What 935 DialAFlight clients thought of Indian Ocean

Toby was excellent, easy to get hold of and delivered as per request. We will use him again for future holidays for sure.

The trip was fantastic. The hotel was super and the transfers were seamless. All was good until we returned to Heathrow terminal 2....!

Isla Lawson has been brilliant throughout our travel arrangements. We would not hesitate to book with DialAFlight again.

Everything was as promised and we were delighted with our holiday

Marie was amazing throughout the whole process.

Thank you to Seymour who organised this long awaited break. We are both front line NHS staff and we really needed this. So thank you for not turning me away as many other companies I contacted who would not help or reply or consider looking for deals! Thank you. We will definitely recommend to our friends and family.

Everything went exactly to plan - perfect thank you.

The whole trip was fantastic.. everything went without a hitch and accommodation was superb

Marco was fantastic as was his team. Nothing was too much for them and they made the booking and travel effortless.

Very efficient service

We asked Daniel to suggest a hotel in Mauritius. He provided the most perfect location that suited my family. He kept in contact between booking the trip and us actually going and was always on hand to answer our many queries. I can’t recommend highly enough!

Very efficient service.

Callum excellent. Dealt with the multiple changes well

From start to finish wonderful customer service - second time I've used your company and definitely will use agaim

Everything was excellent thanks to Brody and the team.

Calls always answered promptly. When our contact was not in the office a colleague always stepped in and dealt with our queries effciciently. Top service mentality!

As ever, another smooth holiday just finished. Excellent service. We always book through DialAFlight with Clark Maroof and his colleagues!

Gavin was fantastic all the way through. Gave us great choices and was on hand for any questions we had.

I would like to thank Ben for sorting out a lovely holiday for us both - we had a fantastic time and we would recommend you to all our friends and family

The trip was excellent and all went to plan. Good communication from Des during the whole process. Will def use again.

Totally fantastic service, recommendations and flight times - will definitely be booking again.

Excellent service all round that's why I keep coming back to you.

In the past we dealt with Rudi but this time it was with Mark who dealt superbly with all our requests and made sure all went smoothly. Their sevice was excellent and will book our holidays/flights with them in the future.

Holiday destination was fantastic. Everything ran extremely well and DialAFlight did a amazing job for us. All bookings and changes we were kept informed of and all ran smoothly. I would have no hesitation in recommending them.

Thank you very much Zoe for all your help and support

Always willing to assist and help with even the silliest of questions. Thank you for everything.

Stafford was brilliant, and kept us in the loop. He was really friendly and helpful, made our holiday process so easy and made sure we were happy with everything. Would definitely recommend DialAFlight.

I will use DialAFlight again and again

Shelley was excellent and will be booking with her again - thank you so much

It was a pleasure to work with you. The only hitch was that the airline website did not allow us to check in and select seats.

Floating playground

Hooked! On the fabulous sealife of the Maldives

From the moment he touched down in a floatplane, Max Hastings found these islands were a playground of underwater wonders

We drifted with the current. Beneath us bannerfish, butterflyfish, snappers, spangled emperors and unicornfish flitted about. Turtles and manta rays were miraculously unafraid.

We glimpsed the occasional reef shark; a brilliantly-maned lionfish. Who could resist another little passer-by named the seal-faced puffer? My wife Penny and I are passionate snorkellers, and the Maldives are among the great playgrounds for our kind.

Floating above an abundance of colourful flitting fish

Every hotel amid the thousand islands scattered across the Indian Ocean south-west of Sri Lanka offers boats for watersports and fish-watching.

Through the glass floor of our villa set on stilts above the sea at the Lux resort on South Ari Atoll, we watched the octopus that lived in a heap of rocks ten feet below. Remind me not to be reincarnated as an octopus: you spend half your life waiting for lunch to swim within tentacle-reach; the other half hiding, to avoid becoming somebody else's entree.

Guests reach the Lux resort via a half-hour flight, itself a pleasing little adventure, on one of the fleet of floatplanes that services the islands.

South Ari is less than a mile-and-a-half long, and one of its joys is the absence of motor vehicles: everybody walks, rides an electric buggy, or bikes. As the place is dead flat, even pedallers of our age are unlikely to suffer coronaries, and we went everywhere on two wheels.

The four restaurants serve every kind of Western and Asian food. We rotated between them, especially savouring the Italian place's pasta arrabbiata.

The Lux's 400-odd guests are a three-way spread of British, European and Asian. Each evening we walked the length of the island's pristine beach, watching tables set for the honeymooners who opted for candlelit dinners on the sand.

We fell in love with Goni, the warm, tough, laconic boatman who took us out to the reefs. I had special reason to appreciate him, because I would never have made it back into the pitching speedboat without being heaved onboard by his brute strength.

Uninhabited escape
On our most spectacular day, we peeled away from our usual group to take a private 20-mile trip to an uninhabited atoll.

On the passage we trailed long fishing lines, and I took up a rod to bring in a 20lb wahoo. Then for an hour we snorkelled blissfully, without another soul or boat in sight. Once ashore, Goni and his boys barbecued the wahoo and a couple of snappers. Penny and I lay idling, revelling in the dazzling white sand and azure sea.

Lunch was a gastronomic triumph, though if I am honest, the heavily-spiced snapper tasted better than my own catch. In the afternoon we snorkelled again, then Goni bounced us home across the sea at 40 knots.

Penny and I agreed that the remoteness, amid so much beauty, placed that day among the best of any holiday we remember.

Eco-transport is the essence of South Ari Atoll and cycles are freely available to use

Paradise must be preserved
As wonderful as it is, or simply because of its beauty, there is reason to be anxious about this paradise. On our barbecue atoll, it was of great concern to see it hasn't escaped the global plague of plastic waste, with many plastic bottles beached above the tideline.

And much of the coral in the Maldives is in a bad way - a stark reminder of what we have allowed to happen to the planet on our watch. It again highlights that unless concerted and decisive, committed action is taken, our grandchildren are unlikely to experience a fraction of the natural wonders we have seen, either at sea or ashore.

The damage to the reefs will of course also affect the fish populations - sealife won't thrive if the reefs continue to become sterile.

On a couple of our boat outings, in search of the hugely popular, brilliantly spotted whale sharks, we decided to leave the area because we thought rather too many snorkellers and divers were entering the sea each time a whale shark briefly appeared and we didn't want to add to the number.

Penny Hastings adored the infinity pool and found it difficult to leave at the end of their holiday

We adored our Maldives fortnight, and would recommend the Lux to anybody active enough to swim, bike, eat and drink: Penny had to be dragged away from the infinity pool overlooking the ocean outside our villa.

Those who love such things should head for the reefs quick… while some remain. And we should redouble efforts to make sure future generations can also enjoy such wonders.

First published in the Daily Mail - March 2019

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