Male – The City On Speed
Male is a medium sized Asian city on speed. It’s a two by a two-kilometre piece of compact real estate where everything happens faster, noisier, smellier… than anywhere else in the Maldives. Consider the juxtaposition between this and the laid-back islands and the difference is even more stark.
Two-thirds of the Maldives population lives in Male. Space is so precious all of the islands around here have been reclaimed up to what used to be the edge of the fringing reef. Each island has its own clearly defined use; Male is commerce, two other newly reclaimed islands are residential ‘suburbs’, there’s ‘rubbish island’ (where they incinerate whatever isn’t disposed of in the more usual ‘throw it under the coconut trees’ method), an industrial island, and even one for detaining political prisoners. My favourite one is the airport island, where a narrow rectangle of the runway has been reclaimed so that it juts out into the lagoon.
We share our anchorage under the runway (it reminds me of our villa in Mirdiff under the Dubai flight path…) with a motley collection of dive/surf /sailing charter boats. Tourist numbers are down and it’s also the offseason; there must be hundreds in here. We’ve anchored between two large sailing ketches so that we swing at anchor in much the same way. Our neighbours have been happy to run us back and forwards from the nearby ferry terminal so that we don’t have to leave our dinghy (the second most expensive boat I’ve ever bought!) at the terminal where it may not be when we return.
We’ve done the main tourist stuff in Male – seen a couple of mosques (one especially large, one especially old…), the little museum (where we finally found the Buddhist and Hindu ruins we’ve searched a few islands for), the (overpriced) souvenir shops and enjoyed a few restaurant meals.
Our experience in the Maldives has been for the most part very positive. We have visited many small islands well off the beaten track, each of which is known for something special – crafts, ruins, bird nesting sites, etc. The reality hasn’t always lived up to the expectations, but it’s been good to look to differentiate between the islands; otherwise, one tropical island after the other would get boring.
The cruising has been more difficult than we expected; the water seems often to be too deep or too shallow- we joked about those channels where we had only 40cm under our keel (sometimes on the top of the tide!), but it was nerve-wracking (and thankfully not boat wrecking) stuff at the time.
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