Niyama Maldives

We stayed at Niyama Maldives on our second trip to the Maldives. As with our first visit, the Maldives is absolutely spectacular and if you want a beach holiday, the Maldives is the best place to go in my opinion. The over water villa at Niyama Maldives was big but not as big as the one we stayed at during our visit (Anantara Kihavah). Niyama Maldives has a great kids centre with great staff and all the restaurants are as good as can be expected being in the middle of the Indian ocean. There’s two islands at Niyama Maldives, good for bike rides, and you can always find a bit of beach to yourself.  Being July, which is considered low season in the Maldives, there weren’t that many people there.

Snorkelling at Niyama Maldives was a bit disappointing but that’s because people have walked on the corals, I suspect many of the resorts in the Maldives face this issue. Staff are great, friendly and will go out of their way to help you out and try and ensure your have a good time.  Loads of other activities to do including Seabobs, kayaks and the like. You can also take a fishing trip on their large boat which is a nice way to spend an hour or two in the evening, Grobbler loved that and caught a fish himself.  If you’re worried about having things to do in Maldives, don’t be, all the resorts have plenty to keep you occupied and keep kids from getting bored, it’s just that I think Maldives is more suited to doing absolutely F all.

We stayed in a Water Studio with Pool, large two tiered balcony with your own pool and you can walk down the stairs to the water and see fish, the occasional turtle and even sting rays.  Huge bathrooms with massive bath tubs, rain shower and anything else you can imagine.  If you go, I’d recommend the over the water villas any day of the week to being on the beach, but that’s subjective I guess.  There’s nothing like waking up, having a quick dip in the sea then a swim in the pool.  If you have young kids I guess you need to look out for them but unless you’re kids are absolutely monsters, you should be fine. We didn’t have any problems with ours with regards to safety.

There’s 6 restaurants and a bar, plenty of options to give you some variety, all are not bad without being amazing.  The breakfast is excellent, large selection and the fruits on offer are yummy.  Edge restaurant at the Niyama Maldives is worth eating at, perhaps not for the food, but it’s accessible only by boat, about 1km off shore.  Go during sunset and it’s beautiful.  The underwater restaurant Subsix, is a bit of a gimmick, a lot of resorts in the Maldives have them, and they tend to charge twice the price.  You can see a few fish, but it’s not great. If cost is an issue, don’t bother, you’re not missing that much, but if you don’t really care about money then I guess worth a go. We’ve eaten at quite a few underwater restaurants so maybe it just wasn’t as unique for us and if you’ve never done it, it’s not bad.

I don’t think Niyama Maldives was quite as good as the first resort we stayed at, but I think we had very high expectations after the first trip and it’s still a very, very good resort that you won’t find much to complain about.