Maldives in October: the green season's final act (and the last great manta gatherings)

October is the final act of the green season, and like all final acts it contains the grand finale. The rains are still the real monsoon kind, prices remain pinned to the year's lows, and meanwhile in the feeding bays the manta season plays out its closing weeks: the stretch when Hanifaru Bay grants its last great gatherings before the water changes and the giants redistribute themselves for winter. Whoever travels in October buys a ticket to the last performance of the Maldivian year's greatest show, at end-of-season prices.

But October is also a month that changes skin along the way. The first weeks still belong entirely to the hulhangu, the wet monsoon; towards the end, in some years, you can already feel the first breath of the transition: stiller days, a turning wind, a sea beginning to stretch out flat. That is not a promise, it is a tendency: October remains a green-season month, with its contract of downpours and windows of sunshine, and whoever chooses it must sign it for what it is.

In this guide you will find the month's weather without make-up, the manta chapter that is the real reason to be there, the prices compared with high season and the verdict by profile, with an eye on anyone weighing September and November too and wanting to know where the difference falls.

Statistically, October plays September for the title of wettest month of the year: intense, concentrated downpours, skies that change several times a day, a southwesterly wind keeping the sea lively on the exposed sides. Equatorial rain, it bears repeating, is not European rain: it empties itself and exits the stage, and in between come hours of full sunshine that hand the island back to the postcard. What is new compared to September is the direction of travel: while September is green season stable in its instability, October is a month in motion, and in its second half the frequency of showers tends to fall, give or take the year. Don't plan on the calendar of averages, though: the true transition keeps its own schedule and in some years does not arrive until well into November. October should be booked as a green month, and every extra still day pocketed as a gift.

The reason October earns a place in the calendar lies in the feeding bays. The season of the great aggregations, the one that lights up Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll, runs from August to October: the month's first weeks are still inside the good window, and in some years the phenomenon delivers spectacular encores right to the month's end. It is the last call in the literal sense: afterwards the water changes, the plankton disperses and the mantas redistribute to their winter cleaning stations, still visible, but in different numbers and dynamics. The rest of the cast stays on stage: South Ari's whale sharks keep their permanent service, the atoll channels work at full tilt for divers, and surfers still find worthy waves on the exposed spots, in a season finale that fades gradually. As with September, the green season's trade applies: fewer metres of visibility, more kilos of fauna. If your trip is measured in encounters, October is a month to take seriously; if it is measured in transparency, the right season is the one that starts afterwards.

"My most memorable October ended with the boat coming home under a sky half black and half golden, the kind that only exists in this season. That morning we had been in the water with the mantas, the year's last great gathering, and the dive-centre lad kept repeating «last show, last show», laughing. He was right: two weeks later the bay was empty. That is October: either you are there, or someone else tells you about it." Samuele, founder of Maldivando

October inherits from September the lowest step of the annual price list and holds it for nearly the whole month: European demand is back at work, the holidays are far away and the properties think like it is end of season. Fares only begin to stir in the month's very last stretch, when the far-sighted start locking in winter. For budget-watchers it is a textbook window: the same holiday, the same fauna at its peak, prices high season can only dream of. The one caveat is the usual green-season one: part of the saving should be reinvested in good insurance, because the risk of a postponed transfer or a rescheduled excursion is real, and the right policy turns it from a problem into a nuisance.