another view of the maldives: the streets of holhudhoo

The little lady and I decided to take an excursion one afternoon to Holhudhoo, an island not far from the resort paradise we called home for eight days earlier this month.

Holhudhoo is a small island of 2100 inhabitants. It's not a particularly nice place, with mostly run-down buildings and lots of mosquitoes everywhere (we have tons of bites to prove it). It was, however, interesting to see how regular people looked and lived.

As is the case in most of the islands we've visited, life in the Maldives was very, very slow. Nobody was in a hurry to do anything or get anywhere most places we went, and Holhudhoo was no exception.



Almost everyone in the Maldives is a Muslim, and by my estimation, more than 95% of the women wear the Maldivian version of the traditional head coverings.



A typical street on Holhudhoo:



There are no street numbers on buildings on Holhudhoo; every owner gives their building/home a name, like this:



The local language, Dhivehi, is Indo-European, but has a script that doesn't look like anything else I've seen, including Hindi and other Indo-European languages of the region.



The rest are random street photos taken with my beloved 135mm f/2L lens. These will give you a good feeling for what walking the streets of Holdhudhoo is like.