Beyond the Summer Sun

At the remote One &Only Reethi Rah, a private island resort in the Maldives, life is so preserved in a bubble of serenity that even the sternest of city souls will fall in love,finds Anwesha Sanyal.

- Ragini Singh

Private islands can change city slickers in a dangerous fashion. While city-philes can be easily spotted stationed in a quiet corner café in Manhattan, peeking from behind their morning coffee at brisk walkers and hassled faces, they can feel quite out of place, rather, put in place, when they leave the comfortable silence borne by a crowd.

That’s where my real calm was too.

Until I was taken zooming off on a speed boat to

One & Only Reethi Rah. It took less time than Alice took to fall down the rabbit hole for my focus to commit lifelong to a staring game with a rainbow defiantly blinking on the water droplets that gushed upwards on the deck, as the boat jammed with the waves beneath.

I couldn’t tear away from it. “Where is the island again?” I asked the young boy staff waiting on me with tissues for my freshly watered face, bravely ignoring his own. He pointed vaguely at the horizon, “That way! It’s 45 minutes from the airport.”

On arrival, a buggy carried me through a wobbly sand path carved out of a bright green cover on either side—it had rained the previous night. Vacant spots revealed exotic little insects that had shed their raincoats to soak in the warm sun; not a human in sight.

“Anything can happen to me and no one will know,” I pondered as my ride came to a halt in a bike parking area. In front, a long pier branched out in four directions. At the end of each boardwalk, a water villa was perched on the ocean, invisible to the other unless you craned your neck deliberately to see your neighbour’s whereabouts.