Flight from Amsterdam to Moscow: first leg of our Maldives and Sri Lanka trip
Tuesday, 29th October, 2019
Today, we have quite some flight mileage to do before we arrive at our first destination on the Maldives: Bandos Island.
It’s a bright and sunny morning and Gaby arrived on time so that by 9.a.m. we were on our way. We had no serious traffic jams on the way so that we arrived at Schiphol before 10.30. Gaby drove the car back to Krimpen while we leisurely checked ourselves in and made our way through security and passport control.
In no time we were boarding the Aeroflot aircraft which would take us on our first leg of our journey stopping over in Moscow. The 3 hour flight went smoothly and what with some lunch and watching a movie, we quickly arrived in a snow covered airport in Moscow! It was a good thing that we had quite a few hours to spend in transit as going through security and passport control proved to be quite cumbersome! The worst part for Gerry was the fact that Moscow airport is totally smoke free – and that meant he could not have a smoke anywhere…….. and to go out of the building, he would need a visa! So we spent the time having dinner and drinks so that Gerry’s agony would be somewhat less painful.
Finally we could board our flight to Male’ and we were so lucky that the plane was quite empty. We could claim two rows of four seats so that after the movie we could sleep somewhat more comfortably during our eight hour flight!
Gerry fast asleep 
The flight information which I followed every time I woke up!
By early morning, we woke up rather stiff but glad to have had a few hours of sleep. Out of the window, I could see the huge blobs in the Indian Ocean – these were the islands making up the archipelago of the Maldives. Even though it was quite cloudy, the sight was just beautiful – various shades of blue and pearl white beaches surrounding green covered islands.
When we landed, it was just marvelous to be greeted with temperatures already gone soaring to 29degrees Celsius. The visa formalities were a bit tedious especially as there were hundreds of tourists arriving at the same time, however we got through security and customs easily and waited for our pick up speedboat to take us to the island Bandos – only a 15 minute ride from Male’ airport.
Bandos Maldives is one of the first resorts on the Maldives when the local government started its tourist industry back in 1972. The whole island is the resort and in that way, the tourists are not interfering with the local stringent Muslim way of life. According to Gerry, Muslim women were not allowed to work in the tourist industry until some 20 years ago. But that’s not the case any longer and our resort is also staffed with women who, some of which do wear an attractive headscarf. The receptionist who assisted us in checking I was a well educated and charming Muslim lady and really looked after us very well.
While our beach villa was still being prepared for us, we went for a walk round the island – that only took half an hour but it was great enjoying the luscious gardens and the pearl white beaches. We had our first drink at one of the bars having it’s terrace jutting out on the reef. Oh, our papaya and mango fresh juice was just divine as we sat out on the verandah taking in all this new scenery – felt truly blessed!
Once we settled in our beach villa, we quickly changed and went out to the beach – and also to have some lunch – it’s been a crazy day but we wanted to have a swim and test the temperature….. it was divine! And what was even more powerful, all our aches and pains seem to have slowly disintegrated into nothing – the warm climate and lukewarm clean ocean did a whole load of good.
Tranquility, lunch and our home for the next 3 nights
After lunch, it was time to have a nap on the beach but soon after, we were back in our beach villa and we thought after enjoying the jacuzzi, we would be on time to watch the sunset from our beach. However we missed that as we both fell asleep and only woke up after sundown! After getting dressed, we first went for. Walk to our favorite bar and ordered our pre dinner cocktails. And then off to dinner which being a buffet, we tended to eat more than we should have, especially the sweets!
Tomorrow Gerry is going scuba diving and I will be his photographer! We’ll be sleeping well tonight – in a proper bed and listening to the sound of the ocean and night birds….
