Paradise: now I know it looks like. I promise.
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Reports & Analysis
Reports & Analysis
Reports & Analysis
Why the Maldives are pure fantasy islands
The first holiday without the children was always going to seem special, but for Claudia Winkleman every aspect of her time in the Maldives combined to make the experience feel like heaven on earth
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The Jihad in Paradise
Sometimes Maldives government used novel means to punish Pakistan-trained Islamists --some famously had their beards shaved off with chilli sauce --but for the most part, it chose accommodation. Now it appears to be cracking down. Is it too late?
In Disaster's Wake, Paradise Restored
The 2004 Asian tsunami nearly wiped out parts of the Maldives, a fragile island nation in the Indian Ocean. Three years later, the remote archipelago is well into a tourism building boom that is already luring back well-heeled vacationers -- as well as American first-timers.
The Sunni Muslim nation, for years an expensive, exotic destination cherished by divers and beach lovers, staggered through its first year after the tsunami. But since then a host of international hotel chains have opened or upgraded resorts.
Paradise without the gloss
Some people have strange ideas about what they want from a holiday. Not many would say they'd like a hotel that is just a five-minute walk from an airport terminal.
They probably wouldn't like that walk to pass a decrepit and closed cinema, a random squash court and a couple of dodgy souvenir shops.
The real Maldives
Behind the island paradise seen by tourists is a country ruled by an autocratic regime with little interest in human rights or democracy.
The Maldives are a strange sort of paradise. The archipelago is gifted with soft white beaches and crystal blue seas, but the islanders themselves are seen as paupers of the Indian Ocean, forced to live off soil too thin to sustain a harvest, battered by storms and ruled by a jittery, autocratic regime that has only a passing interest in human rights and democracy.
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