Maldives

The Maldives gave English the word atoll, from the local atholhu, and the country is made of little else: some two dozen atolls strung across the equator in the Indian Ocean, with well over a thousand coral islands. No natural ground rises much more than two metres. Two monsoons set the year, the dry north-east iruvai and the wet south-west hulhangu, and when plankton blooms in the wet season manta rays gather in their hundreds at Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll.

Settlers from southern India and Sri Lanka brought Buddhism, and ruined stupas survive on several islands. In 1153 the king converted to Islam, a change tradition credits to a visiting scholar, Abu al-Barakat. Cowrie shells travelled from here as money as far as Bengal and West Africa, and Ibn Battuta served as a judge in the 1340s. Muhammad Thakurufaanu drove out a Portuguese garrison in 1573. The sultanate became a British protectorate in 1887, independent in July 1965 and a republic in 1968.

Breakfast is mas huni, tuna with grated coconut, onion and chilli, scooped up with roshi flatbread. Boduberu drummers play faster and faster while dancers keep pace. Friday prayers halt the working week. Fishermen catch skipjack tuna one at a time with pole and line from wooden dhonis, and the catch is canned at Felivaru. The first resorts opened in 1972, and the rule of one island, one resort has turned scores of uninhabited islets into hotels, the core of the economy.