The Maldives is a fascinating country to travel to independently,
I’ve never visited a country where independent travel is so new, and it certainly made planning a little tricky.
I’m a chronic over-planner, so trying to choose between islands while having no idea what they were going to be like left me more than a little anxious. The first thing I do when I decide I want to go somewhere is head to Google Images. I’m a visual person and I like to see exactly where I’m going. When I did this with the Maldivian islands, I came across stock photos of the Maldives, photos of resorts, and satellite photos of islands. I wasn’t sure if any of the photos were actually of the islands we were going to.
Searching for detailed information was just as tricky. Most of the islands had a paragraph on Wikipedia mentioning their size and population, and that was mostly it. I couldn’t find any travel blog posts, I couldn’t find any online travel guides. The best I could find were a few TripAdvisor reviews of guesthouses that briefly mentioned what the islands were like.