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Where is Maldives? Exact location and more

When people see pictures of Maldives the very first question they ask is "where is Maldives?". The answer, it is in South Asia, next to Sri Lanka and India. Maldives are scattered islands in the Indian Ocean. The islands are so small that most of the world maps do not show Maldives. Thanks to Maldives Finest, there is a of maps that show exactly where Maldives is on the world map and then another map that shows all islands. This map on Maldives Finest is clearer than what we have here in Maldivesbest.

mirihi aerial view

While trying to figure out where is Maldives one thing to remember is Maldives won't be seen as big land mass like other countries. Most of the world maps that show Maldives simply have the label "Maldives" in the ocean without showing islands. That's what Maldives is, it's 99% is sea. The remaining 1% of land is divided into 1192 islands scattered on a large area of sea. This makes finding Maldives uneasy on traditional maps.

maldives-private-sandbank

I have seen many maps that does not show Maldives at all. It is little bit awkward that a country of the world is not shown on a map that shows nothing but countries. The reason is also not that you scale down a large map to fit into a small A4 paper. There are smaller countries like Lithuania or Sweden that are shown on map while Maldives is not. So this is not an issue of scaling. It may simply be that the people not aware of the existence of Maldives.

The good news is that most modern maps do show Maldives. It seems the world has learned a lot in the recent decades.

Despite of having small islands, the size of country in terms of geographical boundary the country is not small at all. It is even bigger than Sri Lanka but made up of 99% water, of cause.

farukolhu airport

There is a handy digital map that is little bit like Google Maps. Honestly, I the Google Maps needs a lot of improvement when it comes to Maldives. Many islands have wrong names, miss-spelled or incorrect. To see the island name you have to zoom in to a particular level, then if it is not the island you are looking for you have to zoom out and go for the next. This not easy easy and this is what is good on the digital map in which names appear all at once. You do not need to pin-point your focus to see the island name.



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