The Maldives resort that will challenge your idea of the fly and flop
We all like to take a good book abroad, but resorts are now placing literature at the heart of holidays. Our writer heads to paradise to find the last word in relaxation
I’m more of a margaritas at midday kind of holidaymaker than a beach bookworm, so it’s unusual for me to be making my way to a bookshop, even if I am doing it barefoot and by bicycle, snaking between coconut palms and banyan trees.
I used to adopt the “switch it off and on again” approach to self-care for my frazzled brain, and it worked pretty well. But five years and one soul-crushing pandemic since our last family holiday I really wanted to know that this trip would do the trick. Is switching off really the answer?
“It is impossible to switch your brain off. You can’t force relaxation by simply emptying your mind,” says Lindsay Browning, a neuroscientist and sleep expert. “But pivoting your mind to a relatively complex distraction can be helpful. Engaging your ‘thinking brain’ with intellectual activities means you’re not at the whim of the part of our brain responsible for fight or flight, so your ‘lizard brain’ can rest.”
In a move I’m calling “taming the lizard”, I book the Maldives for our holiday. But I pick the destination at its most bookish: Soneva Fushi, in the Unesco-designated Baa Atoll biosphere reserve. It has form. This month some of the world’s greatest intellectuals and award-winning authors are convening beneath thatched canopies on driftwood stools to kick-start thought-provoking conversations on topics ranging from climate change to politics.
It’s an offshoot of the acclaimed Jaipur Literature Festival, which was founded in 2006 and has attracted luminaries including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi and Bernardine Evaristo. Now it has gone global with pop-ups in Europe, the US, Australia and, for the second year running, in the Maldives. Last year headliners were Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s aide. This year the line-up includes Howard Jacobson, the classicist Mary Beard and Pico Iyer.
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Crucially, you don’t have to catch the festival to benefit from some great minds on the island. Books are omnipresent, and there’s a year-round roster of seminars from visiting academics (Shauna Shapiro, the psychologist and author of Rewire Your Mind, is here in October for a health and wellness festival) and after-dinner talks with astronomers, such as James O’Donoghue, a Nasa alumnus who will host stargazing sessions in August.
I’m staying in a secluded beachfront villa with my husband and our two small boys, and our in-room library includes Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng and Paul Theroux’s Figures in a Landscape, alongside Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales. The children get lost in The Big Book of Bugs, but not before they’ve been out spotting rabbits among the trees, turtles in the sea and Lego in the epic kids’ club.
I ease myself in with a copy of Cheryl Strayed’s collection of agony aunt columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, over an elderflower spritz beside the sea, surprised at how it gently softens my British cynicism. At breakfast I am lured momentarily from fresh fruit platters and fluffy pancakes by the ding-a-ling of the passing book tuk-tuk.
At Soneva Fushi’s large bookshop, the Barefoot Bookseller, I meet Melissa Kelly from north London, who beat 2,000 other applicants to land the coveted job on the island. Having started as a pop-up, the store now stocks more than 1,000 titles (wellness and children’s books are the big sellers). Kelly co-ordinates and hosts author signings, cinema nights, children’s story sessions, creative writing classes and digital detoxes.
Holidays are one of the rare occasions when I find time to read these days, as evidenced by the pristine copy of Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry that I packed — it had been goading me from the bedside table all year. I asked a group of friends for book recommendations ahead of my trip. “I stopped reading when I had kids, tbh,” was the general consensus.
For many, though, holiday reading is all part of the travel experience. As synonymous with holidays as SPF and ice cream, the “beach read” comes endorsed by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon to the Channel 4 presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. So it stands to reason that the next logical step might be an immersive beach book club — even Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, originally held in Powys, has off-shoots in Colombia, Spain, Mexico and Peru.
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At last year’s Jaipur Literature Festival in Soneva Fushi, Huma Abedin told an enthralled crowd: “We are in paradise and know it is a place that may not exist in 20 years.” It might not have had the same impact had she said that in a damp marquee on Wimbledon Common.
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Some authors get a bit sniffy about being given the beach read label. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of the bestselling novel Fleishman is in Trouble, said: “I am confused as to why our taste for what we like would change in the location we read it, or the season.” But I beg to differ. The right book can really make a holiday.
Fifteen years ago a friend gave me Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible for a solo trip to Tanzania. I devoured it by headtorch-light under canvas as I trekked Mount Kilimanjaro, feeling the heart and soul of Africa embedding itself under my skin. On honeymoon in Amalfi I dived into Jess Walter’s breathtaking Italy-based satire Beautiful Ruins, captivated by the romance of it all.
