50 shades of blue - The Maldives!
Travel; travel to broaden your vision and to see what you cannot see without traveling! - Aparna Tiwari
It has been my favorite hobby to shortlist the next possible travel destination and plan an itinenrary that helps me experience the most without spending a lot. When I make travel plans, I always aim to gather unique experiences and learn local culture. Usually I travel with my husband who also loves to travel and is becoming an explorer like me ;). I also love to have my friends or family join me on my trips whenever its possible for them. I have also done some solo trips that made me a different person altogether, my other blogs will highlight more details on my solo trips. For now, I hope some people can find this blog helpful and some who has already traveled can share their experiences which will help me learn something new.
About Destination
I chose to start my first blog with Maldives since I feel this has been the best destination out of 14 countries I have traveled till date.
Maldives encompass more than 99 % of the sea and less than 1 % of the land. The 99 % of the sea is home to one of the most diverse marine treasures of the world. Less than 1 % of the land is a masterpiece in natural landscaping. It is located on top of a vast underwater mountain range have around 1190 islands and sandbanks and it is ranked the third most endangered nation due to flooding from climate change.
Maldives is an assortment of various small islands with Male’ being the biggest island and hence capital of Maldives. Any resort or hotel you have chosen to live in will always be on the island other than Male’. To commute to these islands you would require a public boat (called as dhoni in Maldives) or a private boat or a sea plane that can be arranged by respective resort/hotel. Maldives being one of the premium destinations for vacation and honeymoon, resorts/water villa experience can cost you a lot.
Our choice of stay - the best desicion of this trip
My idea of vacation is always to spend less for the place of stay and spend more on activities and food, hence after huge research on all hotel websites we decided to stay in 2 islands mainly - Mahibadhoo which is a 945m wide inhabitated island 80 kms away from Male’ and Maafushi which is more of a commercial island 26 km away from Male’.
We chose to stay in Mahibadhoo, primarily for 5 days, out of our 7 day trip because we chose to stay with Mazin’s family in his guest house named Amazing Noovilu. I came across this guest house after my intense research on hotels and resorts, and relalized how expensive it is to stay in a resort plus water activities were exorbitantly expensive. We never wanted to spend a lot but we definitely wanted to experience lot of things hence Amazing Noovilu was a reasonable deal and turned out to be the best decision of our trip.
Last 2 days, of 7 days, were spent in Maafushi to experience the commercial side of Maldives ofcourse the former experience was better and undefinable, anyday. We did not do any water activity in Maafushi, since everything was expensive and commercialised and we already did watersports during our stay with Mazin. We chose to stay at the beach and explored the island on rented bi-cycle.
We made this trip to celebrate our 4th Marriage anniversary in the month of February 2015.
Local tastes
We make it a point to always try the local cuisine—no matter where we are travelling. Here at Mazin’s Noovilu we had a great chance to eat local food with his family which we greatly appreciated, specially his family’s hospitality was incomparable. We had our breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked by Mazin’s wife and sister, this gave us good opportunity to try Maldivian local food. I am unable to recall the dish name which was my most favorite - but in my words it was Maldivian Tuna fish bhurji with hot chapati. We also had fresh passion fruit juice everyday.
In Maafushi we had a lavish buffet, on the beach, which had great spread of local dishes and the highlight was Maldivian styled grilled Tuna over a garden bbq grill.
Favorite Spot
Though every place in Maldives is so beautiful that it makes difficult for us to say any one spot is my favorite. As soon as we landed at Male’ airport we were mesmerised by the beauty and color of water, we ended up doubting if the water could be so blue!
We haven't counted how many shades we witnessed during our whole trip, but if someone is tasked to do so, one could probably count close to 50 shades of blue color in the surrounding (to my best assumption), hence the title of this blog!
It is very difficult to funnel down to any one favorite spot out of all the places we visited in Maldives, hence, I would mention spots that gave us the most unique experience:
1) Snorkelling in the non commercial and pristine coral reef locations where visbility under water can be compared to looking on the other side of a transparent mirror and I witnessed things that I could have never been able to imagine even in best of my dreams - colorful reefs, fishes of different colors, shapes and sizes, sun rays getting inside the sea water making everything look like a fairy land and what not! Life under sea can never be explained in words and it can only be experienced. And to make a difference we also did night snorkelling wich was very unique and scary experience for us.
2) Sand banking - This was, another, most unique experience of the trip when Mazin took us in his boat in middle of the sea and asked us to get off his boat - it was a little shocking moment for us but we knew we will be experiencing something unique. Sand banking is banking on a small peice of land (about less than 10 meters) under water that emerges out of the sea due to low tide and stays under water otherwise. We were fortunate enough to experience sun downing on this small peice of land surrounded by blue water all around and at the same time enjoying our evening tea.
3) Camping on unhabitated island - Mazin took us to an unhabitated small island and we spent our whole day under small white tent on the beach. If there exists a pure blue color then I would say I have witnessed it right here. We snorkelled around the island, took power naps on the white sand, had Maldivian snack in eve while enjoying sunset and came back home completely tanned which I didnt bothered till I reached back home!
New Maldives traveler essentials
1) While booking your resort/guest house or hotel make sure to book all inclusive package deal (including food/drinks and commute), else you may end up paying huge for food and your commute specially.
2) Do keep motion sickness pills, you would require these the most since most of the commute in Maldives is on the water and not having motion sickness pill can spoil your journey - this is based on our experience :)
3) Plan your flight timings according to public ferry (dhoni) as they run on a specific schedule. Be mindful of the fact that all public ferry/boats are closed on a Friday - so if you have your connecting flight on a Friday, you will end up paying anywhere between USD 150 to 500 per person, one way, for a sea plane or a private boat, ofcourse sea plane will be more expensive anyday. A public ferry would cost you around USD 30 per person one way.
4) Its a Muslim country so alcohol is only available in 5 star resorts, you cannot take alcohol with you in your luggage so beware and respect this fact.
5) Staying in resorts can be very expensive and water activities are commercialised and can be equally expensive. My personal suggestion would be to spend majority of days in a guest house or less expensive place where you can customize water activities according to your own taste and then take experience of 5 star resorts or water villas which will give you taste of both sides of Maldives, plus will be easy on pocket too.
Overall, an experience to Remember!
Apart from all the activities we did in Mahibadhoo we also spent every night sitting next to the beach in the moonlight feeling breeze and sound of the sea waves, ate Maldivian food with Mazin’s family, met Ritchie (Macau bird), saw Maldivian local performance, danced on Maldivian folk song and discussed bollywood every night with Mazin and his crew while sitting in a small and only cafe in Mahibadhoo by the sea. It was an amazing experience to stay in Amazing Noovilu. Maafushi was a short stay for us but we enjoyed exploring the island on bi-cycle and enjoyed our relaxing time on the beach. I usually watch my photos to revisit the beautiful memories made on the trip and it got refreshed again with more details while I was writing this blog.
For all those people who have not visited Maldives, I am sure you will be enticed to book your next vacation to this place before this place submerges under sea and for the people who already have visited can correlate with the beautiful experiences in common.
http://www.visitmaldives.com/
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