Words and photographs by Christopher P. Hill
September 4, 2026

Home to just a handful of resorts, Huvadhu Atoll is the Maldives before mass tourism: wild, remote, and uncrowded. For travelers seeking something beyond the country’s manicured beaches, its vast, island-ringed lagoon offers a rare sense of adventure.

*Left to right:* Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa’s overwater Kiaali Residence; a screw pine fruit.

“A giri is a shallow reef,” explains Asad Ali over a spread of Maldivian curries. “A hura breaks the surface, but has no sand yet. A finolhu has sand, a fushi has some vegetation, and a rah is a mature island. And a boaddoo…” He pauses for effect, a sly grin spreading across on his face. “That is an island that moves.”

Maldivians have a rich vocabulary relating to islands and reefs, much as the Inuit are said to have many words for snow. Little wonder, given that their watery world comprises nearly 1,200 low-lying coral islands scattered along a chain of 26 atolls in the Indian Ocean. What might seem to a visitor like an endless procession of indistinguishable palm-tufted specks is, to local eyes, a richly varied landscape, particularly here in Huvadhu, the country’s largest and most secluded atoll, where some 255 islands (only 18 of which are inhabited) encircle a vast, deep lagoon.

Resting on reefs that crown an ancient volcanic ridge, these delicate landmasses grow, shrink, and shift, endlessly reshaped by waves and tides, wind and currents. Some, like the boaddoo, even migrate as their sand is redistributed across reef platforms. “These islands are like living organisms,” says Asad. “Just like here on Hadahaa, which is why we call it ‘our living island.’”

Indeed, those words greet guests at the foot of the arrival jetty on this private resort island, which Asad and his sister, Shaahina, opened in 2009. It sounds like a marketing line until you actually see the coastal dynamics at work. Between the days of my visit in May, at the onset of the southwest monsoon season, the shoreline visibly changes as strengthening currents strip sand from the island’s southern beach, gradually exposing the limestone shelf beneath. At The Dhoni—a timber pavilion whose roof recalls the upturned hull of a traditional Maldivian sailing boat—two years’ worth of satellite images chart the monthly migration of the island’s white halo of sand, waxing on one shore as it wanes on the other. They call it “an eternal dance.”

“We have kept Hadahaa as nature intended,” says Asad. “Unlike so many other resort islands in the Maldives, we don’t pump sand to artificially maintain the beach, and we haven’t built seawalls or groins to divert the currents. Some guests might complain if their beach villa doesn’t have a beach outside it during their stay, but when we explain to them that this is all part of the island’s natural rhythm, they learn to appreciate it.”

*Left to right:* Asad Ali; perfectly seared tuna medallions from the Park Hyatt Maldives’ kitchen.

*Left to right:* Park Hyatt Maldives’ Island Outpost; a metal filigree wall installation at the resort’s Dining Room restaurant.

That ethos extends throughout the property, which began life as an Alila before becoming the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa in 2011. As the atoll’s first resort, it set an early benchmark for sustainable luxury, introducing cold-water air-conditioning and rainwater harvesting alongside a host of other environmental innovations that earned it EarthCheck and Green Globe certification. The 51 timber-clad villas—some set over the water, others along the beach—feel grounded rather than flashy, with angled roofs that help rooms stay naturally cool. The island’s lush vegetation has been kept free of any non-native plants.

Asad says efforts to reduce the resort’s footprint are ongoing, including an expansion of its solar capacity that will soon supply 80 percent of its energy needs. The goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of 2026.

The low-impact operation ensures near-pristine conditions in Hadahaa’s inner lagoon. Over sundowners at the pier-side Dive Bar and Snorkelers Lounge, I watch a trio of eagle rays wing through the turquoise shallows below; at other times, juvenile sharks patrol the water’s edge, repeatedly bursting bait balls of anchovies into silvery clouds. And then there’s the house reef: a 360-degree wonderland of marine life as varied and colorful as any in the Maldives—or so I’m told by Anmaday, an instructor at the dive center. I don’t doubt it. On a 30-minute dive along the northern edge of the reef, we spot batfish, bannerfish, Moorish idols, swirling schools of blue and gold fusiliers, and a green sea turtle flippering to the surface. Just as impressive are the corals—forests of staghorn, boulder, fan, and brain decorate the reef wall with almost indecent abundance.

