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Tourist information about Maldives
Most tourist travel to Maldives to relax in spas and engage in water-sports
such as big game fishing and scuba diving. That was what I did when I visited
this fabulously beautiful island nation. The Maldives is located in the South
West of Sri
Lanka and its islands spread across the Indian Ocean in that area. The
country is made up of almost 2,000 stunningly beautiful islands they and form
an archipelago of 26 natural atolls. These 26 atolls are organized into 19
administrative atolls with the capital island of Male (pronounced as mah-leh)
and has a population of about 400,000 inhabitants.
History of Maldives
Maldives was first inhabited by South Indian and Sri Lankan immigrants. In the
12th century, sailors from Arabian countries and East Africa started arriving
too. Traces of their influences on the Maldivian islands can still be seen in
the language and culture of the natives of Maldives.
According passed down legends, the sultanate in Maldives begins
with the arrival of a Sinhalese prince, who was stranded in a lagoon with his
bride who happened to be the daughter of a Sri Lankan King. The prince stayed
on and ruled the islands as the first sultan of Maldives.
Rule by monarchy ended when Maldives became a
republic in 1953. Mohammed Amin Didi, the introducer of the Republic system of
government in Maldives became the the young republic's first President.
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However, the republic crumbled and a Sultanate was re-instated till 1968.
Again, the power grab was short lived and the sultanate was abolished forever
to be replaced by a republic once again in late 1968.
Tourist resorts in Maldives
All resorts in Maldives are on their own island and that means that if you
want to go anywhere else out of the tourist resorts, you have to go island
hopping. The resorts range in sizes from 2.5km (slightly more than a mile)
across to just merely 150m across. This means that the facilities on the
resort where you stay such as the restaurants, bars, sports facilities, spa
and entertainment are the only ones you will have access to during your stay.
There are about 100 resorts to choose from, ranging from affordable budget to
five star ultimate luxury.
Things to do in Maldives as a tourist
What else is there to do when you are on an island but to sun bathe, swim,
snorkel, go fishing and scuba diving! Having scuba dived there before, I can
vouch that the underwater life is amazing and the Maldives lives up to its
reputation as a diver's paradise. We shall cover scuba diving in future
articles about Maldives
More Maldives travel articles
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