The Splendor Of The Sultanate Of Zanzibar. A Vacation To An Archipelago That Defies Time. Experience A Convergence Of Two Varied Cultures.
Stepping out of the motor car, the fragrance of cloves fill the air as a farmer lays out mats to dry the spice .
Tall plants donned with tiny pink-beige blossoms hold the sought after clove as it is the reap season.
Stopping by the Persian baths, so called because Sultan Seyyid Said, the mercantile sultan who shifted his capital from Oman to Zanzibar, structured the baths for his Persian wife on the ideal point on the island from where the Zanzibar beach view is awesome.
Free of the magnificence left behind, the beaten baths are resonant of the grand old days of the sultanate when it was utilised as a country vacation in 1850.
All that stands today is the five toilets with dome roofs showing the stylishness and the private section of the Sheherzade, the princess from Persia had a deep-set bath and a sunken well where the heated water surfaced as steam.
After bathing, the princes would lie on the porch for a massage with the finest oils of the day. Nevertheless, the Persian princess found country life rather too boring and left the Sultan to return back home in Persia.
Enough with the baths, we take a footpath inside a spice farm, this is Stone Town.
Amongst the town's most renowned houses is the Beit al Ajaib or the House of Wonders built by Sultan Barghash in front of the beach and the Stone Town.
Here there is a display of his sister, Princess Salme or Frau Emily Reute in the impressive residence which had the finest decorated wooden doors, first elevator, power supply and water running from taps in the late 17th Century.
Princess Salme, was the pioneer Arab woman who taught herself how to read and write and was excommunicated for running away with a German trader.
Her chronicles are the first composed by a woman of Arab descent from a noble family.
We check into our room, known as Beyt al Chai, a three floor stone house in Stonetown where the aristocrats of the sultanate once downed a cup of tea in the middle of small discussion.
It has been attractively repaired as a town house open to visitors with each room donned in stunning silk and brocade with time old wooden furnishing of teak and other hardwoods.
The bistro serves the best sea-food on the island including platters of seafood made with skill and distinctiveness.
At dawn, we hike into town. The narrow alleys are active with Scooters, gigantic four-wheel drive vehicles all jostling for space with pedestrians.
Scores of houses in this town still don the wooden carved dateless doors that have been gazetted as historical.
At the Ancient Slave Market, we stop, where the Anglican cathedral now stands with its inverted posts, statues of the slaves and the altar where the slaves were whipped and beyond from the tree beneath where Dr Livingstone is placed - he waged an untiring struggle against the heartless trafficking of slaves.
As the sunsets and dusk sets in, we wander out of the Old Fort which was constructed from the rubbles of what was the Portuguese chapel and into Forodhani Square.
The landscapes were laid out early in the 20th century (1935) to celebrate the silver jubilee of King George V and the sublime fountain and seats were set up to mark the silver jubilee of Seyyid Khalifa bin Hamud in December 1936.
As the sun goes down in the horizon under the blues of the sea travelers take leisure in the spicy flavors of the Zanzibar island feasting on sea-food and fresh juice.
The epoch of the sultans stopped with the revolution of 1964.
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