Zoom out to choose another location
Maldives is an island country in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of Atolls of the Maldives stretching in a north-south direction off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and Chagos Archipelago. It stands in the Laccadive Sea, about seven hundred kilometers south-west of Sri Lanka.
This chain of islands is an archipelago located among the Lakshadweep-Maldives-Chagos Group, which are in reality the tops of a vast undersea mountain range, in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. The atolls of the Maldives spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometres, making it one of the most dispersed countries in the world in geographic terms. It features 1,192 islands, of which two hundred are inhabited.
The Maldives are the smallest Asian country in both population and land area. With an average ground level of above sea level, it is the lowest country on the planet such that the Maldives sinking is a great concern.