Six Senses Laamu

A domestic flight south from Malé takes about 50 minutes and lands at Kadhdhoo, a strip on a thin island in Laamu Atoll. From there a speedboat crosses to Olhuveli, a low island of palms and white sand with a long reef on its eastern side. Six Senses Laamu opened there in 2011 and has had the atoll to itself ever since: there is no other resort in Laamu, and the nearest are several atolls to the north.

Architecture and design

The villas are built of timber, with thatched roofs and large decks, in the plain Six Senses style that puts the structure in the background and the sea in front. Water villas stand on stilts along two jetties off the lagoon, several with glass floor panels and nets slung over the water for lying on. Beach villas sit back among the trees with a path to the sand. The public buildings, including the restaurants and the spa, use the same timber and thatch and are spread along the island so that no part of it feels crowded.

Rooms and suites

The 97 villas range from one-bedroom beach and water villas to two-bedroom retreats with private pools. Lagoon water villas face the calm west, ocean water villas the open sea to the east. Every villa has an outdoor bathroom, a bicycle for the island paths and the Six Senses touches of a minibar stocked with house-made snacks and a wine fridge. The largest, the Laamu Water Retreat, has its own pool and gym on the deck.

Dining

Leaf is the restaurant built in the treetops, serving organic dishes with vegetables from the island garden below it. Zen, at the end of a jetty, is a small Japanese restaurant with a tasting menu. Longitude is the main restaurant over the water for breakfast and dinner, and Chill, a bar on stilts next to it, takes the sunset. Sip Sip is a small bar on the beach. The Ice and Chocolate Studio makes its own ice cream and chocolates, and the island has a wine cellar for tastings.

Wellness

The Six Senses Spa stands over the water on its own jetty with treatment rooms open to the lagoon, a yoga pavilion and a programme that includes sleep tracking and wellness screenings. The water itself is the main attraction. Yin Yang, a surf break off the eastern reef, works from roughly April to October and has made Laamu one of the few resorts in the Maldives with a serious surfing season. The Maldives Underwater Initiative, the resort's marine biology team, runs the house reef programme, monitors the manta rays that gather at Hithadhoo Corner in the atoll and studies the seagrass meadows around the island, which the resort has chosen to keep rather than clear.

Weddings and events

Weddings take place on the beach and on the water-villa decks, with dinners at Zen or on the sand. There are no conference rooms; the island takes small corporate groups and buyouts on the strength of its isolation rather than its meeting facilities.

Location

Laamu is in the south of the Maldives, well below the busy atolls around Malé. The transfer is a domestic flight from Malé to Kadhdhoo followed by a speedboat of about 15 minutes, or a seaplane in daylight. The isolation has consequences: there is no island hopping, no nearby town and no other resort to visit for dinner. What the atoll offers instead is a long reef with few divers on it, the surf break and the manta season. As a luxury resort in the Maldives it stands apart on those grounds rather than on the size of its villas.