Diving the Maldives: 10 days, a liveaboard and three nights ashore
The adventure version of the Maldives happens underwater and it happens from a boat. A liveaboard covers three or four atolls in a week, dives channels no resort day boat can reach without burning half a day getting there, and costs less per day than a comparable resort. If you dive seriously, this
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Active
- Hotel changes
- 2
- Best months
- Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Oct, Nov, Dec
- From
- $3,200 per person
We add three nights ashore at the end rather than the beginning, so the trip finishes soft and so there is a proper gap between the last dive and the flight home.
Who it suits: certified divers with at least twenty logged dives, and confident snorkellers travelling with divers.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Malé, board the boat. Met at the airport, transferred to the harbour, checked in and briefed. Most itineraries begin with a shallow check dive that afternoon or the following morning, which exists to sort out weights and buoyancy rather than to impress you.
Days 2 to 7: Six days of diving. Three to four dives a day including a night dive, moving between atolls overnight. The exact route is set by the captain on the day according to current, tide and season, and any boat that promises a fixed list of sites in advance is selling you something. What a good week typically holds:
- Channel dives on the incoming current, hooked in on the edge, watching grey reef sharks, eagle rays and schooling jacks hold in the flow. This is the signature Maldivian dive and it is worth the trip on its own.
- Manta cleaning stations, where the animals queue over a coral head while wrasse work on them. Seasonal and side-of-the-country dependent, which we explain below.
- Thila diving, submerged pinnacles covered in soft coral, generally the prettiest dives of the week.
- A wreck, usually in the Malé atolls.
- Night dives, including nurse sharks and, on some boats, a whale shark attempt in South Ari.
Day 8: Disembark, transfer to the island. Off the boat mid-morning, speedboat to a resort or a good guesthouse island depending on your budget. This is a deliberate day of doing nothing.
Day 9: Ashore. No diving. This is not padding: a full day without a dive before flying is standard practice and we build it in rather than leaving it to you. Snorkel, sleep, eat something that is not cooked in a galley.
Day 10: Transfer to Malé and fly home.
What is included
Seven nights full board on the liveaboard with three to four dives a day, tanks and weights, the boat’s dive guides, nitrox where the boat offers it, all park and fuel surcharges quoted up front rather than collected on board, two nights ashore with breakfast, all transfers, all taxes and the green tax, and a WhatsApp group with our Delhi office and our partners in Malé.
Seasons, honestly
The Maldives sits across two monsoons, and the diving follows the current rather than the calendar.
January to April gives the best visibility and the calmest seas, and the plankton, and therefore the mantas, concentrate on the eastern side of the atolls.
May to November is the south-west monsoon: more surface chop, patchier visibility, and the plankton moves west. This is also when Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll sees its large manta and whale shark aggregations, broadly from around May or June through November, tied to plankton and lunar cycle. Access is regulated, snorkel only, with numbers and time in the water limited. Nobody can guarantee it on a given day.
South Ari Atoll holds whale sharks year round and is the most reliable place in the country to see one, which is not the same as certain.
We pick the boat and the route for your month rather than selling you one route all year.
Choosing the boat
There is a very wide range, from basic vessels with shared bathrooms to boats with cabins better than some resorts. The things we check: the dive deck layout and how many divers per guide, whether nitrox is included or charged, whether there is a separate dhoni carrying tanks, which is the single biggest quality-of-life difference on a Maldivian liveaboard, the cabin air conditioning, and the safety record. We will tell you where a boat is good value and where it is cheap for a reason.
Honest notes
Currents here are real. Several of the best dives are drift dives in moving water with a reef hook, and if that does not appeal, this is not the right trip and a resort with a strong house reef is a better week.
Twenty logged dives is a working minimum for a Maldivian liveaboard and we would rather you had forty. Advanced certification and nitrox make the week considerably better.
Seven nights on a boat with twenty other people is a social experience whether or not you want one. If you would rather not, we build a resort-based diving week instead with two dives a day and your own room.
Do not book the last dive within twenty-four hours of the flight home. We build the schedule so you cannot.
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