Arriving and breathing a sigh of relief is one and the same in the Maldives. The very first breath turns into a sun salutation. “The pause between inhaling and exhaling is very important,” Pawan, who was born in India, instructs his morning breathwork class at Turtle Beach: “Because something completely new is happening there.” Matte and performs an exercise that looks like using his physical strength to open an elevator door and then compressing it into a sugar cube between his hands.
“No news, no shoes,” the personal butler whispers to the arrival as he rocks him in the golf cart to his villa. He offers to keep your shoes for you until you leave – the first indication that it’s time to leave your stressful life behind and dip your bare toes in the powder-soft, sun-warmed sand.
It is best to hand in your mobile phone or at least the SIM card, so that you can take photos and enjoy that no one can reach you. You can also download a photo package from the butler with the most beautiful food, the most beautiful feet on the beach or the most beautiful underwater moments, and he will post it for you on Instagram. Just as he arranges everything around the clock and ensures that the guest lacks for nothing, more silently than his shadow.
Hotel founder Sonu Shivdasani’s knowledge of the invisible, material connections in the world is limitless. The 57-year-old Brit with Indian roots sleeps like a compass needle with his head pointing north because he thinks it’s healthier. His father, a wealthy businessman and banker, wanted his son to have a legal career, having been educated at Eton and Oxford.
But he wanted something completely different; namely stripping away his origins and progressing as a human being. He fell in love with a Swedish model who thought the same way. In 1995, Sonu and Eva opened “Soneva Fushi” in Baa Atoll, a Unesco biosphere reserve – the first hotel in the Maldives to combine luxury and ecology, with a spa to boot!
In 2016, “Soneva Jani” was added in the Noonu Atoll. At first, the couple was laughed at – who wants to have the sesame king icing for three hours in a 30-degree heat or in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the oxygen chamber? Today, every hotel in the Maldives tries to emulate them.
For orientation: “Soneva Fushi” is more rustic and romantic, “Soneva Jani” for guests who would like to land with a private jet or drive up with their own yacht. Madonna has been a guest here, actress Salma Hayek and billionaire François-Henri Pinault book a water villa every year.
The resorts are highly discreet and have their own sign language: a request for new sheets, for example, is met by placing a wooden star on the bed. Nobody needs a “Do not disturb” sign here – if the garden gate is closed, nobody comes to knock, not even the butler.
The guest cycles on whisper tires over sandy paths. From time to time you see a butler jokingly with a large ball of laundry on his head disappearing considerately into a side path or a gecko in the bushes.
Everything is muffled like in a recording studio, you don’t even have an echo anymore. You become one with the waving palm trees and the background noise of nature. The only thing one always hears – and likes to do – is the singing of the most amazing species of birds; for example, the odd backward-breathed whistle of Koel in the morning, as if sucking in its beak all night.
Essentialism is the credo: the guest should concentrate on the essentials, and at the highest level. Anyone who comes here has money, and you don’t have to show it. “We don’t rely on status symbols,” says the hotel manager, “we encourage our guests to explore the world through their senses.”
In America this is called “Making Memories”: You go somewhere to make memories. “With us you can marvel at the universe through the largest telescope in the Indian Ocean. Or we will serve you dinner on a deserted sandbank and a drone will film you.”
As soon as the sun goes down, another people suddenly takes over the night shift: the Indian giant flying foxes. Their wingspan of 1.50 meters is enormous, but don’t worry: they are not bloodsuckers, but herbivores; they just fly to treetops and then hang out like Nosferatu in a cloak.
“Soneva Fushi” is one of the larger of the almost 1200 Maldives islands (a good 300 are inhabited). In the heart of the 1.4 km long and 400 m wide island lies a fruit and vegetable garden from which the chefs help themselves.
“If you cut something off yesterday, it’ll be there again tomorrow,” explains the gardener, blowing into his bangs while sweating. Coral sand is not fertile soil, but natural composting means that nature is effervescent here.
Not the flowers are meant, but the healing hands of Hortensia Corredoira. Guests who just stood in front of her like crooked hangers suddenly straighten up again when she cranks her spine and shakes bones. The osteopath not only treats spa guests, but also top athletes.
She recommends, very important: read! This has the effect of prolonging life: “Our eye muscles are connected to many organs. But if we just stare at the cell phone instead of moving our pupils while reading, important processes such as digestion come to a halt.”
It is not a sanatorium, but in contrast to other luxury hotels, wellness and health are in the foreground here. High-end travelers now want more than just a paddling vacation under the palm trees, they also want to make their stay healthy; ideally not only decelerate, but also slow down the biological clock.
Permanent inflammation means aging that needs to be healed or even prevented by strengthening the immune system. “Motion is lotion,” summarizes one of the doctors, a native of California. “It’s about positioning yourself better, rejuvenating, yes, downright renewing.”
The spa concept combines traditional medicine with modern anti-aging therapies. Healers and specialists from all over the world are on duty, and all parameters are tweaked: autologous blood, stem cells, ozone, oxygen, biomodulation, intravenous nutrient therapies, cryogenic cold chamber (minus 130 degrees). What doesn’t (yet) exist: snipping and gathering with a scalpel.
Many guests come just to get a good night’s sleep. Helpful: floating in the magnesium bath for up to three hours. After that you are dog-tired and very heavy. Also relieves jet lag.
Even though you’re far away, top chefs like the Swede Mathias Dahlgren or the Dane Mads Refslund occasionally serve real, familiar cuisine. Instead of always just fish or buffet landscapes, which are so richly stocked that you can’t decide on anything, they sometimes have a simple beef tartare on the plate.
An Ayurveda doctor optimizes the diets on request. You don’t just eat salad fresh from the garden, you eat it in the garden. Or dine in a tree house like in a bird’s nest, surrounded by gentle island winds and the scents of herbs that waft up from the beds.
