The Real Maldives

This summer I not only managed to realise the dream of seeing the coral islands with palms, the breathtaking colours of the sea, swimming among the most incredible fish, but I managed to do it at affordable prices and, above all, living among the inhabitants of the Maldives, with another ten or so Italians, yes, but on a REAL island! As always I did everything via the internet and taking ideas and suggestions from previous travel accounts, I combined a 10-day tour of Sri Lanka with a week in the Maldives, which are barely an hour's flight from that country. For the long flights, we travelled with Emirates and for the short one with China Eastern Airlines, spending a total of 850 each. Among the cheapest options for doing the Maldives alone, you should have a look at Turkish Airlines, possibly with plenty of advance time.

Then, for 730 € each, with the agency we organised through, we got: transfer by speedboat to our island (these transports can be really expensive and local services only exist in the morning and I'm not sure they serve all the islands thoroughly, but I strongly doubt it), all meals, daily transport to different islands and beaches of the atoll by boat with some Maldivians who stayed with us, even at sea, 2 fishing outings and any equipment such as fins or other, if they had your size. We slept on a fishermen's island of 700 inhabitants, where there is no asphalt or cars, but there is the call of the Muezzin, the school and a social centre open at certain hours, where you could play table tennis or, much better, Carrooms, a game of Indian origin that got us involved in fierce challenges.

In fact, since 2004, the year of the tsunami that fortunately and incredibly claimed ONLY 77 lives in the Maldives, but certainly brought economic damage, the government has also authorised the islands without Resorts to open up to tourism, creating bed & breakfasts or small and simple hotels. Naturally the rules of Islam must be respected, in clothing and in only frequenting the tourist beaches, designated as such. But respecting them was easy. Everything was magical and, both among the Italians and the Maldivians we met, some turned out to be truly special people. The emotion that this shared life stirred in us seems to push into the background the wonders offered by the sea, but obviously it isn't so, it's just that it almost seems banal to describe the colours seen, both of the water and of the fish.

I realise that words wouldn't be enough or would make me seem sentimental or visionary: I can only say that, although I had been to the Red Sea and although I have seen so many documentaries... well, exactly this: now I see documentaries with a TOTALLY different eye. In short, you have to go to understand. To understand what it really means to be "at sea level", to see the shark, the napoleon fish, the turtle or the sea eagles that literally "fly" beneath you, to move among so many fish, and so different, that you have no memory to describe them, to see how tongues of sand or tufts of palms seem to "rest" on the water, in the middle of the ocean, or to get soaked in a tropical storm that in an instant changes every colour around you and soaks you to the bone. To see what a barrier reef means and what the marine abyss means, with the many gigantic shadows you glimpse.

To this, I add the emotion of being among them, the Maldivians. They, who inevitably lead a life so different from yours, but who constantly try to tell you about it with words and actions, who with patience and irony explain the game of Carrooms to you, who give you the weather forecast better than the meteorologist, who build everything out of nothing, but always with exquisite taste, who always offer you something and who, on the last evening, to make you leave with an even greater nostalgia, if possible, entertain you by surprise with an ancient and magical dance organised for you and in which you find yourself swept up, dancing like a madman in the middle of them. A dance played to the rising rhythm of the drum, a drum with 2 faces, like all things in life, always made of 2 parts: perfect and complete only that way.