Maldives

From three hundred feet, an atoll stops being a beach and becomes a diagram — rings of reef fading from deep navy to a turquoise so saturated it looks graded in post, even straight out of the camera. Jim describes the Maldives as the easiest flying of his career and, at the same time, the hardest trip to actually pull off.

The Maldivian Civil Aviation Authority keeps drone flight under tight, low-altitude restrictions, and every resort atoll has its own permit process layered on top. Jim spent more hours on this trip filling out paperwork, waiting on approvals, and arranging boat transfers between atolls than he did with a controller in his hands.

Once cleared, the flying itself is forgiving — light wind, dependable sun, and water so clear the drone's shadow shows up on the reef below it. It's the one destination in this collection where the challenge was never the air. It was everything before takeoff.