Hithadhoo

Hithadhoo is the largest island in Addu and, with nearly fourteen thousand residents, the second-largest population centre in the Maldives after Malé. It sits at the northern end of a causeway that links several islands over roughly thirty kilometres down to Gan and its airport.

That road is what makes Addu unlike anywhere else in the country. You can cycle from one island to the next instead of waiting for a boat — the only place in the Maldives where that is possible.

The atoll also carries a visible history: a British airfield operated at Gan until 1976, and the wrecks and infrastructure around Addu are part of what divers come for.