Jan 31, 2015
Flight: Bangalore, India (BLR) to Male, Maldives via Trivandrum (TRV); Air India 320 Economy
Hotel: Holiday Inn Resort Kandooma; Kandooma Atoll, Maldives; $189++ single
After a week of work in the Bangalore office, 5 technical presentations in 3 days, my brain was frazzled and I was ready for some R&R in the Maldives. I didn't get much time to explore Bangalore at all (though I've been here twice before). My flight to Male was supposed to leave at 7:30 AM which meant a very early start as the Bangalore airport is some distance out of town. I had my driver come by around 4:30 AM for the 40km drive to the airport. We left about 4:45 and there was already a fair amount of traffic out on the expressway heading north. Arrived at the airport at 5:20 only to see my flight departure is now 11:30 instead of 7:30!! Well that is the suck. I only had one night scheduled in Maldives and had deliberately picked the morning flight so I would have time to go diving. The new departure time meant we wouldn't arrive into Maldives until after 2PM, too late to catch the boat to the hotel and make the 2:30PM dive. My flight would now also get in after the nonstop BLR-MLE flight which also departed at 11:30.

Delays

The line was long for checkin at Air India (their website wouldn't let me print boarding passes for some reason) but the agent at the entrance said the line would be much shorter at 6AM. So I just sat and waited for 25 minutes or so, then got impatient and joined the line anyway. I asked about getting put on the other flight but all I got was 'That is not possible, sir'. If they did the needful, it would be possible. The flight technically was a domestic flight as it stopped in Trivandrum enroute but I had to go through departure immigration here. Once through immigration and security I headed to the Plaza Premium (Diners Club) lounge. The lounge was pretty empty this early but I was able to get some breakfast of sad looking sausages and a masala dosa. The lounge filled up for the Emirates flight but then emptied out. I checked my flight time which now showed 12:00, grr. Though the nonstop flight was also delayed until 12:45.

Plaza Premium Lounge, Bangalore

Finally our plane arrived at 11:20 and we departed at 12:00. The flight to Thiruvananthapuram took about 1h15 where we had a 45 minute ground stop. Most of the passengers got off here and were only a few people onboard for the continued flight. We landed at 2:45 PM (Maldives is 30 minutes behind India time zone), just after the other nonstop flight from Bangalore, which meant long lines at immigration. It was considerably warmer and more humid here than it had been in Bangalore. I headed over to the left where the line was shorter. I was already in line when an Indian guy zooms in and jumps the queue in front of me, going nut to butt with the guy in front of me. I'm somewhat familiar with queueing as a contact sport so when he leaned over I moved forward a bit to push him out of the way, but he kept pushing back and pushing the guy ahead. Whatever dude. Our line had been moving fast as the first class line was empty next to us and they were taking people from our line. It got down to 3 people when another flight must have arrived and the first class line filled up and our line slowed to a crawl.

Air India A320 Y BLR-TRV

Air India A320 Y TRV-MLE

Finally it's Mr Nutbutt's turn and of course he takes longer than anyone. I was waiting there 10 minutes while he pulled out papers, had to get fingerprinted, etc. Meanwhile the lines on either side of me are moving fast. Ugh. Finally through immigration at 3:10 and found the Holiday Inn kiosk. The fancier hotels have their own aircon lounges. The Holiday Inn is one of the closer resorts and so transfers via boat instead of seaplane. It's still a hefty $219 roundtrip transfer fee (more than I paid for the room!). They were still waiting on 2 more passengers so it was about 3:30 by the time we finally set off in their boat for the 45-minute trip. We passed by the densely populated city of Mahe which occupies the entire atoll with tall apartment buildings. They provided us with cold towels and bottled water. The crossing was a bit rough in spots as we were crossing open water between the atolls. There were two Americans in the seat behind me, turns out they were from San Antonio! They were planning on going to Sri Lanka after Maldives. We arrived at the hotel about 4:20PM. The water around the hotel was an amazing shade of blue.

Male Airport boat terminal

Male,Maldives

They shuttled us in a golf cart from the jetty islet to checkin, which was in this huge beehive shaped building. A fresh cold towel and welcome drink were waiting while they checked me in. I'm Platinum Ambassador with IHG and they offered me an upgrade to a beachside villa, score. They also went over the activities at the resort, including a free snorkeling trip the following morning. I would have just enough time before my departure. They drove me down to my villa, #53, two story with open air lounge below and aircon bedroom with balcony above. Pretty nice. They had complimentary water and oranges with an orange juice press. Alcohol is illegal in Maldives except for hotels and the minibar was well stocked.

Holiday Inn Kandooma


Reception







Villa Room

I headed off to explore the island, what little of it there is. The local island of Guraidhoo is just across a narrow channel, it would be easily possible to swim or even wade across at low tide, but there were signs here warning that access to the island was not allowed. There were local kids though out playing on the beach across the channel. The overwater cabins were also on this side of the island. They looked very basic from the outside, not like the thatched style overwater ones in the south Pacific. I continued my walk around the island, which didn't take very long. The eastern side of the island had a breakwater and the surf was very rough. I came back across the reception area and Kandooma Cafe, the buffet restaurant. Current rates for breakfast are $36 and $69 for dinner. There is also a decent sized pool here and watersports center. I signed up for the morning snorkel trip and wandered back along the north beach to my room.








Pool

For dinner I went to The Kitchen restaurant. They had a la carte menu and I ordered the Aussie lamb wrapped in prosciutto for $55. The resort didn't seem too busy and there weren't many people in this restaurant. While I was waiting on dinner the waiter came up and said they were feeding sharks. Went to watch, saw a few sharks and stingrays swimming around as they tossed fish heads in the water. Dinner arrived and it was pretty tiny, just three round cuts of meat. But it was enough when combined with the bread plate. Still water is free as they produce their own on the island. I wandered back to my room via the pool area where a DJ was setup playing dance music.

$67 dinner