Travel Diary - Part 1

This has been long overdue from my side. Not that I had promised anybody about it. I always wanted to keep an account of the places I and SM (and of course Jelly now) have traveled so far, with the pictures and details. Want to do this before my all famous memory stops working completely.

So here I am all set to fly back into the first travel me and SM made together. When the thought of planning for our honeymoon started we had a couple of options in our mind. But what both of us wanted was some time away from the hustle and bustle of a city life. We wanted to get rid of the tiredness of the wedding rituals, the endless flow of relatives and most of all just wanted to spend time with each other and forget the world. So without any confusion both of us zeroed in on “Maldives”. A place that is very close by, yet completely detached from this world.

For the first leg of the journey, We took our flights from Bangalore to Trivandrum (back then the direct flights betweem Bangalore and Maldives had still not started operation). We had to break the journey for 1 night at SM’s uncle’s place as there were no immediate connections from Trivandrum and the earliest connection was for the next day.

So after a short break for the night we took the next morning flight out of Trivandrum to Male. The flight journey was just another routine one, the same old beyond retirement age and grumpy air hostess, same old badly maintained flights and one of the most horrible on flight food I have ever had - all courtesy our very own National Carrier. Remember this was before air travel boom time with just a couple of private players unlike today. This was the only negative side of the trip.

The 1 hour flight had nearly come to an end and we heard the announcement confirming the same. Just as they announced to fasten our seat belts, I looked out of the window and the view was truly a breath taking one. As the flight started descending we could see tiny islands scattered all around. The water was turquoise blue and so clear that we could literally see the shallow sea. As the flight got ready for the landing we could see the runway and that sight was truly one to behold. The runway and the ocean looked only meters away from each other, just like conjoined twins - conjoined all the way from head to toe. There was nothing to hold the water away from the runway!!!!!!!! It was a beautiful sight no doubt but at the same time the landing looked a dangerous feat to attempt.....

When we got out of the airport after the immigration, we got to see that the airport was the only thing on that particular island and when we dug for more information after our return we got to know that 1000 and odd islands formed Maldives of which only about 200 are inhabited and of that nearly 90 were exclusive island resorts……Wow!!!! We had our speed boats ready to take us to our destination………The speedboat transfer took about an hour and the views of the islands that whizzed past were breathtaking. The boat just seemed to glide over the ocean barely touching it a few times during the whole journey.

This is the view that greeted us on our arrival at the resort


Just to note - these photos are scanned images of the photos shot using traditional cameras. Those were the days where simple aim and shoot film cameras ruled the roost and the now famous and convenient digital cameras had not yet made their mark or presence felt amongst us.

Now on to the trip - the resort had two kinds of rooms - Beach Villa and Lagoon Villa. We had opted for the Lagoon Villa - this villa is built on stilts on top of the ocean water. We had to take a tiny bridge to enter the villa. Once we entered the room we just felt like we were air lifted from this world to another world that was totally alien to us. At the other end of the room was a huge glass wall which gave us unhindered view of the vast beautiful ocean ahead of us.

This was the view from our room.



The four days we spent there helped us in recharging ourselves and also getting to know each other better. The food was awesome, both of us were not too interested in sweets or desserts back then, but I guess the credit goes to the restaurant chefs for making us the foodies that we are today.



This was the view from the restaurant.

The island on which this resort was located contained nothing but this resort. When they told us we can take a tour of the island on foot we were a little taken a back. How would it be possible to cover an island on foot? But as we started walking along the shore line we totally felt at ease. And before even we could realize it we had gone round the island and it hardly took us about 15-20 minutes. The island was that small!!!!!

These were some of the pictures taken on one of those walks.

Near sunset time we would sit at our very own private sun deck and enjoy the lovely sunset. From the sun deck there were wooden steps that took us directly into shallow ocean water. This was one of those things which we truly enjoyed. Even though we did not know swimming we would frolick around in the crystal clear waters of the ocean. And if we got tired of that we would sit on the steps and look down into the ocean to either find colorful fishes or sting rays swimming by or just admire the beauty of the coral reefs that was all round the place. Wish we had our current digital camera back then, We could have taken some better pictures I feel.

This was the view from the sun deck.

This is the view of the other Lagoon Villas from our sun deck

One night there were heavy rains and the sound of the waves crashing against the sun deck was a little scary. We went out during the rains just to have a look at nature’s fury. Believe me it was so dark outside and we could hear the loud crashing of the waves on the barrier far ahead. We could feel the pressure of the waves against the stilts of our villa, it was so powerful that we could feel the wooden floor and the building swaying in a very slow fashion. It was a creepy as well as an exciting feeling.

With heavy hearts we were ready to say “Good Bye” to this lovely place after four days. But we did make a promise that we would come back here for sure, probably when our family is complete.

We had a safe journey back with plenty of sweet memories captured in our camera and in our minds.