The story of Nihiwatu is one of both humanitarian efforts and unmistakable luxury. Located on Sumba, a 11,200 square kilometers Indonesian island that is inhabited by 700,000 people, the location for the resort was originally chosen by American builder and surfer Claude Graves and his German wife Petra in 1988.  It took years of negotiations to get the rights from the tribal landowners to start building, but the hotel eventually opened in 2001, becoming fully operational in 2005. Yet, despite investing time and money into the business – Graves and his wife even set up the Sumba Foundation, which provides locals with healthy school meals, better access to potable water and diagnosis of and treatment for malaria – Graves had always planned to sell. He eventually did in 2013, to American billionaire Chris Burch (ex-husband of Tory Burch), who visited Sumba on holiday, and James McBride, the former president of YTL Hotels and former general manager of the swanky New York hotel, The Carlyle. The duo joins the growing number of ultra-wealthy individuals, including billionaires such as Richard Branson and Dietrich Mateschitz, who have over the years begun to invest in luxury resorts located in some of the more remote places of the world. As for Nihiwatu, Burch and McBride embarked upon a $15 million (Dh55m) upgrade of the resort, set to be completed in July.

My first look around the resort is accompanied by McBride. A tall, lean South African who oversees the work and spends more time on site than his partner, he first leads me around the villas, some still in various states of completion. The resort is set on 560 acres – a plot of land that, with the exception of 67 acres used to house Nihiwatu, is largely untouched. The 21 intensely private limestone villas sprinkled about the hillside come accompanied by wooden decks, daybeds, large plunge pools, thatch roofs underlaid by strips of bamboo, Sumbanese wood carvings and metal bath tubs in the shape of giant soup bowls. Some villas have a platform with a daybed below the main bedroom, set just metres from the surf.

We continue to make our way through the resort, wandering through a temporary labour camp housing the 300 Indonesian builders undertaking the construction work, sheds filled with planks of wood, blocks of limestone and the drying huts for the alang-alang grass used to thatch the roofs. Stopping at Guru Village, a cluster of hillside rooms also on the property that resembles a British holiday camp, McBride explains that “anyone who has a skill, like an astrologer or a tango dancer or a photographer, can stay for up to two weeks for free, on the condition that they share some of their knowledge with the guests of the resort”.  Looking over to the yoga pavilion, a giant wooden deck built atop a concrete foundation and covered in thatch, McBride whispers, as an Australian family sits cross-legged in quiet repose, “we were originally going to put a villa here”. The breathtaking view from the pavilion, situated at the top of a hill with a view that extends down the coastline, is almost enough to persuade me to take up yoga.

Currently in the works is a three-bedroom tree house: a giant slide will snake down into the private pool and the bedrooms will be connected by suspended walkways. An equestrian centre with paddocks and stables – a nod to Sumba’s rich equine tradition – is gathering steam a few hundred metres down the coast and avid polo player McBride plans to introduce the sport to the island, hoping it will become a stop on the expanding global polo circuit. The kitchen is world-class, helmed by a Mexican-German chef, Bernard Prim. Formerly an Aman chef, Prim prepares fresh, simple food for the guests. Even the water sports staff has mushroomed since Graves’ tenure. But in essence, McBride insists he and Burch are simply executing Graves’ vision, which includes continuing to limit the number of surfers to 10 per day – something Graves was particularly avid about – and maintaining the US$100 per day charge for anyone seeking that privilege. They will also continue to funnel all of the resort’s profits back into the Sumba Foundation.

We eventually reach a sign, sat at the top of a hill that leads to the resort’s entrance, proclaiming, “Nihiwatu Welcome to the Edge of Wildness”. There we are met by a slouch-shouldered man dressed in matching turquoise shorts and shirt, a dark-blue hat on his head, a blank expression and a parang (sword) sheathed in his waistband scabbard. McBride greets him before explaining to me that this man’s main job is “to keep the buffalos off the plants”.

