Yoga in paradise at 7am!

Published Dec 18, 2013

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Male, Maldives - I know people who do yoga, of course, but I view them with deep suspicion, as I do therapists and people who don’t drink. I know they are good people, but their virtue is exhausting, and not a little intimidating. I can say this with some confidence as I have a cleanliving sister who is both a psychologist and a yoga instructor and firmly of the opinion that I would be a healthier and happier person if I saluted the sun every morning. But I find it difficult to take someone seriously who divines her food in restaurants with a crystal.

However, when presented with the prospect of a week in the Maldives, with a little light yoga thrown in, I readily agreed. not because “perhaps it will make you a nicer person” (my sister) or because I’ve “got to learn to relax” (my wife). But because I’ve been to the Maldives before. white sand, turquoise sea and multi-coloured cocktails . . . now that’s what I call balm for the troubled mind. A little downward dog seemed a small price to pay for a lot of beached whale on a sun bed on one of the most beautiful tropical islands on Earth.

Baros is among 100 (and counting) tiny-island resorts rising out of this gloriously glistening stretch of Indian ocean. My previous trip, to a different island, had involved a delightful 45-minute seaplane transfer from the main international airport, but Baros is a mere 20-minute speedboat ride from Male, the islands’ capital. And it’s a bit worrying.

Male is, you see, the commercial and industrial heart of the Maldivian archipelago, all tower blocks and belching smoke, just ten miles from one of the white-sandbanked tropical islands that have made the Maldives the byword for luxury holidays.

A rolled damp flannel from the charming deckhand isn’t enough to cool my anxiety. (what is it with rolled damp flannels? You can’t move 20 yards these days without the offer of a rolled damp flannel.) nor is pointing out that the first island we pass belongs to the president - frankly, it looks a bit shabby, with its scruffy boats bobbing by the quayside and an enormous telecommunications mast rising up from the island’s centre, like a second-hand Tracy Island set.

All too soon, Baros hoves into view. And it’s gorgeous. There’s a mast, certainly, poking up behind the palms, but its beaches are dusty-white, the sea is sparkling aquamarine - and once we’ve disembarked, there’s a cocktail waiting for us (and a rolled damp flannel, obviously) in an open- air bar where low tables and cushioned-cane chairs are studded beneath a lush canopy of palm trees.

Then we walk to our room. Yes, walk. The island is tiny - a mere 380 yards long and 331 yards wide - and there are no golf buggies, just sandy foot- printed paths winding from one end of the island to the other.

On either side of the path, camouflaged behind bougainvillea, lie the island’s 45 beach villas, each with a sea view and its own stretch of beach.

We’ve booked one of the 30 “over- water” villas at the far tip of the island, and in a couple of minutes we emerge from the jungle shade into the dazzling blue and white light of the micro-coastline and step on to a decked pathway leading to a horseshoe of thatched villas, suspended on stilts in the crystal-clear water. It’s stunning.

As we tread the boards, our attention is drawn to shadows in the shallows - and we catch sight of a trio of 3ft-long reef sharks swimming lazily beneath our feet. Three of them! I’d snor- kelled for two weeks on my last visit to these waters and not seen a single one. There had been an embarrassing false alarm when I’d surfaced and cried “shark” upon spotting what turned out to be an unfeasibly large grey snapper, but these were definitely shark-looking sharks - grey, and sleek with mean-looking snouts and a fin and everything, and mere inches beneath our feet.

Baros, you see, has its own coral reef, and as we were to discover, a private ocean teeming with stunning sealife easily accessible a few feet from your sunbed.

That is, of course, if you ever decide to leave your room. Baros may be old-school (it was one of the first resorts) but it has kept up with the how-big-is-your-room arms race that has been fought among the high-end luxury Indian Ocean resorts over the past ten years or so. So big, yes. And luxurious, certainly - cool mahogany bedroom, marble bathroom, a giant TV that popped up from a chest at the end of a magnificent pool-sized bed, the works.

But forget the room. Just look at that view. Beyond the infinity plunge pool and the cushioned sunloungers and the four-poster day bed lies your own private Indian Ocean as far as the eye can see.

And, unbelievably, some 600 yards away, there was a couple, standing in the middle of it.

Or so it seemed. As we discovered, lower yourself from the ladder at the end of your deck and you can walk, with the warm, transparent water no more than thigh-high, all the way out to a small sandbank where you can turn around, stand and enjoy the view of the island from out-at-sea level. And congratulate yourself for choosing the best room on the best island on the most romantic tropical paradise on the planet. And then realise you’ve cocked the whole thing up by signing up for yoga every morning. At 7am. Meeting at 6.45. On your holiday.

But before that there’s dinner - a choice of posh nosh at the Light- house restaurant or the simpler but equally delicious menu at Lime, the main restaurant. (There’s a third restaurant, Cayenne, for pizzas and light lunches.) And before that, a massage.

Now I’m not sure about you, but I find the whole massage experience deeply unrelaxing. For me, the stripoff-and-oil-up experience of the spa massage comes down to the humiliation of paper pants; the tiny, tissue- thin budgie-smugglers that look like bath caps with leg holes that make you look like Borat’s older, fatter, unfunny uncle.

I can feel my stress levels rising as I make my way to the changing room. But even here, Baros manages to outshine its many luxurious rivals by providing generously proportioned paper boxer shorts. Now we’re talking.

The Baros masseuses pummel like Olympians and I waft down to din- ner in a blissful daze. The food is fantastic - fresh fish, crisp wine - and I float back to our room. How much more relaxed can a man get? I’m about to find out.

At 6.30, on the first morning of our holiday, we are padding down to the Lighthouse to meet Kumar, our yogi for the week. I dislike him on sight. He is depressingly small and lithe, glowing with good health, and looks like the kind of man who can flip himself forward and balance on the palm of his hand. I ask him if he can do this. Of course he can. My heart sinks. And so it begins.

I do a downward dog, in a mongrel fashion. I salute the sun and I balance on one foot, cross over my elbows and bend and stretch and breathe and be. And, to my astonishment, I love every moment of it. Kumar is the kindest, gentlest, most patient and generous teacher I’ve ever met.

Through some miracle, he made each hour melt into mere minutes. By the end of the week, if I wasn’t exactly springing out of bed each morning, I was certainly rolling out of it with something approaching

Senthusiasm. By day three I was volunteering for evening meditation.

So, did yoga teach me to relax? I should say so. I’ve never slept better, though the snorkelling off Baros’s coral reef - teeming with every colour of tropical fish, and, on one occasion, a giant sea turtle - would be enough to calm any man.

Did it make me a nicer person? Hmm. I did plant some coral, as Baros encourages its snorkellers and divers to help in its coral con- servation programme.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that a holiday in the Maldives in general - and Baros in particular - is spectacularly self- indulgent, to a virtue-busting degree.

There’s not much to do on a tropical island that you can walk round in 15 minutes, other than eat, drink, swim, snorkel, sleep, and in my case, obviously, meditate and yogitate - though there is a gym, boat trips to other islands and diving trips for serious divers.

But there are no water sports here (hurrah!), no underwater nightclubs (as found on the groovier islands), and this island doesn’t take its barefoot luxury style too seriously. What they do, they do brilliantly, simply, without fuss.

Each day is pretty much exactly like the last. Except here, it’s like the best day you’ve ever had, day after day.

Who wouldn’t want to repeat that? Baros is blissed-out bliss at its most blissful.

Om, as we yoga converts like to say. Shanti, shanti, shanti. - Mail On Sunday

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