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Barefoot Luxury in the Maldives

Barefoot Luxury in the Maldives
A TravelIntelligence.com story by Jim Keeble

Is a naked-toed luxury holiday worth the price of a small compact car? Could you not get a cheap flight to somewhere beachy, take off your shoes, find a wooden cabin and a man to cook you curry, for a fraction of the cost?

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They’ve stolen my shoes. After thirteen hours on a plane, a smiling man has placed them firmly into a bag labelled “No News, No Shoes” and pulled the draw-string tight. I am now barefoot in the Maldives. I feel distinctly uncomfortable. Some people have a thing about their thighs, stomach or numerous chins. Personally, I can’t stand my feet. They’re big and hairy, a combination that’s rarely attractive outside a zoo.

This winter-sun season, “Barefoot Luxury” is the new buzz-word. Every expensively exotic beach holiday worth its sand is describing itself as a purveyor of “Shoeless Chic”, “Sand-In-Your-Toes Simplicity,” “Robinson Crusoe Relaxation”, or “Stripped Tootsy Extravagance”. Okay, I made the last one up, but you get the picture.

There’s even a new tour company called ‘Barefoot Luxury’ whose brochure attempts to sum up the concept:

“As our name implies you may experience the true nature of the places you’re visiting by walking barefoot, but luxury will never be more than a step away."

Initially, I’m sceptical. The simplicities of nature, with all mod-cons? Staying in grass huts for £2,000 a week sounds like a good deal for the tour operator. What’s next? £1,500 to pick turnips in Norfolk? £4,000 a week to shovel manure in Shropshire? Wouldn’t you be better off staying at home with the heating up and your size nines in a bucket of gravel from B and Q?

There’s only one way to find out. I must prepare to expose my hirsute toes to luxurious sun-drenched beaches, in the interest of journalistic research.

After much painful deliberation, I’ve decided to head to the Maldives, the birthplace of Barefoot Luxury, via its cousin “Robinson Crusoe Tourism.” This term was coined by a Danish academic study, commissioned by the Maldivian government in 1971, which foresaw that in an ever-shrinking, stressed-out world, high-end customers would pay top dollar for isolation and natural surroundings. The resulting developments set the standard for environmentally-friendly tourism. Resorts can only be built on deserted islands, and must be of a high standard, all with their own generators, desalination plants and produce deliveries, minimising any impact on the surroundings.

It worked. In 1972 there were just 1000 visitors to the islands. Thirty years later, there were 380,000.

It’s not hard to see why they come. These 1200 atoll islands, bisecting the centre of the Indian Ocean, look like they’ve been created by a ‘Paint Your Perfect Paradise’ computer program, with empty white shores caressed by nodding coconut palms, surrounded by a blue neon sea. Each atoll (from the Maldivian word ‘atolu’) is surrounded by coral reefs, housing vast shoals of fish the colour of Smarties. The temperature rarely budges from 30ÅC during the day, 25ÅC a night, and 27ÅC in the sea. All in all, it’s a mote more agreeable than Croydon.

I’m visiting two developments run by Soneva Resorts, founded by Indian businessman, Sonu Shivdasani and his Swedish wife Eva, a former model. Their Maldives properties have introduced this “No News, No Shoes” policy in the last two months, whereby you are asked to remove your footwear before stepping onto the island. Back in London, it seemed like a gimmick. My scepticism grew when Soneva Fushi’s manager, Marc Aeberhard informed me that the company was seeking to “redefine luxury”.

“For us luxury is about intangibles – space, tranquillity, and pure nature. We want people to ask “what day is it today?” In modern living, that is the ultimate luxury.”

Yet any cynicism vanishes the moment I step onto shore. The ivory sand is as fine as table salt and perfectly warm. By my side, a middle-aged Englishman stares at his feet as if he’s never seen them before. It must be said that they are not the prettiest in the world. I look at my hairy monsters with new-found affection.

“How nice,” remarks the Englishman, letting the sand run between his big fat toes.

Soneva Fushi (meaning “small island”), is 60 miles by seaplane and boat north of the international airport in Malé. The island is only a mile long and a third of mile wide, and is thick with tropical trees and plants. It offers Maldivian-style grass huts, (the size of my London flat), with lavish décor and sumptuous outdoor bathrooms.

Everything has been designed with naked toes in mind – from Indian sandstone to plantation teak and smooth pebbles in the outdoor showers, the floors are a joy to walk on. Outside each villa is a pine needle hedgehog, against which you rub the bottoms of your feet to rid them of sand. The pleasure this gives is not printable in a family newspaper. Suffice to say it’s good for sole and soul.

It doesn’t take long to realise that bare feet are a great leveller. Everyone seems to have dressed-down accordingly, with a pleasing lack of flashiness for an expensive resort. As Michael and Harriet Maunsell from Islington remark;

“It relaxes you immediately. There’s no competition. You can forget your make-up and jewellery. You don’t need to make sure your shorts are ironed!”

Stress levels are lowered further by the fact that there is very little to do in the Maldives, beyond contemplating your toe-nails. There are no museums, monuments, ruins, cultural centres or shopping malls. Just the sea, beach, and endless sunshine. Oh, and a gastronomic restaurant and five-star spa.

One of the attractions of Soneva Fushi is its shady “jungle” - a stroll along the sandy paths through the tropical fiscus, coconut palms, cork wood, stone apple, and hibiscus is the perfect antidote to sunburn on the beach. It feels coolly exotic, yet wholly safe - the paths are swept hourly, and lit at night, in a way I find real jungle never is.

