I’ve been to 50 resorts in the Maldives — and this is one of my favourites

So when I learn that Kagi Maldives Spa Island is launching “Say When Wellness”, a five-night package where the guest decides which treatments they will receive, up to a value of £1,300pp, I sign up to be the first to test it. And look forward to the freedom to concentrate on fitness and counterbalancing massages and skip the beating with twigs and ear candling.

Jorg Weytjens, Kagi’s affable Belgian general manager, is just the person to oversee this approach. He spent his twenties working for the British embassy in Brussels before switching to hospitality to work across brands as diverse as the family-friendly Mark Warner in Europe, the high-glamour Eden Rock in St Barts, and a wellness lodge in Bhutan, adding up to a CV that has given him a more realistic attitude than your average spa supremo. He appreciates that, post- pandemic, there is a genuine appetite for wellness, but as a component of a “proper” holiday rather than a strict detox overseen by Nurse Ratched. And the Maldives is the perfect location for such a hybrid holiday; its pristine islands, wrapped up in silky sands that dissolve into impossibly turquoise lagoons, are the definition of nature-based decompression.

The beach at Kagi Maldives Spa Island

I’m feeling particularly relaxed as I step off the boat because I am aware of Kagi’s pedigree. I visited its sister property Kudadoo in 2019 and rate it as one of the world’s loveliest private islands. Sadly, Kudadoo is horrendously expensive, costing north of £4,000 a night. I have a healthy sense of satisfaction knowing that £4,000 isn’t far off the entire cost of my five nights at Kagi. Yet the resorts share the same soul-soothing aesthetic and focus on food. Both were designed by the award-winning New York-based Japanese architect Yuji Yamazaki and, despite having just 50 villas, Kagi has four restaurants and an executive chef, Denis Placereani, who knows his way around a luxury menu, having worked for high-profile resorts such as Amanyangyun in China and Nihi Sumba in Indonesia.

Like Kudadoo, Kagi is tiny. You can walk around the island in five minutes even if you stop to post a smug selfie en route. It eschews the ubiquitous Robinson- Crusoe-was-here mood board of thatch, sand floors and lashings of rope in favour of serene minimalism, with shingle roofs and interiors decorated with ryokan-lite simplicity, featuring slatted woods and sun-bleached shades of greige. All villas have a spacious open-plan bedroom/living area, sleek grey marble indoor wet rooms and outdoor garden bathrooms with showers and freestanding tubs. They also have large dining and sunbathing decks with plunge pools. Ten are on the beach; the rest are over water.

At Kagi’s heart is a distinctive overwater wellness hub, one of the largest spas in the archipelago, with an open-air core within a teardrop-shaped roof. The courtyard has a large oval yoga deck with views through to the water (you would be surprised how many spas have impractically small yoga platforms). This is ringed by a circular deck where you can lounge on oversized day beds or have lazy-as-you-like healthy lunches. Beyond it there is an outer circle with doors leading to treatment rooms with private balconies, a beauty salon, sauna, steam room, a state-of-the-art gym and an indoor yoga sound studio, the last two with floor-to-ceiling windows for ocean-view inspiration.

The indoor yoga sound studio

Although I get to call the shots, there are some Say When conditions. I can select three wellness activities and two lifestyle options every day. The former includes personal training, private Pilates and yoga, one-on-one sound healing, massages, manicures, pedicures and — drum roll — detoxifying bath rituals. Lifestyle options include scuba diving, glass-bottom kayaking, paddleboarding, windsurfing and using Mirage Eclipse boards, a bike embedded in a kind of paddleboard that you can pedal and which allows the user to travel much further than on a standard paddleboard. Weytjens is considering adding educational workshops, offering advice on subjects such as how to maintain good habits and improve sleep health.

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I liaise with Hasnaa, my “Pure Life Ambassador”, mainly via WhatsApp, to construct my itinerary. One day I start with an 8am HIIT class, which I request be concertina’d into 30 minutes, then I have an hour’s post-breakfast paddleboard before a restorative snooze beside my villa pool. After lunch I schedule a massage and pedicure, then a Mirage Eclipse board for a round-the-island spin, which is great fun.

The Mirage is about the same width as a paddleboard but its hull design and handlebar steering make it much more stable so I can achieve considerably faster speeds as I circumnavigate Kagi’s little bouquet of palm trees wrapped up in ribbons of white sand. Others have spotted manta rays, turtles and dolphins on expeditions; all I see are trails of fish beneath and the distant silhouettes of other resorts.

I’ve used up my daily quota but have timed my activities so that I can join the complimentary, open-to-all evening yoga and meditation. Another day I go full-on fitness bootcamp with HIIT, core focus and Pilates sessions, teamed with paddleboarding and, as I don’t dive, guided snorkelling on the house reef.

My trainer, Uday, switches between good cop and bad cop to extract maximum effort as he puts me expertly through my paces in the gym, which I appreciate — at least I do once the sessions end. He’s quite the taskmaster during yoga too; again something I only value when we reach the concluding shavasana without dislocating a limb. My therapist, Maria, is from Bali so, of course, her massage technique is faultless. She also turns out to have the voice of an angel and sings prayers during an enchanting sound therapy hour. As nothing kills the healing vibrations of Tibetan bowls quite like someone snoring beside you — which happens hilariously often — I am delighted to have a solo session.

