Milaidhoo Maldives

Milaidhoo is 300 metres long and 180 wide, small enough that a drone overhead would be everyone's business, so drones are banned. Its 50 villas went up in 2016 to designs by the Maldivian architect Mohamed Shafeeq, some on a jetty over the lagoon and the rest along white sand, where the shallows run pale turquoise out to the dark of the reef. Under roofs raftered high in honey-coloured wood, the front of a bedroom folds back and the bed faces a swing seat on the deck and a pool of its own. From the beach a boardwalk curves out to Ba'theli, the restaurant, which is a ba'theli: the trading boat that once carried goods between the islands, and the cooking of distant places with them, now thatched over with its masts still up. The kitchen takes its cue from the cargo, with Maldivian seafood and spice, served on the open deck or below, where it is air-conditioned and the floor is glass, with the lagoon underfoot.

Recommended for couples who want their Maldives quiet, and for families whose children are eight or more, the youngest the island takes, with the Two-Bedroom Ocean Residence sleeping six. A protected house reef rings the island, close enough to snorkel from the villas. Further out, Hanifaru Bay is about fifteen minutes by boat, for manta rays and, from May to November, whale sharks, and the hotel runs guided trips there three times a week. For anyone who finds an island of 300 metres a crowd, the resort keeps a sandbank of its own a few minutes away by boat, and a night out there comes with a four-poster bed on the sand and a crew close by, in case the castaways change their minds.