Run by a family that actually gets in the water.
Maldives Index isn't a company with a call centre. It's one family — the Chablanis and the Norrises — who fell hard for the Maldives, go back every year, and got quietly obsessed with the one question nobody could answer straight: which house reefs are actually any good? We couldn't find an honest answer, so we built one.
Five of us, one small Rock, all a little reef-obsessed.
We're based in Gibraltar — about as far from a coral reef as you can get, which is probably why we take it so seriously when we finally reach one. Maldives Index is built father-and-son by Rakesh and Sahil, with the whole family field-testing the water.
Dad, builder of the site, and the one who plans the entire trip around the house reef before he’ll even glance at the room. Fearless in the water.
The fearless snorkeller of the family — first in, last out, and rarely without a turtle in sight.
Codes the site alongside Rakesh and usually spots the reef sharks before anyone else does.
Fearless beyond her years, with the sharpest turtle-spotting eyes on the boat.
The littlest of the crew. Current speciality: poolside supervision. Reef debut pending.
The reef is the reason we come.
For us the house reef isn't a nice-to-have — it's the primary reason we choose one island over another, and the main reason we come to the Maldives at all. Yet every time we went to book, the one thing we cared about most was the hardest to get a straight answer on: glossy photos, no substance. So we started scoring reefs the way we wished someone had scored them for us — honestly, with the evidence shown.
No booking agenda. Ever.
We don't sell rooms, we don't take booking commissions, and no resort can pay to move its score. Maldives Index is family-funded and independent by design — we rank reefs the way we'd want them ranked for our own next trip. If a reef is only average, we'll say so. That's the whole point.