Maldives 2025: Bandos, corals and tiger sharks

The second half of our trip with Hanka in August 2025. After a week in Sri Lanka we flew from Colombo to the Maldives and spent four days on the little island of Bandos, not far from the airport and the capital Malé. The beginning of the trip is in the article Sri Lanka 2025.

In the Maldives you travel by boat, there's no other way 🙂

Tuesday 12 August 2025, Colombo – Malé – Bandos

Morning flight to the Maldives. From the plane window you can see the atolls, rings of coral islands in turquoise water. At first glance they look like a badly done photoshop, but they're real.

From the airport by speedboat to Bandos, accommodation in a villa with a view of the beach, and then nothing but white sand, palm trees and water the colour of a holiday brochure. Hanka went straight into the water, I went to check out the dive centre and by three in the afternoon I was already underwater on the reef right by Bandos: 53 minutes, 23 m at the deepest. I photographed the fish charts so I'd know what I'd be running into.

On one of the charts I then circled in red what I actually did meet on the dives:

• Teardrop Butterflyfish (Chaetodon unimaculatus), the butterflyfish with a teardrop on its side
• Moorish Idol (Zanclus cornutus)
• Long Fin Bannerfish (Heniochus acuminatus)
• Smallspotted Dart (Trachinotus baillonii)
• moray eel (Moray Eel)
• Zebra Lionfish (Dendrochirus zebra), a smaller relative of the lionfish
• lionfish (Lionfish)

In the evening wine and dinner. In Sri Lanka we'd been rushing around for a week, here it looked like we wouldn't be rushing at all.

Bandos
An island in the North Malé Atoll, just under 10 km from the airport. The resort on it is one of the oldest in the Maldives. The island is ringed by a coral reef you can snorkel to straight from the beach.

Maldives
An island nation of 26 atolls and roughly 1,200 islets in the Indian Ocean. It's the lowest-lying country in the world, with an average elevation of only about a metre above sea level.

Wednesday 13 August 2025, Bandos

In the morning the first diving trip by boat, two dives at two sites east of Bandos: at 9:02 for 48 minutes and at 10:49 for 47 minutes, both times down to 28 m. The first one was, I think, Manta Point by the island of Lankanfinolhu, but we didn't see any mantas.

In the afternoon snorkelling by the island and a turtle that was grazing on the corals and couldn't have cared less about us. A deer in Sri Lanka, a turtle here, the animals around here are somehow forgiving towards tourists.

In the evening a drink on the jetty, sunset and a live band playing.

Thursday 14 August 2025, Bandos

The second trip on the dive boat went out for sharks. On board there was, among others, a German family, both parents and two daughters around twenty. We kept bumping into them afterwards.

I knew we were going for sharks. Unlike the previous trips, the plan wasn't to swim around the atoll but just to go down to the bottom and wait. Luckily I had a borrowed GoPro. We were hoping a shark would show up. We had three guides, two very young European girls and one guy, Japanese I think. All of them equipped against sharks with, ahem, a wooden stick. It was obvious the shark would be a tiny one, a herbivore. Except not at all.

First a school of rays appeared, then another one in a while. That day the water was unusually murky, so each time this huge elegant animal would emerge out of the haze with a whole pile of others behind it. So there I am filming rays and suddenly something flashes past up on the right. I look, and there's a shark. Well, it's not a small one, about 3 m apparently, and another one behind it. Good thing they're herbivores! So I head towards them to get a better shot. All of a sudden the guide is pulling me back by the leg. Pfft, what's she on about, they're herbivores after all! Well, seeing as we were right by a fish processing plant that's been throwing meat scraps over the wall into the water for years, I guess I can't be surprised they weren't herbivores. They were tiger sharks, luckily well fed at that moment 😄

According to my watch we dived for the sharks twice at the same spot, the Fish Tank off the northern tip of the island of Hulhumalé, right next to the tuna processing plant: at 8:49 for 54 minutes down to 27 m and at 10:41 for 48 minutes down to 29 m. In the afternoon at 15:40 I did one more dive on the reef by Bandos, 53 minutes down to 27 m. The water was 28 °C on all the dives.

Hanka stayed on the island, and while I went after sharks, she went after a sun lounger and a book. We were both happy.

In the evening dinner, a walk along the beach and stars above the palm trees.

Friday 15 August 2025, Bandos – Malé

On the last day a bit more snorkelling in the morning and then photos by the leaning palm tree. A leaning palm above turquoise water is compulsory equipment for every beach in the Maldives and Hanka took it seriously, she stood on the palm, sat on it and lay on it 😄

In the afternoon by boat to the airport and by ferry to Malé. The capital is the opposite of Bandos: houses, scooters and people all crammed onto a small island. We walked to the Friday Mosque and the old cemetery with its coral-stone gravestones, across Republic Square and to the market, where the fruit hangs like green grenades.

Sunset in the harbour among the fishing boats, the ferry back to the airport and home.

Malé
The capital of the Maldives on an island of about 2 km², one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Old Friday Mosque (Hukuru Miskiy)
A mosque from 1658 built of coral blocks, the oldest in the Maldives. Next to it stand a minaret and a cemetery with coral gravestones.