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WONDERS OF NATURE
Maldives. Nature miracle
It is even hard to believe that today there are still regions on Earth where anyone can find an uninhabited island to their liking and settle on it. And yet such places exist! And when a light boat, having safely slipped through the white-foamed lace of the surf, squeezes through a narrow passage in a coral reef and finds itself in the pale blue water of the lagoon, whose mirror-like surface is not disturbed by a single wrinkle-wave, then the traveler’s heart involuntarily shrinks from the sweet foreboding of a miracle happening. : ten meters from the anchored ship lies a dazzling white strip of sandy beach, trimmed with a green wall of palms and pandanus, and the bottomless southern sky is reflected in the warm and transparent blue of the lagoon, as if inviting you to enter a fairy tale...
A light bungalow with a supply of food and water, a first aid kit and a radio transmitter will complete your transformation into a Robinson, and a scuba gear or just a mask and fins taken with you will allow you to look into the underwater world of the lagoon full of wonders. This is how the traveler is greeted by the Maldives - the most beautiful and most fertile islands of the Indian Ocean. Two parallel 850-kilometer chains of coral atolls of this archipelago stretch across the boundless ocean along the seventy-third meridian from the equator to the eighth degree of northern latitude. There are XNUMX islands and islets in the Maldives, but only XNUMX of them are inhabited. The rest are still waiting for their Robinsons. The atolls barely rise above the surface of the water (a maximum of one or two meters), and it seems that huge green flower beds grow right out of the ocean, crowned with curly tops of palm trees and girded near the water with a white belt of coral beach. It is unlikely that somewhere else on our planet there is a country whose highest point is a hill only 24 meters high! The impression of the friendly hospitality of nature, arising from people who first came to these distant islands, does not deceive the traveler. There are no poisonous snakes or predatory animals here, and in general there are very few living creatures on land: except for lizards, turtles and outlandish bats, flying foxes, the size of a rabbit hanging on branches upside down. But in the clear waters of the lagoon, whose light blue is so different from the dark blue water of the ocean surrounding the island, among the bizarre multi-colored coral thickets, life is in full swing. Fish of various shapes and colors, crabs and squids, starfish and hedgehogs, marvelous beauty of mollusk shells and brown, green and red algae live here. The storm of the local waters - the shark - cannot penetrate into the lagoon closed from the ocean, and swimmers do not get out of the gentle waters for hours, contemplating the wonders of the underwater world. The northern part of the Indian Ocean, where the islands are located, is not in vain called the "ocean of heated waters." Thanks to the warm Equatorial current, there are ideal conditions for the development of corals, and it is no coincidence that the two longest chains of atolls - the Maldives and Laccadive Islands - are located in this area. By the way, the name "atoll" itself comes from the Maldivian word "atola", which means "island ring". The inhabitants of the archipelago call themselves "divehi" - islanders, and their country - "Divehi Raajare", that is, the "Kingdom of the Islands". The main atoll and the city on it - the only city and capital of the country - are called Male. From this name came the generally accepted name of the island republic. Its small population (about 200 thousand people) is mainly engaged in fishing. But not coral fish are sold, but a local variety of tuna - bonito. To catch it, fishermen have to go 40-50 kilometers from the coast, into the open ocean. At dawn, their small sailing boats roll away from the moorings and soon the white spots of the sails disappear over the horizon. But at six o'clock in the evening, the fishermen always return home: after all, at exactly six on the islands the sun sets and a black, impenetrable tropical night reigns, when even the experienced eye of an experienced sailor cannot find the only passage in the formidable ring of the coastal reef. Dried and dried in a special way tuna - the so-called Maldivian fish - is the main export item of the Maldives, and XNUMX-gram pieces of it are a kind of currency on the islands. Once upon a time, the archipelago was also the main supplier in the South Seas of another currency widely used in the countries of the East - cowrie shells, which were used in the Middle Ages as money in dozens of countries: from India to Mali. But as these unusual "bills" were replaced by bronze and gold coins, the kauri fishing lost its importance, and beautiful patterned shells are now collected only for the manufacture of necklaces and other jewelry. Few people leave the Maldives without a string of cowrie beads. Another important part of the economy of the islanders is the collection of coconuts. Coconut palms, bananas and breadfruit grow on most of the islands of the archipelago, but only palm trees give residents the opportunity to obtain a valuable commodity product - copra. This is the name of dried coconut pulp, a highly valued raw material for the production of coconut oil on the world market. Life in the archipelago can be called calm and serene. Only the absence of rivers and springs complicates the life of the islanders. All fresh water is collected here in wells and pools during the rainy season, and only on one atoll - Fua Mulaku - there is a small fresh lake with a diameter of three hundred meters. The ancestors of the modern Maldivians, the Sinhalese from the island of Sri Lanka, settled the islands as early as the XNUMXth century BC and brought their religion here - Buddhism, which for one and a half thousand years determined the way of life of the islanders. But in 1153, an Arab preacher who arrived in the Maldives converted the inhabitants of the archipelago to a new faith - Islam. The messenger of the prophet became the first Maldivian sultan, and the Muslim religion still remains the state religion in the Maldives. However, outwardly, this does not manifest itself in any way in the appearance of the few villages of the island country. Only the miniature one-story capital of the country, Male, can boast of a mosque built in the XNUMXth century from white coral slabs. The atoll adjacent to the island of Male has now been turned into an airport, and many tourists now arrive in the Maldives by air. But, although instead of a leisurely three-day boat trip on the route Colombo - Male, a modern airliner delivers you here in a matter of hours, the feeling of traveling to a fairy tale does not disappear. And when, after a three-four-hour journey over the ocean, instead of a monotonous water desert, emerald pendants and dark jade necklaces suddenly appear in the window of an airplane, like scattered on blue velvet, my heart stops in a sweet anticipation of a miracle: finally I will see the Maldives! Author: B.Wagner
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