Rude Travel by Vir Sanghvi: An island in the sun

The Maldives, on the other hand, actually wants Indians to visit. I took the first Air India flight to Male scheduled after the travel restrictions were lifted and there was an air of celebration in the aircraft. Though Air India, (and Indian Airlines) developed and created the Maldives-India sector (I first went to the Maldives in the early 1990s by Indian Airlines from Trivandrum), there has, oddly enough, never been a Mumbai to Maldives Air-India flight till now. So, the cabin crew distributed cake and when we landed at Male airport, there was a warm Maldivian welcome. I spoke to Hassan Areef who looks after public communications at the airport and he told me how delighted they were that Indians were returning to the islands.

The second reason is the quality of the resorts. There are a lot of ugly, nasty resorts in the Maldives which you should avoid and go to Goa or Kerala instead. (Though these days, the Maldives may actually be cheaper.) But the better resorts are among the best seaside resorts in the world. The level of hoteliering is so fabulous that the resorts are at the cutting edge of global hospitality.

All of this begs the question: if the Maldives can do it, why can’t India build such great beach resorts?

What makes us look worse in comparison is that luxury tourism in the Maldives is largely the creation of an Indian. Sonu Shivdasvani and his Swedish wife Eva built Soneva Fushi, one of the first luxury resorts in the Maldives at a time when the country was a low-budget destination catering to groups of Eastern Europe tourists. (There are still Eastern European visitors to the Maldives but they are all millionaires now.)

Eleven years ago, we did a cover story on Sonu and Eva in Brunch and wrote about their role in transforming tourism in the Maldives. We also wrote about a concept that Sonu had pioneered: barefoot luxury.

At that time, Soneva Fushi was modelled on a Robinson Crusoe Island, the villas were hidden under lush vegetation by the side of the beach and butlers were called Mr. Friday (after Crusoe’s Man Friday). When you got off the seaplane that brought you to Soneva Fushi from Male airport, they took away your shoes. You were encouraged to go barefoot everywhere and to take a break from the stresses of the world. The idea was so original that many other Maldives resorts copied it. (‘No shoes, no news’ became a sort of slogan for Maldives resorts.)

Eleven years later, it is good to see that Sonu is still launching new trends. There must now be two hundred or more resorts and hotels, but most of them are vaguely similar. If you took pictures of the villas at, say, four of the top Maldives resorts and put them side by side, it would be hard to say which was which.

The thing about Soneva Fushi and its more recent sibling Soneva Jani, is that no picture of either of the resorts could be mistaken for anywhere else. Fifteen years ago, when I spoke to Eva, her ideas about sustainability, about being good to the planet and about avoiding plastic and other non-biodegradable materials seemed a little way out. Today, they are the conventional wisdom.

So it is with Sonu’s ideas on nutrition. From the very beginning, he pushed the resorts into growing their own herbs, mushrooms and other vegetables. (This is a big deal in the Maldives where it is hard to grow anything in the coral islands and most food items are imported.)

He was talking about avoiding gluten, about reviving ancient grains, about the need to look for lactose-free ‘milk’ and about the dangers to the environment (and possibly your health) from eating too much beef. At that stage, no luxury resort bothered about all these so-called ‘fads’.

But Sonu, who likes and enjoys good food and wine and still retains a Peter Pan-like youthful quality, is proof that it all works. As he said to me years ago, “it is not how much you eat but what you eat and when.”

There are many sides to Sonu and Eva. She was a top model, appearing on the covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, etc. He was brought up in a NRI family of millionaires (full disclosure: I am a trustee of the philanthropic Inlaks Foundation, run by the Shivdasani family to send Indians to study abroad but Sonu is not involved with the foundation), so they both had glamorous backgrounds. (They met at the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, for instance.)

But both have gone beyond those glamorous backgrounds. Sonu is so obsessive about food and wine that it is impossible to eat badly at Soneva Fushi. For instance, the sushi counter is run in collaboration with the three-star Sushi Gyoten in Fukuoka. The right-hand man of Chef Gyoten, a brilliant chef called Akira, makes the sushi in front of you and it is easily the best sushi most of us will ever eat. The teppanyaki counter, also run by a brilliant Japanese chef, is on the roof of a building and designed so that you can see the sun set as your meat grills. (There are two Indian chefs — one North Indian and one South Indian — who will make anything from dosas to chicken manchurian to vegetarian dishes, if that’s what you want.)

Then there are the unique Soneva experiences. There’s a picnic to a deserted island where the boat drops you and leaves you alone all day or where, if you prefer, a team of chefs can precede you and cook a gourmet meal. There is the observatory where, on one memorable visit, Buzz Aldrin showed me where he had landed on the moon.

Soneva has always had its share of celebrity guests. You could be sitting next to James Dyson, inventor of those amazing gadgets or the owner of Gucci, YSL and Bottega Veneta and his famous actress wife or opposite a Pussycat Doll. But, here’s the thing: there is no bowing and scraping. Everyone gets treated the same way.

Because Sonu likes going beyond glamour, he will routinely offer free holidays to writers, thinkers and academics. All they have to do is to give a few talks and interact with guests. I found it amazing to go on an island picnic and end up discussing the rise of China with an Oxford professor (and best-selling author). The intellectual component of Soneva easily matches the luxury.

So, at the end of every trip, I ask myself the same question: if Sonu Shivdasani can transform hospitality on a bunch of tiny islands off the coast of India, why can’t we do the same in our country’s seaside resorts? Why do we have to fly over the Indian Ocean to enjoy such stimulating holidays?

After all these years, I still don’t know what the answer to that question is.

And so, I go to the Maldives.

The views expressed by the columnist are personal

From HT Brunch, August 15, 2021