I second the side trip to the Maldives. And if you do go there, might as well head over to Sri Lanka as well, check out Sigiriya, where the rock fortress is located. If you do go to Sri Lanka, then you can also fly first or biz back to the US west coast, although that would require you to get a one-way to DEL, and more one-ways to MLE and/or CMB. You can fly a number of airlines in biz, one-way from CMB to SFO/LAX/SEA. For example, an OZ or SQ ticket, one-way will cost around 800-1000 USD, for the following:
on SQ CMB-SIN-ICN
on OZ ICN-LAX/SFO/SEA

I recently did this on a trip to southern India, turning a simple trip into a multi-country hop. My trip report is here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=382620