Malé

Malé is the world's most concentrated capital: one square mile of coral rock carrying a whole country's government, markets, mosques and motorbikes, packed so tight the buildings seem to hold each other up — all of it two meters above a sea that owns the horizon in every direction. The Maldives' true country is water: twenty-six atolls, a thousand islands, and this improbable dense heart beating in the middle of its lagoon.

The sensible traveller gives Malé the honest day she deserves before the seaplane: the fish market at landing time, when the tuna arrive like silver cargo; the Old Friday Mosque's coral-stone walls, carved by hands that had only the reef for a quarry; the produce market's betel and bananas; and the seawall at dusk with the whole town. Then the country proper begins — a dhoni or a seaplane out, to whichever ring of sand and light the traveller has chosen.

The Guide's honesty: Malé is a working capital, not a resort — dress modestly, Friday reshapes the week, and alcohol exists only on the resort islands —; the guesthouse islands offer the real Maldives at honest prices: bikinis on designated beaches only, and the courtesy repays itself in welcome; the seaplanes weigh everything, including you — pack light; and the reef is the country's roof and treasury: touch nothing, stand on nothing, take only the blue home.