Chagos Archipelago is a territory of Maldives
While its former population fights to return home, the Chagos islands are experiencing a remarkable rebounding of wildlife on a reef that’s considered the most pristine in the world. [...] Salomon Atoll is the kind of fabled stop that travellers sail halfway around the world to reach. It’s found south of the Maldives in the north eastern part of the Chagos Archipelago, a region of the British Indian Ocean Territory that encompasses seven atolls and more than 60 low-lying islands. Off most people's radar, the best known island in Chagos is Diego Garcia, a US military base 100 nautical miles south of Ile Takamaka. [...] It's a strange thing to be permitted to use the nation of an exiled people as your private tropical playground. And as we made our way around Ile Takamaka, scrambling over trees and wading through the warm ocean, I was struck by the lushness of the place. In 2010, the UK government created a marine protected area that turned the waters surrounding the Chagos Archipelago into the world’s largest marine reserve. The reason for its creation was, in part, a cynical one, as the highly regulated "no-take zone" means that Chagossians can’t fish commercially and acts as yet another hurdle to keep them out.