Avantika Chaturvedi

Dumpy dump dumpster from our family vacation back in February to Maafushi, an island in the Maldives 🏝️🇲🇻 I’ve just published a detailed travel guide to Maafushi Island on my blog. It’s got everything you need to know: how to reach, where to stay, where to eat and most importantly what to do ✍🏼 The link is in my stories, or just type in waywardwayfarer.com to read 🔗

This is the Keyodhoo Shipwreck in the Vaavu Atoll of Maldives 🇲🇻 Most shipwrecks you find anywhere on the world are going to be submerged under water, sometimes starting at a few tens of meters deep. To access said shipwrecks, you gotta know how to scuba dive or free dive. And that definitely limits accessibility. But this shipwreck in the Maldives is different. Its hull sits jutting out of the ocean while the bottom is only about 10 meters or so deep: shallow enough to see the very ocean bed without having to be under water. The good thing? Even if you’re a non swimmer (like my mother was on this tour), the tour operators give you a life jacket which you can use to just float about and experience the shipwreck! I have always been fascinated by the haunting beauty of shipwrecks. How marine life can absolutely thrive in a human discarded piece of metal/ wood is beyond me. And I have always felt that more people need to experience this mix of emotions that shipwrecks give out. This is the perfect place to do so 🚢 If you’re a first time snorkeller/ ocean swimmer, make sure you get some practice on a beach beforehand and mentally prepare yourself to jump off a boat! We took this tour from Maafushi island where it’s super popular. But you can access this shipwreck from a few other islands too. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #shipwreck #maldives #maafushi #indiantravelblogger #oceangirl #girlswhotravel #indiangirlswander #freediving #scubadiving #vaavuatoll

@scentopia_singapore sent a part of Singapore 🇸🇬 home to me! Scentopia is a DIY perfume workshop in Sentosa Island, Singapore where you can have an all rounded olfactory experience and learn so much about the world of scent through experiences like: 🌸 Scent Workshops 🌸 Scent Discovery Tours 🌸 Scent Museum with 300+ AR exhibits And while I still haven’t had the chance to pay a visit to Singapore yet, the good folks at @scentopia_singapore had me fill out their online Perfume Personality Test 📝 Based on the results of this test, they curated a customised orchid based scent especially for me! The bottle even has my name on it 🌼 I am SO excited to have this unique perfume, a fragrance which does not exist elsewhere but on my person! 👃🏼 The orchid based scent transports me right to the famous Singapore Bay Garden and that’s what inspired these crazy edits which I had so much FUN making hehe 🤓 Big ups to Scentopia for creating such a unique experience in Singapore! Don’t miss out on it on your next visit to the country 🇸🇬❤️ I also write about this experience in detail on my blog. Hit the link in my stories or simply visit waywardwayfarer.com ✍🏼🔗

Take a shot each time I say “The Earth Collective’s Swimmer Hair Care Duo” 🤪🥃 (discount code below) No, but for real. I say it in each sentence so it can really get etched into your memory because these products have saved my hair from the chlorine pool water and HOW! I’ve already spoken about @theearthcollectiveofficial a lot last year during my swims and my scuba dives. But this season, I roped in a few fellow swim girlies to try out the Swimmer Haircare Duo and they LOVED it too! And honestly, that doesn’t surprise me because I saw that coming! The Swimmer Haircare Duo consists of a pre swim hair defence spray and a post swim conditioning wash. The products are: 🌱 Cruelty free 🌱 Vegan 🌱 Paraben and Sulphate free 🌱 Mineral oil free So it is not only gentle on our hair, but also gentle on the planet 🌍 💰💰 Use my coupon code Avantika10 for a sweet discount! 💰💰 And of course, a biiiiiiig shoutout to @shivranjinikrishnamurthy , @sleepyfish0_0 , @debjanicaroleaich and Jigya for agreeing to do this video 📣📣 Tell me these badass women aren’t just absolutely natural in front of the camera? 🎥❤️ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #haircare #veganbeauty #swimlife #selfcare #indiantravelblogger #viralreels #productreview

Throwing it back to Koh Yao Noi and the sweaty adventure I had in this Thai island, one of the most beautiful islands I went to over my two month long trip to the country. This was a special day: cycling 12 kilometres to reach Pasai Beach; renting a kayaking and paddling a two person boat by myself for an hour; reaching the remote uninhabited island of Koh Nok; rappling up the cliff using ropes and climbing on all fours to reach the top of this view 💘 And then climbing back down to swim in the beach below 🌊 Can’t wait to embark on more such adventures soon. But for now, go visit waywardwayfarer.com for a complete travel guide on Koh Yao Noi and add it to your list 🫶🏼

The wind is a 🌬️ paid actor 🌬️🩵 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #vibes #travelreels #maldives #maafushi #indiantravelblogger #aestheticedits

