Imagine sitting on your board off an Indian Ocean atoll, the warm water as blue as silted turquoise, a warm, offshore wind holding up the transparent lip of a six-foot swell that peels right and left down each side of a palm-tufted islet.

This is surfing in the Maldives, whose splendid isolation and clean, manicured Indian Ocean swells make it the perfect destination for the surf traveler who wants to unwind-not get all wound up. Scattered across the equator to the southwest of India, the Maldivian Archipelago is a relatively recent discovery, but enjoys one of the most colorful stories in the history of surf exploration. Shipwrecked here in 1973, en route from Sri Lanka to South Africa, Australian Tony Hinde Hussein discovered he'd actually washed up in Surf Eden, and stayed on to settle in the wave-rich region. Hussein kept his trove a secret for almost 10 years, but the desire to share the wealth proved stronger, and so in the early 1990s Atoll Adventures was born-and the jewel of the Indian Ocean revealed.