Guests staying in one of the overwater villas perched along the edge of the lagoon can step straight in for a snorkel. The reef is said to be at its most vibrant just off the Kiaali Residence, introduced in 2022. Occupying a prime position at the end of the curving villa jetty, the three-bedroom showpiece features a 16-meter infinity pool, a sunken outdoor dining area, a private gym and treatment room, and round-the-clock butler service. Whoever nabs the master suite can step onto a deck equipped with a whirlpool tub and a daybed-size take on the traditional undhoali, or swing seat. The main living area is elegantly furnished in soft brown and aquamarine tones, but it’s the views through the floor-to-ceiling windows that really draw the eye: an unobstructed panorama of seemingly boundless blue ocean.

I can’t imagine a more ideal base from which to explore Huvadhu—and given that the atoll spans some 2,900 square kilometers, there is much to discover.

*Left to right:* A boat excursion through the maze of lagoons, channels, and islets south of Gemanafushi; a volleyball-themed monument on Gemanafushi’s main street.

*Left to right:* A Maldivian lunch at a café on Kondey featuring mango curry with smoked tuna, breadfruit with rice, and stir-fried moringa leaves; on the same island, farmer Hassandhi supplies fruit and vegetables to the Park Hyatt Maldives.

“Huvadhu has an old soul,” says Shaahina, who grew up in Malé, the capital, but fell in love with these remote islands while “hitchhiking” across the Maldives in the 1980s.

Situated just above the equator in the southern reaches of the archipelago, Huvadhu is far removed from the tourism hub of the Maldives’ central atolls, with a 100-kilometer channel separating it from its nearest neighbor, Laamu Atoll. “In Malé, we used to joke that Huvadhu was so far away, even the beyri—sea monsters—didn’t want to come.”

These days, turboprop flights from the capital reach the tiny airport on Kooddoo in just over an hour, bringing a modest trickle of travelers to the handful of resorts in Gaafu Alifu, the northern half of Huvadhu. For most of its history, however, the atoll existed in relative isolation, developing its own dialect, maritime trade routes, and traditional crafts such as coral carving and thundukunaa, the weaving of fine mats from local marsh reeds. It also nurtured a fiercely independent streak. In 1959, this culminated in the short-lived United Suvadive Republic, when Huvadhu joined the southernmost atolls of Fuvahmulah and Addu in breaking away from the Sultanate of the Maldives. For four years, the fledgling state was governed by a Westminster-style parliament in a bid to secure recognition from the British, who maintained a military base in Addu. A gunboat from Malé ultimately helped bring Huvadhu back into the fold.

I learn more about Huvadhu on a trip across the lagoon to Kondey, due east from Hadahaa. Beyond a small rectangular harbor where tuna boats are prepping for sea, the island unfolds much like any of its inhabited neighbors, with sandy streets flanked by metal-roofed houses daubed in pastel colors. Here, a mosque; there, a volleyball court. With Shaahina leading the way, it takes all of 10 minutes to cross the island to a little café where lunch awaits: mango curry with smoked skipjack tuna, coconut-milk soup, boiled breadfruit with rice, and a thick, umami-packed fish paste called rihaakura—“Maldivian Bovril,” someone at the table quips. Afterward, we tour the farm of a man named Hassandhi, who supplies papaya, butternut squash, eggplant, bottle gourd, and other produce to the Park Hyatt. Yet the real purpose of our visit lies in the island’s ancient past: an excavated bathing well, green with algae, believed to have formed part of a Buddhist temple complex more than a millennium ago. Not far away, pieces of carved coral-stone masonry are all that survives of a long-collapsed havitta, the Dhivehi word for stupa.

“Huvadhu has one of the Maldives’ richest concentrations of Buddhist-era remains,” Shaahina says. “Though archeologists have only begun to scratch the surface.”

Yet for all her interest in the past, it’s the future of the Maldives that drives her work. The first woman to work professionally in the Maldivian dive industry, Shaahina recalls diving off Malé in the early 1990s and finding the reef strewn with rubbish—old bicycles, tires, fishing nets, plastic trash. That encounter sparked the first of many reef cleanups around the country, and a lifelong commitment to environmental conservation.

Apart from helping shape the ethos of Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, Shaahina co-founded Parley Maldives in 2015. Under her direction, the locally run chapter of New York–based Parley for the Oceans has led more than 700 cleanups and established education and recycling programs across the country. In 2025, she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award—one of Asia’s foremost honors for leadership and social impact—for her work in marine conservation, community engagement, and sustainable tourism.