Nihiwatu’s assertion that it exists at the edge of wildness is accurate. Visit and you really do feel like you’re living at the tip of the planet. Certainly Nihiwatu doesn’t fit into any typical beach-resort mould. Sure, it’s steeped in luxury with disarmingly warm butlers assigned to each room, but it’s also irrepressibly wild. A touch grungy yet supremely comfortable, Nihiwatu embraces its surroundings – small crabs and geckos wander around the villas, the floor of both restaurants is sand, the local herders come down to the resort’s beach to wash their water buffalo, and 98 per cent of the staff are from Sumba. The ambience here has been branded as barefoot luxury and considering that Nihiwatu is located in a distant corner of Indonesia (according to some reports, Sumba is the country’s poorest island in the poorest province), its ability to offer chilled yogurt, sliced fruit and freshly baked pastries at breakfast, locally caught fish at dinner and attract scions of the Hermès and Banco Santander empires every summer, is a remarkable achievement.

And while Nihiwatu is an effortless place to hole away for a week or more, the resort urges guests to experience what’s beyond its doors. See a bit of the island and the reasons why become apparent. Agrarian Sumba is lost in time: it is a place where the animist religion Marapu is widely practised. Livestock sacrifices occur at weddings and funerals, human blood (often spilt at the annual horseback jousting festival Pasola) is believed to fertilise the soil and head-hunting was prevalent until about three decades ago. About 30 per cent of the population follows Marapu, and even the 68 per cent of the island inhabitants who are Christian and 2 per cent who are Muslim weave parts of the faith into their lives. Sumba is low-key, with the occasional tribal dispute but little crime, safe in the way that places with little economic disparity or proselytising tend to be. Sumba is only an hour’s flight from Bali (and was trumpeted as the next Bali by a Balinese tourism official in 2011), but the difference in development between the two couldn’t be starker. The numbers alone provide evidence: Sumba welcomed about 2,500 visitors in 2013, compared with three million that year to Bali, an island half its size. Drive from tiny Tambolaka airport, which receives a few flights a day, to Nihiwatu and you’re guaranteed not to see Bali’s ubiquitous 7-Eleven or Circle K stores, spas offering half-day packages, chalkboards advertising two-for-one happy-hour drink specials or “the best Italian on the island”. And while Sumba may not have Bali’s vistas of endless terraced, emerald-green rice paddies or ornamented stone temples at every turn, its landscape is certainly more memorable for the variety and state of intactness.  With its hills dotted with grazing horses, rolling plains, deep valleys, glittering, empty seas, and landscapes that recall Hawaii, sections of the Caribbean or Africa, the scenery will have even the most worldly traveller scrambling for a camera at every turn.

To help me further appreciate the island’s physical charm, I embark on several excursions, courtesy of the resort. My first trek is to Nihi Oka, a plot of land that will develop over the next couple of years with the building of three villas, one with a freshwater swimming pool fed by a stream.  Our journey finds us weaving between rice paddies, past Sumbanese children drawing water from wells built by the Sumba Foundation, around farmers tilling their plots, and over arid, lunar hills dotted with limestone pebbles. During a short break at Weihola, a 500-year-old village with traditional peaked houses, I am invited inside a home. A woman sits fanning a wood fire, with strips of animal meat drying above the flames. The house is cool, with the tower roof drawing up the heat. We eventually arrive at Nihi Oka, a series of headlands that separate three beautiful beaches brushed by gentle waves. Despite the ongoing development, the only sign of human progress is the table and chairs arranged on a raised wooden deck with a clear view of the sea. After a late breakfast of tea, toast with fresh marmalade, muffins, eggs and some fiery homemade sambal (chilli sauce), I descend to the middle cove for a swim. The fact that nobody else is around only adds to the sense of undiluted bliss.

