Thulhagiri (also: Thulhaagiri) Island is one of the many tourist island resorts on the Maldives and it’s located in the North-Malé-Atoll, just 20 minutes by speed boat (13 km) from the airport on Malé. The island is relatively small with only around 300 to 300 metres.
With an overall size of 1.568 km² the North-Malé-Atoll is the fifth large atoll of the Republic of Maldives. 349 km² are coral reefs and 9,40 km² are actual islands.
As the Maldives are quite a different experience for a trip, this article looks quite different to my other travel destination articles, but I hope it helps you to gather all information you need for vacation planning or to find yourself at home as soon as you arrive on this pretty little island.
Explore Thulhagiri
Although the island is small, there is enough on and around the island to spend two weeks without getting bored.
I have made a map for you to see the most important spots on the island, so you can easily navigate on the island when first arriving.
Just maximise the map and you can click on the points and find the spot you’re searching for.
If you’re more used to culture trips, like we are, you will need some days to get used to the completely different vacation feeling on a maldivian island and based on where you come from, you will also need some time to adjust to the timezone and get rid of the jetlag, but the island makes it easy.
Please also keep in mind to respect the maldivian people and their culture, even if you’re on a quite isolated island, because most of the staff are from the Maldives. Inform yourself about the rules and the recommended behaviour.
But I just can say that the people of the Maldives are absolutely warmhearting friendly and helpful.
Practical Tipps
Current State of the Island.
First thing you notice: The island is beautifully clean. No trash on the footways, the beach or the water. The staff does an absolutely gorgeous job in keeping everything clean and nicely in shape. You notice some things are aged, but overall the staff also does a great job to fix this and keep everything in a good shape.
The problem here are more or less the tourists. We noticed that a lot of other visitors just left their empty glasses and icecream trash on the beach, on the footbridge of the overwater bungalows, on the pool and partly even on the sand beach itself. Even with this strange and dull behaviour of some guests (mostly all-inclusive guests drinking too much cocktails during the evening) the cleaning staff of the island does it’s best to keep everything clean.
This also sadly applied to some people staying in the overwater bungalows next to us. I can’t understand why someone is too lazy to get in the water and get out the empty water bottle or orange or whatever that visibly fell from their balcony in the indian ocean. Just horrible behaviour. Several times I was jumping in and getting the trash of other people out of the water.
One thing that was heavily noticable was that the island can change it’s shape quite fast. When arriving we were able to walk around the island on the beach without problems. Towards the end of the second week of our stay, we had to go through the inner footpaths at a certain point, because the island lost so many of the substance of it’s surrounding sand beaches, that the vegetation was already reachin in the water. The base of permanent huge parasols in the area of the Beach Bar were already under water when we arrived. We visited right at the beginning of the rain season, so we had rough weather on two days and this seemed to be enough to let the ocean wash away a lot of the sand beach.
Transfer.
The transfer is fast and reliable, but highly depends on the weather. We had a mostly calm sea during our transfer to the island and made the distance in roughly 20 minutes. In contrary we needed around 35 minutes on the transfer to the airport at the end because of rough sea and heavy wind.
Half-Board or All-Inclusive?
This is a question of how extensively you want to exclude surprises with the final bill at the end of your stay.
We booked half-board only as we already knew we wouldn’t need regular food at noon, because of the temperatures. Disadvantage of this one is, that you have no drinks during the dinner, so this directly raises your final bill. Since everything has to be taken to the island and therefore is more expensive than we’re used to, this is a important point to have an eye on. We hardly wanted anything for lunch and just ordered some special stuff from time to time, like the ecellent octopus they offer. We also let all drinks, spa visit and additional food add to the room bill, so at the end we ended up having a bill of around 850 euros, which was perfectly fine, as we expected something around 1000 EUR. We also had 500 USD with us for tips and spend around 350 on tips during our stay, because we wanted to also end up money with the people that made direct contact with us and took care our stay was wonderful. Special thanks have to go to Rashid, our housekeeping guy, and Ali, our waiter at the main restaurant. Both have done an amazing job!
You definitely should book All-Inclusive if you travel with kids to be worry-free when it comes to snacks, drinks and so on. If you still want a regular lunch during 35 degrees, you also should choose this option. Still if you want special dishes like the octopus, you will have to pay additionally, aswell as for the Spa treatments.
No matter what you choose, please take USD with you and absolutely reward the people like the housekeeping staff, waiters and the chefs at the buffet. They absolutely deserve it!
High Season or Rain Season?
This absolutely depends on how you’re able to tackle high temperatures and if you absolutely want perfect weather every day.
We’ve chosen the time between high season and rain season at the end of June quite perfectly, because we were able to see both sides of the Maldives and having a distribution of 75% hot weather and 25% of rapidly changing weather with everything that’s possible on the Maldives like cooling heavy rain, cool high waves, beautiful cloud formations, heavy winds and amazing looking thunderstorms. All within a day sometimes. Exactly what we wanted!
But there is also the possibility that you have a whole stay with lots of rain and storms in the main rain season, so you should avoid that time, even if it is much cheaper. But still: A vacation is a vacation is a vacation!
