It is a strange view of island life from down here, some 150m below the surface of the Indian Ocean. Diving is a popular sport in these parts – indeed, it is widely ranked as one of the best five dive spots on the planet. But this is diving of another order, on the world’s largest, deepest-diving passenger submarine. It is very Boy’s Own. As you board you are reassured that the Whale, as the vessel is called, has enough air and supplies to keep a full passenger complement of 50 going for 100 hours in the event of an emergency. But even by the 99th hour you may not have tired of the sights: the weird marine life, the coral, the cliché crystalline seas.
Back on the surface, things are on the up. The Maldives may be the world’s smallest Asian state, with a population of only 300,000, and it may have suffered badly during the tsunami of 2004, which killed over 100 and left over $400m of damage, contracting GDP the following year by 3.6 percent and threatening to wipe out its cash crop for good: the 680,000 or so tourists who visit every year. Perhaps out of necessity, it effected a remarkable recovery – in 2006 it saw an 18 percent increase in GDP and by 2007 it was recording the highest GDP per capita of all south Asian countries outside of the Persian Gulf.
Tourism has seen a capital injection that, once again, has made the Maldives something of a dream destination, with recent months seeing new promotion drives into South Africa and Eastern Europe. Earlier this year the Holiday Inn opened its first property on the islands, in their capital, Male, the city’s first international-class hotel. Its conference and communication facilities are likely to help make the Maldives a more attractive business convention destination. Airlines too are looking to the archipelago: direct charter flights from Milan and Frankfurt to Male Airport are now on line, China Eastern has started flying direct from Shanghai, Singapore Airlines has launched a daily route and Island Aviation Service, effectively the Maldives’ internal airline, has in recent years doubled its fleet.
Granted there is not much to do when travellers get here, with, excepting the national museum and markets full of lacquered handicrafts, none of the cultural highlights that (together with time pressure) have seen a huge boom in city breaks over the last five years. This is water sports and spa territory, a getaway location for those wanting to abandon all thought, indulge the senses, feel the sand between the toes. And that seems to be more than enough for most people. The Maldives have recently won a World Travel Awards nomination for best Indian Ocean destination (the winner is announced this November), hotly tipped to triumph over the likes of Mauritius and the Seychelles. Last year it picked up their World’s Most Romantic Destination Award. For praise from the horse’s mouth, last year Conde Nast Traveller’s readers’ awards gave the archipelago its Best Island Award, with the highest possible mark for its beaches.
The Maldives have even found themselves in company with the likes of Rolex, Bose and Ducati – according to research body YouGov and the UK Superbrands organisation, the Maldives is now officially one of its ‘CoolBrands’. That is because its scope of hotels – from ultra-luxury and private hideaways, through to more barefoot chic for the would-be castaway (who still likes a turn-down service) – has made it “extremely desirable among many style leaders and influencers”, according to the Superbrands survey.
Of course, while the hotels are of a high standard – Cocoa Island Resort, Huvafenfusi and the Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa are among those that pick up their own gongs – they are not why people come to the Maldives. Location, location, location, as property agents have it: and it is small wonder that early this year the Maldives were nominated for the New Seven Wonders of Nature campaign launched by the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation, an organisation running a global poll to find the world’s seven natural wonders. The results are not out until 2011. But the Maldives must be in the front running.
After all, some 89 of the coral islands may now have resorts, with others in the pipeline – that is going some for a tourist industry that did not exist here before 1972, when it rescued the islands, economically, from dependence on fishing (even as the fishing industry here also revamped, the traditional dhoni fishing boats undergoing mechanisation and a fish canning plant opening). That might suggest some crowded, loutish ‘all you can drink’ arrangement – the Costa Del Sol with coconuts, the coconut being the national tree. And certainly publicity stunts such as 2005’s attempt to break the world dive record – bringing together 1,000 locals and tourists in a bid to top the 722 gathered at the Thailand’s Koh Tao Underwater Festival earlier the same year – do not really help to counter this impression.
But a broader look at the figures is reassuring. Never mind all those resorts – only 185 of the archipelago’s islands are even occupied. And there are 1,190 of them in the chain, closely packed along the equator and accounting for only one percent of the country’s 90,000sq. km territory. Most of that is water – transparent, warm, turquoise water. That means, for anyone willing to get on one of the many charter boats, a day spent on an island alone is quite feasible. And few experiences are better able to clear the head of the daily round of meetings and decisions than playing at Robinson Crusoe.
Most will return for supper at one of the growing number of top-rated restaurants, with local, European and fusion cuisines all available, often accompanied by a Bodu Beru dance troupe. But those who want to live hand to mouth have washed up on the right isles. Covered in lush vegetation and rain forest, banana, breadfruit, plantain and papaya are all native. Keep your eye out for giant fruit bats, scorpions and flying foxes after the same snacks. The wildlife is as exotic as the flora.
Indeed, the hospitality industry here seems especially adept at creative escapism, at making the best of the natural resources to create an adventurous environment acutely unlike that experienced by big city dwellers. This past summer, for example, saw the Shangri-La hotel company’s Villingili Resort and Spa launch some new 218sq. m villas, complete with private infinity pool. The difference? The villas are perched some 12ft up in the canopies of beach-front trees. These tree-houses are Famous Five stuff, if Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog also travelled to Kirrin Island by powerboat and drank champagne instead of ginger beer.
Certainly while the lap of luxury, and its cosy, cashmere-wrapped comfort, is never far away, the Maldives does present a sweetened taste of the great outdoors. There are plenty of spectacular beaches to lie on, for those for whom sun, space, sand and Stephen King are plenty. The Maldives may have been a British colony – it achieved full political independence in 1965, when it continued as a sultanate under the fantastically-named Ibrahim Nasir Rannabandeyri Kelegefan for three years before becoming a republic – but the climate could not be less British: the temperature rarely drops below 77ºF, with a monsoon season most pronounced in June and July and winter sunshine more or less a sure thing. The first settlers of the islands, around 2000 BC, were the Redin, seafarers who worshipped the sun. They came to the right place.
For the more active type, the diving, sailing, snorkelling and wind-surfing are all world-class, with night fishing a must-have experience – it is something of a local tradition, offering cooler conditions for the fishermen and, if the catch is poor, the pleasure of a few hours rocking under a star-spangled sky. Whale and dolphin watching is also memorable, especially since the Maldives are a magnet to marine biologists who rank it one of the best places in the world for studying over 20 species that call the Maldives home. Spinner dolphins congregate around the islands in their tens of thousands, so sightings from the many safari boats are frequent, but the greatest animal on earth, the blue whale, also stops by. Don’t mistake it for another island.
It would be hard to mistake the Maldives for any other islands, that much is clear. They have their regulars, but visiting is really a once in a lifetime event, worth every laaree (though US dollars are accepted in most places). It is a place as far from the grind of the desk as might be imagined. One phrase in dhivehi, the local language, that you won’t need often? ‘Gadin kihaa ireh?’ ‘What time is it?’