Goethe said that no one walks under palm trees with impunity. Luckily there are other trees in the Maldives as well. For example the screwpine from the screw tree family, which with its long stilt roots looks as if it were walking on high heels.
The Asian tiger mosquito has long been a huge problem. For years, the bloodsuckers were fought with insecticides, which killed other insects in particular, but also corals and fish – only the mosquito remained resistant. The Dutch entomologist Bart Knols switched from poison to traps – interestingly from Regensburg – that simulate the smell of human sweat and breath using lactic acid and carbon dioxide from fermented sugar water with yeast.
The Dutch entomologist Bart Knols fights the Asian tiger mosquito in the Maldives with traps that simulate the smell of human sweat and breath. As soon as bloodsuckers approach, they are sucked in by a fan and die.
Source: Soneva/WORLD
Both attract the mosquito from a distance of up to 30 meters. As soon as she approaches, she is sucked in by a built-in fan and dies. 256 such traps are set on Soneva Fushi. Knols hopes the atoll will be the first to be totally mosquito-free. “Completely without chemicals.”
If you spot a triggerfish while snorkeling, don’t be fooled by its full, kissable lips—they hide shark-sharp teeth. He not only shreds sea urchins like potato chips with them, but also your feet if in doubt. Especially in the breeding season: 15 meters minimum distance!
“Soneva Fushi” is referred to as the Switzerland of the Indian Ocean. In the Waste-to-Wealth Center, beverage cans are processed into decorative Christmas trees and sold, and a total of 90 percent of the waste is recycled. The complete processing of the coconut is impressive: there is a recycling center, mountains of it are heaped up there in order to make ropes, heating and building materials, oils, soap, even wine and to grow mushrooms.
The coconut is basically the potato of the Maldives, it plays a central role in life there: while we only use one word for coconut, the Maldivians have diverse vocabulary for different parts of the coconut tree and the stages of the fruit. “Otherwise, our island world would be too vague,” says a local. And so they tell each other the greatest coconut stories on coconut chairs while the coconut lamp is burning and you nibble on coconut snacks. Probably one is also buried in a coconut.
The gloriously white sandy beach is partly made up of parrot fish excretions – more precisely, coral particles that they have eaten while nibbling on seaweed. Washed up plastic waste is collected daily, but recently the islands are considering hiring crows to keep the beach plastic-free.
It is based on a Danish experiment in which the clever birds were used to clean the streets in cities: A machine was developed for this purpose that spits out crow feed in exchange for cigarette butts.
There are no jellyfish here. You can safely jump into the turquoise seawater for a swim, which sparkles during the day like a floodlit swimming pool at night.
In the “Soneva Jani” you can dine under the open sky in the evenings with a view of a huge cinema screen built into the water. There you can watch Wes Anderson’s “The Deep Sea Divers” with headphones. Fish are highly sensitive to noise.
Parents who want to do something good for their children (and want to relax even better) send their offspring on a three-night adventure trip: the sailing yacht “Soneva in Aqua” takes them to a Robinson Crusoe island, where they learn important survival strategies , for example how to make salt water drinkable.
With a metal detector you can search for the treasure chest of the “Corbin”, a French ship that crashed on a reef there in 1602. The real treasure, as the adventurers learn on this trip for around 2,500 euros, are their memories.
For those who yearn for a sin, there is a walk-in chocolate sculpture, the Chocolate Room. Access desired, this raises the dopamine level and puts you in a good mood. There are also separate rooms for bread, cheese, fruit and ice cream specialties.
You walk barefoot through the jungle over suspension bridges and wooden walkways. Slap-slap-slap it on the planks – that’s the music of the Maldives.
Above it, the sky shines sometimes golden pink and sometimes squeaky blue, while small flaky clouds float weightlessly.
It’s dark at six o’clock sharp, curfew at around 10 p.m. Club life here means going to bed. Or you center yourself on the beach with a view of the endless sea.
The architecture looks a bit like it was kneaded by children: a lot of wood in organic forms with psychedelic, slightly Steiner influences, such as the “Out of the Blue” bar, which is modeled on a mushroom. Mirrors were set up according to Feng Shui teachings, which are said to deter evil spirits and properly direct energy flows.
Eva Shivdasani is responsible for the entire design concept of the hotels, right down to the tableware. Her husband once explained it this way: “The only plastic she accepts are the guests’ credit cards”.
If you see a waddling baby turtle, please do not touch it or put it in the water. It has to go its own way in order to memorize it. On average, only one reproductive turtle survives from 1,000 eggs and later returns to its place of birth to lay eggs there itself.
Dashing to the jungle restaurant with the Tarzan taxi is crazy! A suspension cable car takes you 200 meters up to a platform above the treetops. Anyone who is afraid of heights will learn here at the latest to finally let themselves fall.
Arrival: For example non-stop with Condor or Lufthansa to Male, connecting flights are offered by Qatar Airways via Doha or Emirates via Dubai. Neither corona vaccination nor tests are required for entry.
Wellness vacation: RTC Rose Travel, for example, offers seven nights at Soneva Fushi in a villa with pool, including half board, flights and seaplane transfer to the resort in Baa Atoll from 11,699 euros; other resorts can also be booked, rosetravel.de, soneva.com.
Anyone who appreciates club holidays will find what they are looking for in the “Robinson Maldives” in the Gaaf Alif Atoll, seven nights all-inclusive with flights and wellness offers from 2720 euros, robinson.com.
For more info: visitmaldives.com
Participation in the trip was supported by Soneva Resorts and RTC Rose Travel. You can find our standards of transparency and journalistic independence at axelspringer.com/de/Werte/downloads.
