For decades, the Maldives has been sold as a luxury postcard: overwater villas, seaplanes, and private lagoons. That image is real. It is also incomplete. Long before tourism arrived in 1972, these atolls were the “Money Islands” of the Indian Ocean — the source of cowrie shells that circulated as currency from Bengal to West Africa. That older story is what The Cowry Route is trying to put back on the map.
The Cowry Route (also written Cowrie Route)