TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

To date, my one and only visit to the Maldives had been in August 2014. During that trip, I had stayed in one of the locally inhabited island of Mahibadhoo. Accommodation was booked via AirBnB and everything about the stay was no frills right down to the prices. It was a great experience to be able to live amongst and to interact with the local people on a day-to-day basis, even if this is only for that few days of a short vacation trip. Such experiences can not be replicated if one chose to stay cocooned in an expensive and sanitized tourist island in the Maldives. During my visit, I was not confined to just the island of Mahibadhoo. I also got to experience visiting other smaller islands as well, both inhabited and uninhabited. Getting to some of the sand banks that appeared or disappeared with the coming and going of the tides were extremely awesome experiences. I will return to the Maldives again because I generally love the sea and everything about the Maldives has to do

While vacationing in the Maldives in August 2014, I had to take an unplanned domestic flight from the island of Mahibadhoo to Malé to catch an international flight home to Singapore. This was due to bad weather resulting in rough seas which ruled out the usual boat transfer from Mahibadhoo to Male. The nearest domestic airport to Mahibadhoo is Maamgili Airport located in Alifu Dhidhdhoo Atoll (a.k.a. South Ari Atoll). A 25-minute speedboat ride from Mahibadhoo brought our travelling party to Maamgili Airport and we were booked on Villa Air's flyme for the short 30-minute domestic flight to the Malé s International Airport. The relatively low-altitude flight route treated those of us seated in the window seats to exhilarating views of the beautiful atolls of the Maldives. An awesome sight-seeing experience from the air which was totally unplanned. Villa Air's flyme operates the ATR 72-500 twin-engined turboprop aircraft and I was thrilled to take this picture of the arr