About the nurse shark tours of Maldives… They’re all over Instagram and that’s also the first thing you see online when you google “things to do in the Maldives”. There is a certain spot around the South Male Atoll, close to islands like Maafushi where tour operators take you to snorkel with nurse sharks. The pictures and the videos look super enticing and I was extremely excited to not only swim around a shiver of sharks myself, but also for it to be my parents’ first ever snorkelling experience. But the reality of it came to us only after we had paid the money, hopped on the boat and actually ended up at that spot… The sharks are always there because they are being fed fish by the tour operators. And I have so many thoughts about this. All this time, I had assumed that these sharks just naturally tend to be here. Now in retrospect it sounds so silly to me that I believed that. And while the operators feed these sharks uncooked, raw fish — close to what their natural diet is, being fed fish (as opposed to hunting on their own) day after day creates a dependency because of easy access to food. This dependency over times weakens their hunting abilities, often to an extent where they can no longer sustain themselves and need to be fed to survive. And when bad weather or larger events like the pandemic arise, when these operators don’t have clients to take to sea and hence have no reason to feed the sharks, these animals will suffer. Not to forget, nurse sharks (like most shark species) are strictly nocturnal and they hunt and eat only at night. So this practice also messes up their natural body clock. It’s all such an interconnected cycle. It’s the butterfly effect, it’s one small ripple creating a bigger (badder) change. At the end it felt like I was in an open aquarium. Sure, these sharks are living in their natural habitat but are they able to thrive naturally, without human interference? #themoreyouknow

I’m just kidding…or am I? 🤪 Posting this to stir shit up in the family gc 🥰 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #familyvacation #sisterlove #indiangirlstravel #girlswhowander #maldives #maafushi #indiantravelblogger #indiantraveller

Did I just drop a big hint about where I am in real time? The only way to tell you’re an OG community member here is to guess my location correctly 🤪🏝️ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #islandlife #islandgirl #palmtrees #indiangirlstravel #indiantravelblogger #indiatravelgram

Went diving with @thedivesquad in Maafushi and I was NOT disappointed! Maldivian waters always have such special surprises for you when diving and this dive trip was no less. We went diving with eagle rays welcoming us and at one point we were surrounded by black tip reef sharks on all sides and it was spectacular! 🦈 I also saw soooo many dog tooth tunas on this dive. We also went to a shipwreck which has an air space inside it. I’m going to show more of that one particular dive in the coming posts ⛴️ My sister also went diving for the first time ever and came back with the resolution to do her open water course soon! So overall, a pretty successful trip I’d say 💙 @thedivesquad is a PADI 5-star dive centre and I would highly recommend going diving with them. They have a super cute dive shop near the harbour and all the dive professionals were incredible. But the best part was the after dive dance party we had on the boat. They played some old Bollywood music and until we docked back at the harbour in Maafushi, we were all dancing away in a circle. 🪩 Pretty cool way to celebrate some epic diving, I’d definitely go back here and dive with them again 🧜🏼‍♀️ #hosted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #maldives #maafushi #scubadiving #girlsthatscuba #paditv #scubagirl #indiantraveller #maldivesislands

The only reason my dad agreed to visit a local Maldives island was because of this floating bar… …and it turned out to be such a fail lol 🫠 We really went hoping for a popping bar with food and good drinks and instead got a near empty boat all to ourselves blasting early 2000s pop and serving a small can of beer for 10$ with red blue green lights sparkling the empty dance floor 😂 Well, you wouldn’t know if you tried it right? 🤷🏻‍♀️ This is Princess Vishwa, a floating bar just off the harbour in Maafushi Island. Since Maldives is an Islamic country, you cannot buy or consume alcohol anywhere except for the privately owned resort islands. But they’ve found a loophole around it and since this floating bar isn’t technically on a local island, it works! The bar is open from 4 pm until midnight every day and they have free shuttle on a small boat to the bar (which is only free if you buy alcohol at the bar otherwise they’ll charge you) So now that you know my side of it, proceed with caution 🤪 Tell me, would you go here anyway? 🍺 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #travelfail #familyvacation #floatingbar #maldives #localisland #indiantraveller #funnyvideos #travelreels

Which one are you, bestie? ☺️ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #travelhumor #familyhumor #indiantraveller #maldives #familyvacation #travelreels

I took the public ferry in Maldives for the first time ever! And let me just set the record straight — I’m never going back to speedboats again! To give you some perspective, I’m currently in Maafushi Island and the public ferry ticket cost 2$ per person. Whereas the speedboat costs 25$!! The time difference is definitely felt — the public ferry took 1.5 hours whereas the speedboat takes 45 minutes so that’s double the time. But for me if I’m paying 1/14th the cost I would otherwise, I’m more than happy! And when you’re travelling to an expensive country like Maldives on a budget, these small things can make the big difference. However, getting to the ferry terminal was a bit confusing. We were initially told the ferry will depart right from the airport. But at the airport we found out we need to go to Villingili terminal in Male City which was 5km away. At Vilingili Terminal, we were told it’ll actually depart from the MTCC Airport Express Terminal which was another 3 km away. Thankfully we had enough time on our hands to go around and were able to grab a ticket. The public ferries are super comfortable too, have windows and even a snack bar. Remember: public ferries don’t run on Fridays because it’s the day of Jumma and a public holiday in the Maldives. What else do you want to know about the public ferries of Maldives? Save and share this reel for your future Maldives vacation! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #maldives #publictransport #maldivesislands #indiantravelblogger #indiantraveller #budgettravel #indiangirlstravel #girlsthatwander #travelhacks