My second excursion is a hike to the Blue Waterfall, more commonly known as Matayangu Waterfall, located in the National Park Manupeu, in the island’s central west. The trip begins with an hour’s drive in a 4x4 vehicle meandering through the isolated terrain. Our journey terminates in front of two thatch-roofed houses, literally in the middle of nowhere. This deserted area marks the start of the trail. The walk through the rainforest takes an hour and is a straightforward ramble interrupted by the occasional ravenous leech.

Eventually I hear the roar of the water and emerge from the canopy to see a powerful torrent that empties into a large teal pool. Again, there isn’t a soul in sight. “Only about 100 people come here a year,” the guide explains. If the waterfall had been in Bali, or one of the more popular Thai islands, it would have been mobbed. But here in far-flung Sumba it was all mine. As I jump into the water, I revel, even for a short time, in the solitude.

No man is an island

Back in the late 80s, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson bought Necker Island for approximately $180,000, 30k more than his original offer. Three decades later, the 74-acre plot of land, located in the British Virgin Islands, is now home to an ultra-luxe resort for the rich and famous. Able to hold 30 people at a time, the resort boasts nine bedrooms in the Great House and six individual Bali Houses dotted around the island. Guests can keep themselves occupied with the various activities during their stay – and there are a number of them – including kite surfing, sailing, water-skiing, diving, tennis, spa treatments and, in the evenings, themed parties. Included in a seven-night stay, for the starting price of $28,805 (Dh105,805) per couple, is accommodation, all meals and drinks, return launch transfer from Virgin Gorda or Beef Island airports, two freshwater pools and a large jacuzzi on the beach, two floodlit tennis courts, most water activity equipment, laundry facilities and wireless internet (virginlimitededition.com).

In 2003 the head of the energy drink Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz, purchased Laucala, an island located in the South Pacitic, from Forbes's heirs. After six years of building and renovations, Laucala officially opened to the public in 2009. The resort's 25 Fijian-style villas are set over 3,460 acres of land, amid coconut plantations, beside a deserted beach and atop the island's volcanic mountains, which overlook fertile coral reefs and jungle. Guests have access to a number of activities including golf on the resort's 18-hole course, water sports, diving and snorkeling, game fishing, boating and horseback riding. Also on site are five restaurants and bars, including the Plantation House, Seagrass Lounge and Restaurant (specialising in Asian and Fijian), the Beach Bar serving grilled seafood and meats and Rock Lounge. Prices start from $5,520 (Dh20,275) per night, and include food and select beverages, select activities, one 90-minute spa treatment, per person, per stay and taxes. Rates for children start from $550 (Dh2,020), per day, per child, including taxes (laucala.com).

The late Marlon Brando also joined the world's wealthiest individuals to invest in a luxury island resort. The Brando, which opened last July, is located on Tetiaroa in French Polynesia. Also claiming the title of barefoot luxury, the resort has not done so at the expense of the resort's natural surroundings. This "post-carbon" resort incorporates new technologies and enables a self-sustaining environment. Eco-friendly practices include going carbon neutral by using solar energy and a biofuel thermal power station (partly fuelled by coconut oil); installation of the EcoStation – a think tank where international scientists and researchers can gather to preserve Tetiaroa, while helping other tropical islands find their own path to sustainable development; growing produce in the organic garden, where guests can see first-hand how the resort grows vegetables and fruit, plus the implementation of eco-friendly farming techniques; and water conservation, where the resort has installed a wastewater management system for irrigation. On the grounds, guests will find 35 villas, each with its own private beach area. Also available on site: a plunge pool, restaurants showcasing Polynesian and French cuisine, a library, a boutique, a spa and water sports. Activities range from diving lessons to Polynesian dance lessons, guided tours of the research centre to whale watching, and deep sea fishing to the lagoon school, designed for children ages 6 to 12. The all-inclusive package covers meals and room service, beverages, mini bar, some activities, unlimited WiFi, bicycle rentals to explore the island and a 50-minute spa treatment for one person, per room, per day. From April 1 to June 30 prices start from €2,784 (Dh11,628) per villa (holding up to two guests), with a minimum three-night stay, including taxes (thebrando.com).