Baa Atoll

Baa is a ring of seventy-five islands around a lagoon in the middle of the Indian Ocean, thirteen of them inhabited by Maldivians and a dozen more by hotels, and on its eastern rim a bay the size of a football field where, when the tide runs in against the monsoon between May and November, the plankton is trapped and the manta rays come to feed in their hundreds, wheeling in a slow spiral with their mouths open — the largest gathering of them on Earth, and the reason UNESCO made the whole atoll a biosphere reserve in 2011. Whale sharks come to the same feast. Around them, the reef drops from a lagoon thirty metres deep to an ocean two thousand metres down, and the islands are what the postcards said: white, green, ringed with turquoise.

The traveller flies to Malé and on by seaplane or the domestic hop to Dharavandhoo; sleeps on a resort island if the budget allows the whole thing, or in a guesthouse on a local island — Dharavandhoo, Maalhos, Thulhaadhoo — if it allows the country instead; takes the boat to Hanifaru in the season, snorkel only, no fins in the bay, and floats above the spiral; dives the channels for the sharks and the coral; visits Thulhaadhoo for the lacquer boxes the island has turned for centuries; and, every evening, does nothing on a beach, which is what the atoll is for.

The Guide's honesty: the Maldives are two countries — the resorts, one island each, with their own rules and prices, and the local islands, where the country lives, dry, modest and cheaper by a factor of ten — choose knowingly, and dress for the second; Hanifaru is a protected bay: rangers count the boats, snorkelling only, no touching, and the mantas come when the moon and the tide say so, not when the booking does; the seaplane is a marvel and costs like one; the reef has bleached and recovered and bleached again — swim as a guest; and the atoll sits a metre above a rising sea, which is the quiet fact under every photograph. Go, float, and be careful with what you touch.