Dining is as good as at big sister Kudadoo. I go healthy with breakfasts of bircher muesli and green juices and spa lunches of incredibly good sushi, with a smoothie or electrolyte chia lemonade. Goody two-shoes daytime discipline paves the way for guilt-free lapses after dark. There are good international buffets in Noo Faru, the main restaurant. Nonna, Kagi’s Italian restaurant, has superior comfort food, including irresistible creamy pasta topped with an indecent helping of black truffle shavings. I also enjoy my dinner of tiradito — Peruvian-style sashimi with chilli sauce, avocado and tomato salsa — followed by tiger prawns in Thai choo chee curry sauce with vegetables at Ke-Un, the Pacific Rim fusion restaurant. And, yes, I can order a glass of wine without klaxons going off.

A room at Kagi Maldives Spa Island

To keep the ambience set to chilled, guests must be at least 12 years old. They are considerably older than that during my stay, ranging from twentysomething honeymooning Koreans, always dressed in matching outfits and taking endless near-identical photographs of themselves, to laid-back Dutch grandparents who have been to the Maldives many times and rate Kagi one of their favourites. (I have to agree, having been to 50-plus Maldivian resorts, it’s cracking value). They join group yoga most evenings and fabulously (for me) are so stiff I look like an Olympic gymnast in comparison.

I chat to a glamorous Spanish former swimsuit model who now runs a beach club at a luxury Dubai hotel. She’s here for a few nights’ R&R with a girlfriend. I tell her that I am road-testing the resort’s new DIY wellness retreat. “Really? You just seem to be on a normal holiday,” she says. Which shows I’ve hit the wellness sweet spot. Now, if chocolatiers would only boycott the Brazils and cherries, life would be really good.

Susan d’Arcy was a guest of Kagi Maldives Spa Island, which has five-night Say When Wellness packages from £3,509pp, including B&B, five activities daily, three lunches, two dinners, one daily wellness cocktail and boat transfers (kagimaldives.com). Fly to Malé

Four more wellness resorts in the Maldives

Alila Kothaifaru

1. Alila Kothaifaru, Raa Atoll
If you’re travelling with children, this new design-led resort needs to be on your radar. It is one of the few to offer a diving programme to those as young as eight, so they can experience being immersed in a natural underwater world. The kids’ club offers authentic Maldivian games such as dhalhu vetti, a local version of bowls, as well as drumming classes, crab races and fishing expeditions where families catch their lunch and cook it on a castaway island. Back at the resort, there are 80 smart villas with private freshwater pools and three restaurants, two bars, a spa and a decent house reef to keep you entertained.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £4,375pp, including flights and transfers (azurecollection.com)

A Joali Being bathroom

2. Joali Being, Raa Atoll
Wellness is the focus at this glamorous new resort, which opened last spring. It has a 39-room spa complex and has collaborated with the Oxford University professor Gerry Bodeker, a Harvard-trained expert on traditional and integrative medicine, to create targeted programmes based on four pillars: mind, skin, microbiome and energy. Guests can consult ayurvedic doctors, undergo high-tech diagnostics and mix stints in the cryotherapy chamber with hot drinks at its tea bar, where herbal brews are bespoke to guests’ particular concerns. For some DIY sound healing, there is an alfresco trail with a range of therapeutic instruments tucked in between the pandanus trees that you strike for good vibrations. Dining is calorie-controlled and comes with organic wines and cocktails.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £9,515pp, including flights and transfers (elegantresorts.co.uk)

Emerald Faarufushi

3. Emerald Faarufushi, Faarufushi Island
Opened in October, this 80-villa resort works the barefoot luxury vibe to the max, including siting its spa in a series of treehouses. The complex includes eight air-conditioned treatment huts, a steam room, a relaxation area with plunge pools and a yoga pavilion. There’s Balinese, Thai and Japanese-style massages, or rubs that feature bamboo and hot stones, and you can tackle wrinkles with marine-based facials that harness the collagen-boosting properties of red coral and sea algae. As an incentive to get fit, there is a padel court, a fusion of tennis and squash which is the world’s fastest growing racket-sport, as well as a traditional tennis court.
Details Seven nights’ all-inclusive from £4,399pp, including flights (kuoni.com)

Anantara Veli

4. Anantara Veli, South Malé Atoll
This adults-only resort emerged from an extensive nine-month renovation in December with a new emphasis on personalised wellness. Guests can turn their contemporary tropical villa into a private spa sanctuary for an extra £600 a night, which gets them an in-room experience that includes light, sound and scent therapy, ayurvedic spa amenities, an “earthing mat” for meditation, and a wellness minibar with herbal teas, healthy shakes and wholefood snacks. The Wellness Villa package also includes a health consultation, a daily yoga or personal training session, a healthy cooking class, and 20 per cent savings on treatments. Venture out from your room and there are four restaurants, a spa with a hammam, a tennis court, beach games and surfing lessons.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £3,550pp, including flights and transfers (scottdunn.com)

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