By Evergreen box fruit trees and red mangrove fauna enclose the pathway. Arriving by car, it suddenly hits you, exactly how quiet, quiet can be. The air is thicker and palpable with excitement. A glaring reddish brown hue contrasts the green and greets soon with the water’s edge dressed in hammocks and swinging in the windless air. This is the “Fairy Pond” of Laamu Gan.
Evergreen box fruit trees and red mangrove fauna enclose the pathway. Arriving by car, it suddenly hits you, exactly how quiet, quiet can be. The air is thicker and palpable with excitement. A glaring reddish brown hue contrasts the green and greets soon with the water’s edge dressed in hammocks and swinging in the windless air. This is the “Fairy Pond” of Laamu Gan.
Plenty may describe it, even allude to its mystery, but the only way to truly understand it is to spend some time losing yourself in the quiet hum of nature; and the fact that the water always looks like it’s raining with an array of miniscule ripples.
If being in this unique, southern atoll hasn’t already mesmerized you with its highways lined with towering evergreen palms, Golha Riha (fish ball curry) and its stunning natural beauty, you may want to ask a local about Paree Fengandu. A guide will most likely drive you closeby and keenly advise you to slather on mosquito repellant before making the three- minute walk into a clearing.
Some locals on the other hand, would grinningly tell you about how there have always been countless sightings of glowing fairies that fly around and tickle the water on full moon nights. Others may simply tell you a tale of the time a rope was lowered to the deepest parts of the pond, only to return completely blackened and charred. For eons, the residents of Laamu Gan believed it to be a bottomless vortex, swallowing the trees around it on a whim. “It used to be very fresh water, until the 2004 tsunami ravaged it and now it’s brackish”, you would hear repeatedly.
Explorations have in reality led to the discovery that not only is it approximately 28 to 30 meters deep, but that there are several indents or “caves” that have so far been deemed unsafe to explore. While these days you may find drone pilots excitedly taking their aerial shots or agile youth jumping from the swaying but surprisingly strong branches into the center of the pond, with lazy purveyors enjoying the hammocks, any visitor would agree that its beauty lies in its mystery as well as quiet dignity through the test of time.