True mindfulness, according to Browning, is not about zoning out. What our weary brains need is something new and stimulating to reawaken our dulled senses. “When I teach visualisation to manage generalised anxiety, I encourage people to create a scene in incredibly high definition. What can you smell, what does the breeze and temperature feel like on your skin, what can you taste? If your brain is keeping this complex image in your mind, there’s no room for worries and unhelpful thoughts.”
This multisensory escape to Soneva, our holiday resort, is certainly memory-banking a wealth of experiences I can revisit in times of need — from watching dolphins spin on the ocean’s surface at sunset to tasting next-level torched wagyu at Out of the Blue, a decadent restaurant on stilts.
“I encourage engaging all the senses in something new,” Browning says. “When we’re anxious we worry about the future and ‘what ifs’, and when we’re depressed we’re fixating on the past. Giving your senses new stimulus pulls us into the here and now.”
If true mindfulness isn’t about clearing your mind but reinvigorating it with new experiences, none is more surprising to me than a tour of Soneva’s “waste-to-wealth” hub. In the awe-inspiring recycling centre 90 per cent of waste is recycled, including tin cans being transformed into door handles for luxurious villas. Soneva is entirely plastic-free — the water is filtered and bottled on the island. After listening intently to conversations on sustainability and biodiversity I make a mental note to upgrade my recycling efforts at home. I know, I travelled more than 5,000 miles to have an epiphany beside a rubbish dump.
As I am reluctantly reunited with my Birkenstocks (Soneva has a “no news, no shoes” policy) to board the sea plane back to Male I am drawn momentarily to a copy of Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, propped up in the bookstore window. I realise that my phone has spent the duration of the trip in a drawer. I haven’t missed it once. I grab a copy of Hari’s book, vowing never to let myself switch off again.
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Tracy Ramsden was a guest of Soneva Fushi (soneva.com) and Turquoise Holidays, which has seven nights’ B&B at Soneva Fushi from £6,999pp, including flights and access to the full festival programme next May (turquoiseholidays.co.uk)
More ways to reboot your brain
1. Paint on Lake Constance
With sweeping views across the forest-lined shores of Lake Constance and Mainau Island to the snow-topped peaks of the Alps, this German wellness spa-retreat adopts the philosophy that nature is a health spa, and music, art and literature are nourishment for the mind and soul. During a creative art week under the expert supervision of Joanna Klakla, an artist and teacher, you’ll experiment with techniques and materials under themes such as growing plants, colours and celestial inspiration. Retreats are free for guests; three will run this year on July 16-22, October 1-7 and December 23-30.
Details Three nights’ room only from £768pp (buchinger-wilhelmi.com). Fly to Zurich
2. Literature in Cambridge
A stay at the Regency-era University Arms is steeped in literary tradition, from the oak-panelled library (stocked floor to ceiling with titles chosen by Heywood Hill, the Mayfair bookshop) to the lavatories, which play loops of audiobooks read by Alan Bennett and the like. Suites are named after writers, including Virginia Woolf and Stephen Hawking, who have passed through the city. Guests are allocated a personal “book butler” to tailor a recommended reading list. This year the hotel will host Janice Hallett, a crime and mystery writer, and Bonnie Garmus for talks and masterclasses. It partners with the Cambridge Literary Festival in the autumn.
Details B&B doubles from £253 (universityarms.com)
3. Music in Lucerne
Enjoy guided city walks and marvel at modern European architecture, all to the soundtrack of performances by the Oslo Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and a raft of classical musicians at the prestigious Lucerne Festival (August 8 to September 10). The expert lectures and stunning lakeside venue will only enhance the experience further.
Details Five nights’ full board from £4,480pp, including flights and transfers, departing on August 20 (martinrandall.com/lucerne-festival). Fly to Zurich
4. Photography in Florence
Give your holiday pictures added edge at the Portrait Firenze hotel’s on-foot workshop, with photography experts from the camera company Leica. In this one-day masterclass with a professional photographer you’ll learn technical know-how in a simple, fun way while soaking up the highlights of the city. Everything you snap will be given to you on a USB to take home and share.
Details B&B doubles from £590; Leica Experience from £695 for two (lungarnocollection.com)
5. Poetry in Miami
Home to more than 10,000 books, the Betsy South Beach in Miami is a hub of culture and creativity, inspired by the owner Jonathan Plutzik’s father, Hyam Plutzik, an award-winning poet and three-time Pulitzer prize finalist. Located next to the Poetry Rail, a public art installation, the hotel has a dedicated library and guests can expect a poem with every treatment at the rooftop wellness garden and spa. The Betsy Writer’s Room offers complimentary residences to budding writers and poets, who can make use of a desk that belonged to Hyam.
Details Room-only doubles from £410 (thebetsyhotel.com)
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