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Technicolour sunsets. Swaying palm trees. Shimmering water that feels like stepping into a bath.

Time and space to sit back and do...



nothing. It sounds like paradise, but until I spent four nights in the Maldives , it was my idea of holiday hell. I love to travel, and am lucky enough to do so more than most.

But my usual itinerary looks a lot more like 30,000 steps a day storming through as many historical sights as opening hours allow than vegetating horizontally on a sun lounger. Before the Maldives, I’d most recently been to Uzbekistan , driving seven hours across the Kyzylkum desert and scaling secret tunnels in the belly of a Central Asian mosque. So when I was given the chance to visit one of the 1,192 pristine sandbanks that make up this Indian Ocean haven, I felt anxious.

What on earth was I going to do in an all-inclusive resort that you can walk from top to bottom in 15 minutes? It’s safe to say I’ve always struggled to unwind. And if you told me that half a week on a tiny island in the South Nilandhe Atoll would finally teach me the joy of relaxation, I wouldn’t have believed you. But it did — and it’s changed my idea of the perfect holiday forever.

As we touched down in the densely-populated Maldivian capital Malé, I wondered how quickly I would devour the books I had hauled halfway across the world. And what would I do then? Lie alone with my thoughts? My anxious brain was already fretting about where it would take me with little distraction but su.

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