Ukulhas Beach

Ukulhas is an inhabited island in North Ari Atoll, about a thousand people, reachable from Malé by public ferry or speedboat. It is not a resort island: it is a village with a mosque, a school and a harbour, and a beach on its western end that has been set aside for visitors.

It matters as an example of a change in how the Maldives works. Until 2009 foreign visitors were effectively confined to resort islands, one island per hotel; a change in the law allowed guesthouses on inhabited islands, and a parallel Maldives has grown since — cheaper, closer to how Maldivians actually live, and requiring visitors to respect local norms. Ukulhas became one of the best-known examples, partly for its guesthouses and partly for running one of the country's more serious recycling and waste-separation programmes, in a nation where waste disposal is a real crisis.

The beach is white coral sand on a lagoon, with the reef edge visible as a line of surf offshore. The water is shallow, warm and pale, and there is good snorkelling from the beach at the drop-off. The designated bikini beach at the western end is where swimwear is acceptable; elsewhere on the island, modest dress is expected, and this is a rule rather than a suggestion. The island is small enough to walk around in under an hour, and the walk is the best way to understand the scale of what an atoll island is: a few hundred metres of coral sand, a metre or so above a rising sea.

Development is a village: guesthouses of a few rooms each, small restaurants, a dive shop, bicycles. Alcohol is not sold on inhabited islands in the Maldives, which is the practical difference visitors notice most.

An ordinary Maldivian island that organised itself: full waste segregation since 2013, a model the rest of the country was asked to copy. Guesthouses rather than resorts, no alcohol, a designated bikini beach and modest dress everywhere else — the arrangement is taken seriously and it works.