On this trip, she’s come to discuss waste management with the village council on Gemanafushi, one of Huvadhu’s largest inhabited islands. I tag along for a beach cleanup she’s organized with the local school, joining 80 kids collecting trash along the shore. They bring in quite the haul, though given the state of the garbage dump at the island’s northeastern tip, I wonder how much of a dent they can possibly make. “It’s a challenge,” Shaahina says. “There’s no centralized waste management system, and the amount of plastics we can send offshore for recycling is quite small. Still, we have to try—and to instill a sense of environmental stewardship in the next generations.”

Back at the Park Hyatt, she points me toward the Ocean Lab, a new space at the heart of the resort. Designed to connect guests with reef conservation programs and citizen-science initiatives, it’s a bona fide research facility, affiliated with the Maldives National University’s faculty of ocean sciences and equipped with a laboratory-grade microscope for studying plankton—the tiny organisms that underpin the entire marine ecosystem. Yet it also serves as a hub for community education, bringing schoolchildren from Gemanafushi and other islands to learn about the richness and fragility of the reefs on their doorstep.

*Left to right:* Inside a beach villa at Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa; studying plankton at the resort’s Ocean Lab.

*Left to right:* Arriving at Hithaadhoo, aka “Forest Island”; mung dal crepe with coconut and tomato chutneys, served for breakfast at the resort.

“How many seaplanes do you see? Zero. How many boats?” I’m standing with Asad on the jetty before setting off on an excursion, and indeed, there’s nothing to see but shimmering water stretching to the horizon. Huvadhu is the Maldives before mass tourism: wild, remote, and blissfully uncrowded. It offers a sense of discovery unlike anywhere I’ve experienced in the country’s busier atolls. Today’s outing, for instance, brings us to a labyrinth of tidal lagoons and islets south of Gemanafushi. As the boat threads through mangrove-edged channels, we spot gray herons and egrets stalking the shallows. Below us, moving like shadows across the sandy seabed, are porcupine rays, eagle rays, and cowtail rays. At times, it feels like we’re on safari.

The next evening, we’re the only visitors to what Asad calls “Forest Island,” a 90-minute boat ride from the Park Hyatt in the northwestern corner of the atoll. Swimming ashore, we skirt the powdery shoreline—empty save for hermit crabs scuttling among the driftwood—before trekking across an interior thick with banyans and towering lhos trees. Bushwhacking in the Maldives is apparently a thing. Compact though it is, the forest provides an important roosting site for frigatebirds, whose soaring silhouettes have long guided Maldivian fishermen to schools of tuna. At twilight, hundreds of the fork-tailed seabirds settle into the canopy overhead.

And then there are the turtles. Off Mutteyfushi, we snorkel at a site nicknamed “Turtle Town,” but even that doesn’t prepare me for what awaits: an extraordinary congregation of green and hawksbill sea turtles, all waiting patiently for the rising tide to carry them over the reef to feed on the seagrass in the island’s lagoon. I count 10, then 20, then 40 before losing track. More than I have ever seen. Almost as inconceivable is that we have the reef all to ourselves.

Guests can also play castaway at the resort’s Island Outpost, a private beach camp on a nearby deserted island. Stilted over the sand in a patch of palms, the rustic pavilion comes with sea-blue bean bags, hammocks, and a bare-chested, sarong-clad host who plies me with fresh coconuts as a chef grills up a just-caught whole rainbow runner. If that sounds too laid-back, there’s yet another stretch of secluded reef to explore.

On my last night at the Park Hyatt, I grab a table on the beach for a barbecue under the stars. The constellations in this part of the Maldives seem to shine with particular clarity, and on this night, the moon, Venus, and Jupiter are lined up brightly on the western horizon. Like the shifting sands beneath my feet, the vastness of it all will stay with me long after I’ve left.

*Left to right:* A welcome coconut at the Park Hyatt’s Island Outpost; bougainvillea on Kondey Island.

*Left to right:* The jetty connecting the resort’s overwater villas to the island; local transport on Gemanafushi.

Stays at Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa start from US$1,100 a night.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2026 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“As Nature Intended”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

The Untamed Magic of the Maldives’ Huvadhu Atoll