: "I have a receipt for lunch from my local staff which shows they paid ten dollars for a dog stew," says a friend but I don't believe him till I see the bill. I try to philosophise about social conditioning - after all if one can eat goat and horse, why not dog? For unlike the international community which imports everything it eats and drinks from Australia and Indonesia, most Timorese live off the land, which produces little, as they refuse to modernise for fear of upsetting their ancestors.

Life remains nasty, brutish and short - average longevity is 49 years - but that is changing as oil comes gushing in from the sea. According to some optimistic projections, East Timor could become the next Brunei in five years, catapulting people who still live by spearing fish, onto the other side of the digital divide. It's hard to imagine when we visit the ancient penal island of Atauro across the harbour one day, to find that life has changed little in the last few centuries. There is no pollution haze shrouding its majestic mountains permanently garlanded in clouds and its azure shoreline which abounds with luminous coral reefs and strikingly painted fish. We spend an exhilarating morning studying ornamental fish, crustaceans, turtles, sea urchins, cucumbers and anemones and brilliant blue starfish. They swim in and out of the pink and red reefs, the big brain corals and the coral flowers. The wonders of our aquatic garden leave us bemused but nature has decided to dazzle us with another spectacle before the day is done.

As we head back in our little boat, a large brown body flashes briefly on the surface and some primeval instinct tells me it's a whale. We kill the engine and a few long moments drag by in silence. Suddenly, a whoosh of air sends a geyser blasting out of the sea and a huge brown minke whale rises to the surface. We gawp in disbelief as yet another comes up for air and then another and another…they are simply too massive to see in totality but we watch amazed as five mammoths crash to the surface then dive below, hissing jets of water in perfect unison through their blowholes. We hug each other as the boat rocks in a sea that is suddenly heaving with geysers - if you thought heavy breathing was for porn films you ain't heard nothing yet! Moments pass and the whales return to the depths leaving us to resume our journey. It's almost too much when a couple of dolphins decide to arc out of the water to escort us into the harbour. "And you call this a hardship post!" squeals my son who is here for his summer break. "Imagine, someone pays you to live here!"

But daily life on our little island is not some Robinson Crusoe idyll. The struggle for survival is writ large in the hungry eyes of emaciated people and mangy animals and in the bare, airless straw huts that are a breeding ground for tuberculosis and babies. Timorese women have the highest birth rate currently in the world but the post war baby boom is being levelled by a gruesome harvest of infant and maternal deaths. The Portuguese neglected this distant outpost of the empire completely - there were no roads, schools or electricity till the Indonesians invaded in 1975 - but they did leave one powerful legacy. Catholicism and the Indian descendants of some priests from Goa, Daman and Diu. The Church's strong support for the freedom struggle which decimated a third of the population, has earned Bishop Belo a Nobel Peace Prize and a devout flock.

The hauntingly beautiful graveyards, shrines and crosses that dot the mountaintops throughout the island are a reminder of the pain and suffering of the Timorese as are poignant customs like combing the hills for the bones of family members mowed down by militias. It makes me reflect how easily we in India have forgotten the pain of those who sacrificed their lives so that we may walk free. And how little we appreciate the tremendous strides we have made in joining the rest of the developed world. As I take a helicopter ride over the verdant isle, isolated black thatched huts break through the cover of a Jurassic forest and I think of the inhabitants who must walk the better part of a day to barter some basic necessities of life. Of the months they will be marooned on their mountaintops as the valleys below flood with the rains. There will be no doctors, no emergency supplies, for soon, the UN peace-keepers will depart and with them, the bulk of the infrastructure and personnel resources that kept this country ticking. Yet for all its daunting challenges, the world's youngest nation is a good news story - almost a million people freed from centuries of oppression taking their place on the world stage with pride in their fledgling democracy, their traditions and their resources. Will their hopes for a better tomorrow be belied by the greed and corruption of their freedom fighter leaders? Only time will tell. As for me, I hope its unspoilt beauty will not be over-groomed by 'development'.

Regular Verve contributor, Prabha Chandran, has been living in Timor-Leste since October 2003, working with UNFPA on the first national census of the world's newest nation. Currently with the World Bank as a communications specialist, she has also been mentoring local journalists as part of a capacity building programme.