Please note that, especially in the overwater bungalows you have lifejackets and raincoats in your closets. Use them when the weather is getting rough and be careful during strong winds when you walk the footbridge to the island. It can be slippery and the wind can get pretty strong.
Beach Bungalow? Garden View Bungalow? Overwater Bungalow? Deluxe Overwater Bungalow?
First of all this is obviously a budget choice. While the garden view bungalows and the beach bungalows are the cheapest options, the overwater bungalows are more expensive, there is something more important to be taken in consideration when booking.
Garden view bungalows are mostly located in the second row and the view mostly isn’t something special, while the beach bungalows are mostly advertised with the direct unblocked view to the sand beach and sea, but in reality you don’t have a private part of the beach, so most of the time you will most likely have someone lying directly in your view. Might happen.
If you want that extra piece of privacy and luxury feeling, you should definitely go for the overwater bungalows. On Thulhagiri we had a look at the deluxe and standard overwater bungalow and we finally chose the standard one as we found them to look more authentic and also the interieur was absolutely stunning, although a bit aged. Unfortunately the newer white deluxe overwater bungalows looked far to clean for us.
We didn’t regret this decision and love the standard ones! Absolutely cozy, well equipped and the bathroom/shower is perfectly accessible from the outside when you just took a dip in the sea or return from snorkeling.
Restaurants and Bars.
Main Restaurant.
The beautiful main restaurant is the place where you get your regular meals like breakfast and dinner (for half-board) and additionally lunch (all-inclusive). The buffer offers a great variety of food with enough variations from day to day, so everyone will find something for his taste. The buffet for lunch/dinner is divided into the areas: Starters/salads, main courses and desserts.
When you arrive for your first meal, you will be assigned your table by one of the waiters. This will be your table for your whole stay, except you’re not satisfied. Then you will be able to change to another table on the next time someone leaves and a table is freed.
During the lunch times it can get quite crowded and it turned out to be a good tactic to get starters, because most people directly went to the main course buffet. So we enjoyed some starters and skipped the waiting time on the main course buffet with this.
We loved the great selection of international food, but we especially loved the local and indian/indonesian stuff. So taste and well cooked!
You can end all meals with fresh fruits and sweet stuff, which is all of hich quality and very delicious.
The breakfast offers quite the same every morning, which is fully ok, because the selection of food is so large that you can get a little variation in it by yourself. Coffee is good.
The waiters in the restaurant are all very friendly and fast. After some days they even get to know your
Sand Bar.
The Sand Bar is the main bar and also the area of the evening events. It’s nicely designed, located between the reception and the main restaurant and offers a good selection of drinks and food. It also has a terrace to enjoy foods and drinks outside and chill for some time.
Prices are decent for a maldivian island and the staff is, depending on who is working at the moment, either pretty fast and friendly or (if you had the luck and this one guy had his shift) pretty uninterested and clueless.
Beach Bar.
The Beach Bar is nicely located and perfect for watching the sunset. Selection of drinks is good and prices are ok for a maldivian island where everything has to be taken there by (in this case) boat.
It could have more flair, if they wouldn’t use these cheap plastic chairs, but on the other hand it’s pretty understandable, because especially during rain season the waves hit this part of the island pretty hard. Nevertheless it’s a great spot to have a seat and just relax and enjoy the view.
Food time.
We noticed some people, also in the online comments have complained about the food and we just have to say:
The food was excellent and featured so many different stuff from day to day, that we couldn’t manage to try it all. It was a great mixture of maldivian, indian, asian and european food (from which we almost always skipped the european one). We would have loved to get more infos on the food, but on the other hand the friendly chefs were always there to answer all our questions.
We also ordered a-la-carte food, which was a grilled octopus, which was absolutely delicious! Definitely recommended!
The breakfast was practially the same every day, but offered so many options that it was perfect for us, as we mostly didn’t have lunch because of the temperatures at noon.
So, all in all: There is something fitting for everyone on the buffets and the food was always of great quality!
If you’re not used to really spicy food, you should be carefull with the local food. It’s absolutely delicious, but REALLY spicy!
Another tipp if you want to enjoy some ice cream on the beach:
During our stay we twice got the ice cream from the Beach Bar, which unfortunately wasn’t deep freezed but already quite soft and you couldn’t even eat it fast enough to not make a mess. This is probably because of the high temperatures in the Beach Bar building. So the better choice is to get ice cream from the small tourist shop between the Sand Bar and the Restaurant Area. This one always was deep-frozen and delicious.
Sports and Activities.
There are several sports and activities you can do on and around the island.
First of all there is the water sports and diving center SUB AQUA. It features a good selection of watersports rentals, dive excursions and courses. If you plan to take a dive course, please be sure to visit the doctor in advance and let him do a quick check.
Other than that you can book courses or rent almost anything you can imagine like: Windsurfing, SUP, Catamaran surfing, Canoe, Waterski, Wakeboard, Banana, etc. This is also done through the dive center.
On site outdoor sports are also available, like: Tennis, badminton, table tennis, darts and more. Unfortunately the beach volleyball / beach soccer field we expected by the sea is not there anymore unfortunately.
