With Neptune, Poseidon and Mother Nature
In this paradise, be prepared to tango with your surroundings
I am hardly an inveterate traveler who has sampled the golden sands of the world’s best beaches, I am not exactly adventurous or athletic, I have lived the entirety of my 36 years in cities, I wear thick glasses and I have never learned how to swim.
And yet here I was sitting on a speedboat after arriving in the Maldives at midnight being taken from Male International Airport to the Sheraton Hotel on Full Moon Island, where we would spend the night.
My fatigue from the 10-hour flight (four from Beijing to Hong Kong and then six from Hong Kong to Maldives) was brushed away as I opened the French window of my hotel room to welcome the ocean breeze. I was on Mother Nature’s doorstep, so why not rest in her lap, sleeping under the stars, on a settee-bed on the balcony overlooking the water?
At first, it all seemed perfect. Fatigue set in and drowsiness took hold of me, but it soon became apparent that I would be unable to sleep, not with that monotonous sound of ocean waves licking my ears. From time to time, I felt that someone was walking up to me from behind, only to realize that it was only the waves romancing with the pillars on which my water villa was sitting. How intimate can you be with nature? The answer no doubt varies from person to person, and in the Maldives I was about to come up with my own answer.
The next morning, we — there were five of us — took a seaplane to the island of Vommuli, our planned destination the newly ordained luxury addition to the famed paradise on earth. A St. Regis Hotel had opened in November, a month before our arrival.
(Whenever I thought of the name Vommuli, the word voluminous thrust itself into my mind, to which one might add that the two things that appear in the most generous volumes there are faintly salted sea air and the color blue.)
One of the first obvious temptations after you arrive may be to go out for a dip into the cobalt-colored sea, but once you have lounged around outside for just a few minutes you are likely to change your mind. It’s hot outside, so hot that posing for a picture under direct sunlight seemed like an act of selfdenial in the cause of pictorial art. Between 12:00 am and 3:00 pm it is better to simply gaze at the blue from the coolness of your hotel room.
A high point of my four-day stay in the Maldives came the day before our group left Vommuli. We got on a speedboat and went out snorkeling and dolphin watching. One time to watch the dolphins was before sunset, and we did so after the snorkeling. As shrieks erupted from among us, I strained my seriously shortsighted eyes. There, from the glistening surface of the water, a black fin jutted out. The dolphins barely leapt, disappearing almost at the same moment as they appeared, making short curves with their slick backs.
The sea parted at the stem of our boat before remerging at its stern. The leaden waves, with white foam on top, reminded me of the petrified sea in that famous Japanese woodcut print The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. The dipping sun cast a wide streak of burnt orange across the water, intensifying the drama that is not often associated with the Maldivian sea.
According to the locals who work at St. Regis Vommuli, the sea in this part of the world is extremely calm, and indeed the only time they have seen it throw a tantrum was when the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami struck 12 years ago.
But that does not mean they are oblivious to nature’s majesty and power. Ahmed Asim, a Maldivian and the hotel’s room director, said that since childhood his parents have always told him not to swim at high tide or when it is raining.
“As Maldivians, we all know when not to go swimming, just as we all know how to swim.”
And as someone who cannot swim, my fear — and the hot weather — prevented me from going into the ocean until the third morning of my arrival at Vommuli. With my life vest keeping me afloat and a security guard of the hotel standing by watching, I battled the barely visible waves, flipped when the merest ripple hit me and yet managed to kid myself that finally this city girl long denied nature’s loving embrace was now luxuriating in her lap.
Right below the surface were sprawling coral fields, sadly all dead due to the construction of the villas. However, even as dead remnants they are a haven for small fish whose jolt of vivid blue is penetrating, and unmistakable even for someone who did not know how to put her head under the surface while swimming with that chunky life vest.
The same day I learned, with the help of a coach, how to breathe while wearing a snorkeling mask. In fact, the moment that I took off my thick glasses and put on the mask, everything went blurry. I jumped fearlessly into the immense blue. My friends later talked about seeing swarms of fishes. But for me, it was just endless blue. Sometimes fear dissipates when you cannot see or hear clearly and need to rely on your senses.
A week after my snorkeling trip I listened as a friend, a frequent beachgoer, recalled his most memorable underwater experience. “I swam and swam, going further and further out into the ocean while admiring the schools of fish that appeared in every color, shape and iridescence that I could possibly imagine. Even the sea around me changed its hue — from aquamarine to peacock blue and then to sapphire.
“But then suddenly, as if I had unwisely stepped inside some invisible door leading to the secret chamber of Poseidon, the sounds and sights receded. Instead, a much darker color reigned, color that absorbed and dissolved every shaft of sunlight. That’s the real underwater world: cold, strange and sealed-off. It’s not a world that gives one the feeling that you can come or go at will. “I was scared.” Indeed, caution does come, and often when you least expect it. Another member of the hotel staff, an Indian whose hometown is just two hours away from the Maldives, recalled for me his experience wandering alone on the island late one night.
“I was suddenly struck by fear and I didn’t know why,” Reji Sebastian said. “I heard the rustling sound of banana tree leaves and told myself that I had better go back to the hotel.”
Every year, people, especially city dwellers, come from all over the world this paradise to escape their fellow homo sapiens and to be close to nature. Yet how many of them are really ready to be alone with it, knowing that to be integral to nature means subjecting oneself completely to its dictates?
Hundreds of millions of years ago, when sea creatures crawled on to land with fins that would eventually become legs, they never went back. When apes learned to walk upright, they traded forever their speed of running for broader vision; and when man built houses to keep the rain and snow outside, he chose to keep nature at his doorstep.
A glimpse through the window is beautiful, just as venturing outside is bound to bring its excitement, and no one is going to demolish the house.
On my last night in Maldives I lowered the curtain, snuggled up in bed and slept tight.
Every year, people, head to this paradise to be close to nature. Yet how many of them are really ready to be alone with it, knowing that to be integral to nature means subjecting oneself completely to its dictates?