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Maldives
Situated in the Indian Ocean the Islands of the Maldives are known throughout the world for the pictorial paradise that they are. The Maldives are are one of the main holiday destinations for Honeymooners after there wedding to escape to a dreamy paradise, with secluded accommodation scattered throughout the islands, overlooking the breathtaking Indian Ocean.The pearly white beaches lead on to the turquoise seas where the coral reefs are regarded as some of the best in the world and one of the main attractions of the islands. The Maldives, an island state which includes a cluster of 26 atolls located in the Indian Ocean, where roughly 1200 coral island are situated. The vast majority of these islands are quite small with most being less than 1km sq( 1/2 sq mile. It is nearly 700 kilometers from Sri Lanka in south-west. The nation’s name might be representing for the "Fort" or "Mountain... Read More -
Weather
Maldives Weather and Climate The scattered atolls and islands of the Maldives bestride the equator in the Indian Ocean, a few hundred miles south of the Indian mainland and Sri Lanka. As a result the weather is routinely hot and sunny, and the temperature range changes little throughout the year - an average of about 30 degrees Celsius during the day, and a balmy 25 degrees at night. This makes the Maldives an excellent destination for a sunshine-filled holiday at any time of year. Although the average temperatures show little change, conditions on the islands are affected by the major seasonal monsoon winds that determine the weather patterns for the whole of the Indian Ocean region. In the Maldives these are known as the north-east monsoon - the dry season, which usually runs from January to March - and the south-west monsoon, or wet season, which runs from May to November. The transit... Read More -
Diving
Maldives, Diving The Maldives have become famous as much for the marine life under the water, as they are for beach-life above. Thanks to their location far from the mainland, the waters around the islands are renowned for the abundance and variety of fish species. The lagoons include coral gardens and pinnacles teeming with schools of reef fish and other life, and deeper waters that are the haunts of zebra sharks, hammerheads manta rays, and whale sharks. The bright sunshine, clear water, and living colours are perfect for underwater photography. Most resorts in the Maldives have a scuba diving facility and there are many specialist resorts offering dive training and advanced diving tours, as well as live-aboard boats that cruise among the archipelago's best dive sites for several weeks at a time. Scuba diving runs all year round, but the months from December to March have the best wate... Read More -
Airports
Landing at the main international airport in the Maldives is an exhilarating introduction to the islands. Hundreds of atoll islands and undersea coral banks are clearly visible from the aircraft as it starts to descend, and many flight pass over the high-rise towers and port of the remarkable island city of Male just a few minutes before landing. The airport itself occupies the whole of Hulhulé island, just two miles north of Male. The runway spans the length of the small island - giving it almost the appearance of an aircraft carrier when seen from the air. The airport is small, friendly and efficient. In 2010 it was renamed the Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, after the president of the Maldives who commissioned its construction in the 1960s, but it is more commonly known as Male airport or Hulhulé airport. The immigration process is handled smoothly so tourists can get quickly ... Read More
- History
- Location and Geography
History of the Maldives
The first settlers to the Maldives are thought to have come from India and Sri Lanka more than 3000 years ago. These first peoples have left no archaeological remains, as they built no stone buildings or large settlements, but traces of their origin are found in the linguistic and cultural traditions of the Maldives islanders today. In ancient times the Maldives were known as the main source of cowrie shells, which were used as currency in parts of Asia and East Africa.
Buddhism is thought to have spread to the Maldives in about the Third Century BC, a time when the Buddhist emperor Ashoka the Great ruled the the Indian subcontinent and much of South-east Asia. Buddhism became the dominant religion of the islands and its kings for many centuries, and many traditional customs of the Maldives date from this time. The first coral stone Buddhist temples were built during this period, but were abandoned when the islands converted to Islam in the 11th Century.
Serious study of the Buddhist history of the islands began with a British civil servant stationed in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) named HCP Bell, who was shipwrecked on the Maldives in 1879 and returned several times to study the ancient ruins. Bell suggested that the structure, guardian statues and inscriptions on the ruins indicated that Buddhism had spread to the islands from Sri Lanka. Today many of Bell's discoveries are housed in the National Museum in Male.