If you’re more into weight lifting and the usual fitness center experience, you can also enter the fitness center on the island. During the pandemic you will have to check in advance as there is only a limited number of people allowed in the fitness rooms.
If you want to do activities off the island, there are several trips and excursions you can book at the area beneath the reception. Just have a look at the given tours and sign in. One day in advance you will get closer information when and where it starts.
They offered Island Hopping, Malé city tour, snorkeling, sunset/sunrise dolphin tours, a fun trip and night fishing.
This leads us to the
House Reef.
which is in large parts unfortunately pretty dead already, but don’t worry, as there is still so much to see!
There are still some amazing corals, you just have to search a bit.
We’ve also seen a large selection of different sea live including various species of fish, squids, moray eels, crayfish, jellyfish and sharks. There has been said ba other travelers that they also have seen various ray types.
Snorkeling to the rock formations in the outer part of the island rewards you with a great variety of sea life and exploring just never gets boring.
Sharks often come to the area close to the beach during afternoons/evenings and they also can be seen swimming through the overwater bungalow areas.
If you want the full dose of sealife on Thulhagiri, you have to go to the reef edge where you can see much more fish swarms and bigger sharks patrolling round the island. Mostly you see the shy black-tip sharks and the more curious white-tip sharks there. The biggest shark I have seen around the reef adge was an oceaning whitetip shark with approximately 2.5m. Quite impressive and should be taken with care, as this shark type is much more curious and partly aggressive to humans.
You generally should be informed about the various types of fish that could get potentially dangerous. Some of the jellyfishes can be really dangerous and even funny looking guys lik the giant triggerfish can get quite aggressive.
One thing that is important is to study the reef map before going exploring, as the map shows you where you should go snorkeling or not, because there are some zones the incoming and outgoing ships are using and there are also some zones with dangerously strong currents that you should stay away from. It’s also recommended to go snorkeling in pairs for your safety.
Island Animals.
Wandering through the inner parts of the island you will see a lot of lizards, budgies (in and outside a cage), small hermit crabs and bigger crabs around the beaches, small seagulls, herons (mostly around the overwater bungalows), water hens, huge bees and with a bit of luck: The island rabbit.
Concerning the budgies and birds in the cages I asked the staff feeding them and they assurd me that the birds inside the cages are only the younger ones that get released as soon as there is assured they manage to survive outside their care.
The coconuts bound to trees you see throughout the island are prepared as nests for budgies. Quite cozy homes for the small colorful birds.
Also please don’t feed the animals on the island with any food out of the sand bar, beach bar or the restaurant. The animals are feeded by the staff and also find sufficient food on the island itself.
Spa and Relaxing.
The Duny Thai Spa is located in the large overwater house easily reachable from the reception/sand bar area and offers a great variety of treatments and massages. We have tested the couple offer including a foot cleanse, a relax bath and a couple massage on one day and the classic thai massage on another day.
We were very satisfied from the quality of the massages and they even were closely sticking to the information we gave them beforehand and left out parts we had issues. They did a very good overall job and we felt this was absolutely worth the price.
With the great view over the indoan ocean during the treatments and massages this is truely the perfect place for relaxing.
Romantic Evenings.
Well. The evenings on the beach or your bungalow with such a view are already romantic on their own, but if you want that extra piece of Maldives mood with your beloved one, you can rent a table directly at the beach with two options:
Just a table and you get your food by yourself like you normally do at the restaurant or you get the full service at the beach table. These two options just differ concerning the price. Both are a nice experience.
We have been assigned a perfect table with sea view anyway, so we didn’t book a beach table.
Tourist Shop.
This shop is practically just good for buying two things: Postcards and icecream.
Sorry to say, but there is mostly overpriced stuff in there, that’s not really worth the money, but this is the only way to get postcards and deep frozen icecream, although one of the (in Europe) famous “Magnum Icecreams” costs 6 USD, which is also ok, based on the distance this had to travel.
If you want to send postcards home, you can buy them here and you will even get stamps. After finishing them, you can hand them over to the reception and/put them into the postbox there.
There was also a gold and jewel shop right beneath it, but it looks like it’s closed for a long time already. I planned to write an Email to the resort to suggest to use this space for a small information center about the maldivian culture and possible sell genuine maldivian hand crafts there. This would be a huge bonus concerning the shopping situation and would bring the people a bit closer to the friendly maldivian culture.
Show your gratitude to the staff!
Very important in my opinion is to take USD (US Dollars) with you to the Maldives. They’re widely accepted everywhere and also the best possible option for giving tips.
Please give decent to large tips, as the people cleaning and taking care of the bungalows have a hard job. Also give tips to your waiter and the chefs at the buffet. They all do a hard and good job in making your stay a great one!
Please tip even if you have booked all-inclusive to be safe concerning the needed money. Also tip if you have booked half-board and notice that the overall prices are much higher than they are at home. You already spent a lot of money for getting here, so some extra dollars shouldn’t really hurt you.
More questions?
If you have any more questions, absolutely don’t hesitate and get in touch with me and I will try to answer them.
You also can get more impressions, photos and videos on my Instagram account: Harry’s Wanderlust