My energy levels have plummeted, but I do venture out bravely one morning to go fishing. I have a dhoni boat to myself, where I eat mango and sip espresso on the rolling Indian Ocean, with an attendant poised, like a cricketer in the slips, to catch any fruit that tumbles off the table as we loll on the waves.

“Barefoot luxury?” I think to myself. More like “Bare-cheek luxury”.

But I’m not complaining. Especially when catching Maldivian fish seems to be as easy as getting a parking ticket in London.

My only complaint involves Soneva Fushi’s Me Dhuniye ‘Sunset’ restaurant, which boasts an incongruous $120 dégustation menu offering “Lasagna of job fish sashimi” and “Espresso of sweet corn and truffle”, and an even more OTT wine list, in which many bottles cost $300 or more. The contrast between the resort’s ‘natural’ ambiance and this Monte Carlo snootiness couldn’t be more acute. When the ‘luxury’ overpowers the ‘barefoot’ elements, the whole concept fails.

Fortunately at my second destination, Soneva Gili, the chef Lionel Valla has sought to maintain a more happy alliance with the shoeless concept. Here, the cuisine is stylishly simple. At the Saturday night buffet, my tuna curry is prepared by my own personal chef, after I’ve selected the ingredients. I mean, your own curry chef? I bet even Gazza doesn’t have that.

Soneva Gili (“very small island”) is just 15 minutes by speedboat from the international airport at Malé, and attracts a more glitzy clientele. It’s famous for its seven ‘Crusoe’ residences built in the water which are only accessible by boat (recently patronised by Sven Goran Eriksson and Gareth Gates, although not, I’m assured, together). Marooned these villas might be, but it’s unlikely Mr Crusoe would recognise them - the interiors are as luxury as barefoot can get before you’d have to put shoes on.

Arranged on two levels, these residences resemble huge grown-up Wendy Houses, with multiple decks and rooms boasting huge daybeds and wooden recliners, backgammon sets, DVDs, glass portholes so you can see stingrays and reef sharks swimming beneath your feet, and vast wooden bath-tubs built over the sea.

Whilst all appears ‘natural’, the attention to luxurious detail is extreme. There is beautiful Thai cutlery, Sri Lankan crockery and crisp cotton sheets. The tea bags are made of muslin, hand-tied. I thought the bamboo bathroom rubbish bins so lovely that I bought one for my girlfriend. I mean, when was the last time you bought your loved one a bin?

On my last afternoon, I find myself at the spa, which also resides on stilts 200 yards out into the Indian Ocean. My feet do the talking. I end up with a reflexology massage. As I lie there, trying not to flinch, I think that the last person who touched my toes like this was a doctor saying “Congratulations Mrs Keeble, it’s a boy!” Yet it’s wonderfully soothing. I awake at the end with drool on my chin.

So, is BL, BS? Is a naked-toed luxury holiday worth the price of a small compact car? Could you not get a cheap flight to somewhere beachy, take off your shoes, find a wooden cabin and a man to cook you curry, for a fraction of the cost?

Of course. But that defeats the point. As I recall from backpacking days, finding such perfect simplicity is hard work, requiring time and effort. The great thing about Barefoot Luxury is, it’s all done for you. To the highest quality.

As holidaymaker Harriet Maunsell puts it:

“It’s as if they’re saying, leave it to us. We know what you need to relax.”

There is a reason such ‘barefoot’ simplicity is expensive. In some ways, the ‘barefoot’ element is an illusion. All this ‘naturalness’ and ‘simplicity’ is the result of a large team of staff (at least double the amount of visitors in most resorts) and a costly creative vision. It’s akin to experiencing some great theatrical show, in which you never see the stage-hands, the rehearsal process, or the producers.

These adult playgrounds (in the Julie Andrews, rather than the Hugh Hefner, sense of the word), permit us to do things we haven’t done since childhood – not wearing shoes, riding a bike after dark, snorkelling in rock pools, or splashing about for hours in a gigantic bath-tub.

Without getting too Freudian, this might be the essential attraction of the Barefoot Luxury concept. It returns us to a state of blissful childhood. The moment you take off your shoes and run barefoot in the sand is all the more pleasurable because it reminds us of the first time we did it as kids. And who are the cheerful white-clad staff, calling us by our first names and acquiescing to our every whim, if not surrogate parents?

As if to symbolise this point, the visitors’ books at both resorts are full of happy little stick drawings, like primary school art exhibitions. Whilst walking around the island of Soneva Fushi, I discover a lovingly-crafted sandcastle with a home-made flag on top. It should be noted that there are no children staying here at the time.

“I suppose we do encourage you to slip back into childhood,” agrees Soneva Fushi’s manager, Marc Aeberhard. “You’re allowed to do things that ‘mother’ might have told you not to!” He illustrates his point with an anecdote concerning the Deputy Mayor of Zurich, (“The very definition of stiff!”), who had to be forcibly separated from his loafers upon arrival.

“He was so angry …” recalls Aeberhard. “But the day he left, he actually jumped off the boat and started swimming back to shore. He was laughing and splashing like a five year old!”

Ah yes. There’s only one real drawback to a barefoot luxury holiday - returning home. Since being back in London, I’ve been parading around the house, pied-nu, much to the alarm of my postman. But what can I do? My feet have become used to being luxuriously bare. The only problem is, next week they’re off to some hotel in the Seychelles. Without me.