Maldivian history books hail the introduction of Islam in the 12th Century as the cornerstone of the modern nation. The Buddhist kings converted to Islam in around 1153, and took the Muslim title of Sultan. Their conversion is credited to a Muslim traveller named Abu al Barakat al Barbari, thought to be a berber tribesman from north Africa. His tomb now stands on the grounds of Male's venerated Huskuru Mosque.
The European colonial powers took control of most trade in the Indian Ocean from the 16th Century, and the Portuguese, Dutch and French started to involved themselves in the politics of the Maldives. As Britain secured its rule in India, the Maldives came under British influence - and were formally declared a British protectorate in the 19th Century. The Sultans continued to rule the islands for much of the British era, but from the 1930s reformist politicians began to demand democratic changes to the government. The Sultanate was suspended in 1953, and a short-lived First Republic was declared. Britain restored the Sultan to the throne the next year, in a deal to secure its important wartime airfield on the island of Gan, on the southernmost atoll of the Maldives.
In 1965 the Maldives gained independence, under an agreement that ensured Britain would continue to have access to the airfield on Gan. The monarchy was abolished after a national referendum three years later, and the Maldives were declared a Second Republic, under its first president and former prime minister Ibrahim Nasir. Despite several challenges and coup attempts provoked by his authoritarian rule, Nasir remained in power until 1978, when he fled to Singapore. His successor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, used authoritarian measures to stay in power another 30 years, until he was ousted in the elections in 2008. The current president is Mohamed Nasheed, the founder of the Maldivian Democratic Party.
Maldives Location and Geography
The Maldives are a double chain of twenty-six atolls, located just north of the equator in the Indian Ocean, about 250 miles south west of India. The atolls are composed of living coral reefs and sand bars that have formed on top of a submarine mountain range. There are 1192 islands in the Maldives, but most are less than a square mile in area: the total land area is about 115 square miles, spread over an area of more than 35-thousand square miles. Just 10 percent of the land area is cultivated, mainly growing coconuts, taro, and bananas. The Maldives are the smallest nation in Asia in terms of land area, as well the least populated. Just over 300,000 people live on 200 islands, and a third of the population live in the main city of Male in the western Kaafu Atoll.
Each of the atolls has formed from coral reefs that have accumulated over millions of years in the warm waters of the tropical Indian Ocean. Banks of sand and coral debris from the reefs have accumulated to create barriers against the sea, forming lagoons where the sea tends to be much calmer than the open ocean, and ringed by small islands composed of eroded coral and sand. As a result, the surface landscape of the Maldives is remarkably flat - the highest point in the islands is a sand dune that is less than eight feet above sea level (2.3 metres), making the Maldives the lowest-lying country in the world. This has been the cause of great concern in the Maldives about the eventual effects of a rising sea level due to climate change.
Most of the atolls consist of between 20 and 60 small islands, most of them uninhabited. On average between 5 and 10 islands in each atoll support a few local villages. The islands are too small to have any rivers, but some of the larger islands have small freshwater ponds and marshes. The uninhabited islands are covered in tropical bush and some wild coconut palms. On the inhabited islands most of the available land is used to grow fruit, such as bananas, papaya, coconut and breadfruit. On many of the smaller islands the soil is permeated by seawater, making it strongly alkaline and so few domestic plants will grow.
Although little of the land surface is suitable for agriculture, there is an abundance of fish and other sea life in the tropical waters of the Maldives. After tourism, tuna fishing is the main commercial industry and tuna is one of the staple foods of the islands. The vast coral reefs provide habitats for an astonishing variety of marine animals and plants, which in turn attract many larger pelagic animals from the open ocean, such as manta rays, whale sharks, and sea turtles. More than 1000 species of fish and other marine animals have been recorded in the waters of the Maldives, and several of them are unique to the region. More than 20 species of dolphins and whales are also found in the waters of the islands.