Rx For Your Blues

LUXURIES AT MERCURE MALDIVES KOODDOO GO BEYOND JUST STUNNING VIEWS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN. HERE, YOU CAN GAWK AT TECHNICOLOURED CORALS THROUGH YOUR VILLA'S FLOOR AND SWIM BESIDE GIANT SEA TURTLES.

- Humaira Ansari

Shafeen is swerving the buggy down the snaking wooden jetty like an ace. It’s pitch dark and drizzling, his path is damp from the day’s torrential downpour, but the young Maldivian is jovially transporting our group of seven international journalists to our villas in Mercure Maldives Kooddoo resort. Despite the fatigue from two delayed flights, I’m anxious to find my bearings—they matter, especially when you are in a property that floats atop the Indian Ocean like a levitating yogi.

My ears perk up when I hear the sea roar on either side of the jetty we are now trundling down, but, sadly, all I can see is a bulbous black mass lit in parcels, deep blue reflections cast by the resort’s distant structures glinting off it. “Wait for sunrise, madam. Sea looks gorgeous. Everything here does,” Shafeen reassures me when I alight. “Just hope weather’s good tomorrow.”