Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
I'm craving. Of light and tropical heat, of islands and salt water, of bubbles and coral... I am already nostalgic for the Maldives.
CLARIFICATIONS: in April 2014, I interrupted my series of articles on the MaldivesI found it difficult to continue to praise the beauties of this Indian Ocean archipelago (and thus to encourage people to go to the Maldives) when the regime had tightened its application of Sharia law, after my stay in February 2014. Not respecting human rights, the Maldives had to leave the Commonwealth of Nations in 2016. But in september 2018, things have changed, with the surprise defeat in the autocratic president's elections Abdulla Yameen supported by Islamists and now prosecuted for corruption, beaten by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, an ally of the democratic camp. Then in april 2019, the party of Mohamed Nasheedformer president of the Maldives (2008-2012), several times imprisoned by the regime and main opposition figure, won the first legislative elections since Yameen left. The Maldives return to the path of democracyThis is great news!
Turquoise blue panorama
It's been more than a month since I came back from the Maldives... Five weeks and four days have passed since I left the turquoise blue horizon of this coral archipelago on the waterin the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Time flies and I'm just starting to explore the images stored in the back of my hard drive... I just found this little panorama that I had forgotten, made with my iPhone, with the nice app Dermandarfrom the bow of the boat, the aptly named Ocean Divine.
We were in front of Dhingurah Island, one of the stopovers of this fantastic dive-cruise which took me from Malé to Ari Atoll...
Want to leave
The desire to go back to distant horizons nags me again.
The shark passes, the fragile beauty of the islands, the intense blue as far as the eye can see, this magnificent boat and the company of other passionate divers... I already miss it all.
I am nostalgic for the Maldives.
😎