everyone has summed it up, down to whether you had direct flights or not.
when we went we took off from manchester, landed at gatwick, took on again, landed at bahrain and then landed at marle in maldives. Then a short but ride to the sea port and had to wait 2hrs for our plane, then 45 minutes to the island ( sun island ) and then a 10 minutes ride on a boat.
Think ours was around 18 hours start to finish, sounds worse than it is. As you get off the plane in bahrain for a couple of hours and at least can have a shop. Once you land in the Madives and see the blue water and feel the heat, you forget all the aches from the travel !!!!