Seven-star luxury? No, this is better...

Christa D’Souza thought the Maldives were just perfect – then she discovered a new eco-resort setting a whole new standard

AS BEACH holiday destinations go, the Maldives is about as good as it gets. Hot sun, over-water villas, white, talc-like sand, psychedelic snorkelling, glittering turquoise water stretching for miles… it’s all par for the course if you book a holiday here.

Soneva Jani, the new luxury ecoresort and latest A-list bolt-hole on Medhufaru in Noonu Atoll, about 125 miles north of the country’s capital Malé, is on quite another almost nutty level. Set on a lagoon large enough to hold 7,000 Olympic swimming pools, and so fluorescently blue it looks as if someone has switched on a lightbulb underneath the sea, it almost doesn’t feel real when you arrive.

Imagine Cubby Broccoli’s reinterpretation of Robinson Crusoe, and that goes some way to describing the childish wonderment we felt after stepping off the seaplane and being greeted at the dock by our ‘Man Friday’, Roman. A young ex-soldier from Ukraine with flawless English, Roman welcomed us with fresh coconut water and icy towels infused with orange water. Then he golfcarted us through forests of screwpine and banyan trees to our villa, the last on the bleached-wood boardwalk that runs higgledy-piggledy through the middle of the island.

To the south are four more islands that belong to Medhufaru – an archipelago, really, more than an island – all of which are deserted.

In terms of space, Roman told us, Soneva Jani (the Sanskrit word for ‘wisdom’) is one of the lowestdensity resorts in the world, with only 25 villas on 150 acres of land. If you are seeking seclusion – like former guests Will Smith and Kate Winslet – then this is the place for you.

Many of the villas have a water slide running from the living room to the lagoon – though sadly not ours. However, we did have a remotecontrolled retractable ceiling over our bed so we could stargaze from our pillows – forget rose petals strewn over the sheets, this, surely, is the definition of romance, no? Oh, and the view. We could have gone on a dolphin cruise but often we could see them from our villa. Sightings of 100-strong pods of bottlenoses spinning and somersaulting along the reef are by no means an unusual sight, according to Roman. (There are harmless baby sharks too, deposited by their mothers in the lagoon to avoid predators.)

Sonu Shivdasani and his Swedish wife Eva, pioneers of the luxury eco- resort concept and founders of the Soneva ‘chain’ (Soneva Fushi, Jani’s sister resort, is about 80 minutes away by speedboat, and there is also Soneva Kiri in Thailand), they know their jaded luxury traveller inside out.

The guest who wants something a bit purer, a bit more authentic than the normal, no-holds-barred, sevenstar experience, but at the same time needs his or her creature comforts.

From our lime-green Smeg fridge to the undulating roof shingles of the villas mimicking the ocean; from the purple cushion pads on our