The Majesty Of The Sultanate Of Zanzibar. A Journey To An Archipelago That Defies Time. Experience A Convergence Of Two Separate Civilizations.
Stepping out of the car, the scent of cloves fill the air as a farmer lays out carpets to dry the spice .
Tall plants donned with small pink-beige buds hold the sought after clove as it is the harvest season.
Stopping by the Persian baths, so called because Sultan Seyyid Said, the industrial sultan who transferred his capital from Oman to Zanzibar, built the baths for his Persian wife on the highest point on the island from where the Zanzibar beach view is stunning.
Free of the elegance left behind, the beaten baths are resonant of the grand old days of the sultanate when it was utilised as a country retreat in 1850.
All that remains today is the five toilets with dome roofs showing the elegance and the inner chamber of the Sheherzade, the princess from Persia had a deep bath and a sunken well where the heated water emerged as steam.
After bathing, the princes would lie on the porch for a massage with the finest oils of the day. However, the Persian princess found countryside living rather too lazy and left the Sultan to return home in Persia.
Enough with the baths, we take a walk inside a spice farm, this is Stone Town.
Along with the town's most renowned houses is the Beit al Ajaib or the House of Wonders erected by Sultan Barghash fronting the beach and the Stone Town.
Here there is a display of his sister, Princess Salme or Frau Emily Reute in the imposing family house which had the finest engraved wooden doors, first elevator, electricity and water running from taps in late 17th Century.
Princess Salme, was the earliest Arab woman who tutored herself how to read and write and was excommunicated for running away with a German trader.
Her chronicles are the first written by a woman of Arab lineage from a royal family.
We check into our house, known as Beyt al Chai, a three storey stone house in Stonetown where the well to do of the sultanate once sipped a cup of tea in the middle of small discussion.
It has been wonderfully refurbished as a town house open to guest visitors with each room donned in exquisite silk and brocade with time old wooden furniture of teak and other hardwoods.
The diner serves the best sea-food on the island plus platters of seafood baked with skill and distinctiveness.
At daybreak, we stroll into town. The small alleys are bustling with Scooters, huge four-wheel drive vehicles all scrambling for space with pedestrians.
Most houses in this town still don the wood carved classical doors that have been gazetted as historic.
At the Old Slave Market, we stop, where the Anglican church now stands with its upside down columns, statues of the slaves and the altar where the slaves were laced and beyond from the tree underneath where Dr Livingstone is interned - he waged an untiring struggle against the merciless trafficking of slaves.
As the sunsets and dusk sets in, we stroll out of the Aged fort which was built from the ruins of what was the Portuguese church and into Forodhani Square.
The landscapes were laid out early in the 20th century (1935) to honor the silver jubilee of King George V and the exquisite fountain and seats were set up to celebrate the silver jubilee of Seyyid Khalifa bin Hamud in December 1936.
As the sunsets in the horizon under the blues of the seashore tourists take pleasure in the spicy essence of the Zanzibar island feasting on delicacies and fresh juice.
The period of the sultans stopped with the revolution of 1964.
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