Lakshadweep

Lakshadweep is the top of a drowned ridge in the Arabian Sea, two to four hundred kilometres off the Kerala coast. Coral has grown on it for millions of years into thirty-six islands and their reefs, ten of them inhabited, with barely thirty square kilometres of land between them all. Most are a ring of white sand around a coconut grove, with a shallow lagoon on the western side and the open ocean on the other.

Sailors from the Malabar coast settled the northern islands centuries ago, and Islam came, by local tradition, with a saint from Arabia in the seventh century. Minicoy, far to the south, is closer in language and custom to the Maldives. Almost everyone fishes, farms coconuts or works for the administration, and tourism is deliberately small.

The northern islands speak Jeseri, a dialect of Malayalam; Minicoy speaks Mahl, which is close to Dhivehi. Society is matrilineal in old island tradition — houses and family land pass through the women's line — and every island is quietly devout, with a mosque within sight of most front doors. Minicoy's crews are famous for pole-and-line tuna fishing, landing skipjack one fish at a time, and its lighthouse, built by the British in 1885, is still the best view in the islands.

Food is tuna and coconut in every form: tuna curry, fried tuna, and mas, the smoked and sun-dried tuna that islanders flake into rice, with breadfruit chips, coconut rice and sweet banana fritters. There is no nightlife and, outside licensed resort islands, no alcohol. The entertainment is the lagoon.

Get your permit first and book everything else second — flights are few and small, and people lose money in the other order. Snorkelling off Agatti's lagoon edge at low tide is as good as most dive sites, and costs nothing but a mask. Carry cash, since cards and ATMs are unreliable; mobile data varies by island. And plan around Friday prayers, when much of each island pauses for the afternoon.

These are conservative Muslim communities: swim in beachwear at the resort lagoons, but cover shoulders and knees in villages, and ask before photographing anyone. Never stand on coral, never take shells or coral home — it is illegal, and the reefs have bleached badly in recent hot years. Fresh water comes from thin rain-fed lenses under the sand; use it as if you can see the bottom of the tank.

Almost every journey here starts and ends in Kochi, and it rewards a few days on the way back: the old trading port where Arabs, Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch came for spice, and where the Malabar coast's links with these islands began.