XXXXXXXXXXXX(XXXXXXXXX)THE ADDRESS72 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2018
x For
Your Blues
S
hafeen is swerving the buggy down the snaking
wooden jetty like an ace. It’s pitch dark and drizzling,
his path is damp from the day’s torrential downpour,
but the young Maldivian is jovially transporting our group
of seven international journalists to our villas in Mercure
Maldives Kooddoo resort. Despite the fatigue from two
delayed flights, I’m anxious to find my bearings—they
matter, especially when you are in a property that floats atop
the Indian Ocean like a levitating yogi.
My ears perk up when I hear the sea roar on either side of
the jetty we are now trundling down, but, sadly, all I can
see is a bulbous black mass lit in parcels, deep blue
reflections cast by the resort’s distant structures
glinting off it. “Wait for sunrise, madam.
Sea looks gorgeous. Everything here does,”
Shafeen reassures me when I alight. “Just
hope weather’s good tomorrow.”
Hoping ditto, I finally enter my villa at
two in the morning. Out of habit, I inspect
the bathroom first. When I turn on the
lights, it sizzles like the parties in The Great
Gatsby. The only thing missing is DiCaprio.
The black-and-white patterned floor looks classic
and is rooted in local traditions, “fashioned after
the black-and-white sarongs Maldivian men wear during
a celebratory Boduberu musical performance,” GM Scott
Bowen, an Australian, tells me later. The bathtub is spacious
and the shower cubicle standard, but the real showstopper
in here is a separate open-to-sky bath area. It opens on
to a private deck, which is also where my private infinity
pool sits. I postpone a dip until morning and step back
into the villa and that’s when, two strides from the bed, I
notice something shimmer under the legs of a blood-red
stool whose edges are punched with round golden buttons,
similar to those pinned on vintage trunks. Curious, I inchcloser and peer down. A giant beige coral glares back at
me through a glass frame carved into the villa’s otherwise
wooden flooring. It’s luminescent from the glow of an
underwater LED, and the turquoise ripples embracing
it jiggle like a Boomerang. Inspired, I open the app and
capture the rhythm of the dancing waves. First Instagram
post. Check.
My mind finally veers to more pressing matters, like my
stomach’s embarrassingly audible rumblings. My last real
meal was a salad in Singapore 12 hours ago. So I rip the
cellophane off the platter waiting below the LED TV and
wolf down the tuna sandwich and macaroons.
All four of them. They had come with a side of
fragrant white-and-purple orchids. Touched by
the warmth and now well-fed, I bundle aside
the palm leaf arrangement—in big, bold
letters, they had read Marhaba (Arabic for
greeting)—and sink into bed. That’s when I
give the giant sepia-tinted canvas above the
headboard a second, closer glance. It’s a take
on a nautical map, with the equator slicing
through the Indian Ocean. Maldives is marked,
as are some of its 26 atolls, and lurking in the
foreground is a tiny airplane.
French architect Meriam Hall subtly superimposed
the seaplane on the map, Scott explains when I bring up
the map later. “People probably flew in these planes when
transcontinental travel first opened up. That’s why she didn’t
want to use a jumbo jet,” he considers... “it’s supposed to be a
bit retro, a bit about the nostalgia of travel.”
Still in bed, through the fluttering film of the curtains, I
wake to 180° views of the ocean. It dazzles like a diva, and
intimidates as much as it enchants. Sliding apart the glass-
paned patio door—they comprise an entire wall to afford
unobstructed views of the sunlit cyan expanse—my instinctLUXURIES AT MERCURE MALDIVES KOODDOO GO BEYOND
JUST STUNNING VIEWS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN. HERE, YOU
CAN GAWK AT TECHNICOLOURED CORALS THROUGH YOUR
VILLA'S FLOOR AND SWIM BESIDE GIANT SEA TURTLES
BY HUMAIRA ANSARI