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The Splendor Of The Sultanate Of Zanzibar. A Vacation To An Archipelago That Defies Time. Experience A Convergence Of Two Varied Civilizations.
Stepping out of the car, the fragrance of cloves fill the air as a farmer lays out rugs to dry the spice .
Tall plants donned with small pink-beige blossoms hold the desired clove as it is the harvesting season.
Stopping by the Persian baths, so called because Sultan Seyyid Said, the mercantile sultan who shifted his capital from Oman to Zanzibar, built the baths for his Persian wife on the ideal point on the island from where the Zanzibar beach view is lovely.
Clear of the luxury left behind, the beaten baths are resonant of the grand old days of the sultanate when it became used as a country getaway in 1850.
All that stands today is the five toilets with dome roofs showing the stylishness and the inner section 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 balcony for a massage with the finest oils of the day. Unfortunately, the Persian princess found country life rather too boring and left the Sultan to return home in Persia.
Enough with the baths, we take a footpath inside a spice farm, this is Stone Town.
Among the town's most celebrated houses is the Beit al Ajaib or the House of Wonders designed by Sultan Barghash fronting the seashore and the Stone Town.
Here there is a showcase of his sister, Princess Salme or Frau Emily Reute in the impressive residence which had the finest engraved wooden doors, first elevator, power supply and water running from taps inside the late 17th Century.
Princess Salme, was the earliest Arab woman who trained herself how to read and write and was excommunicated for running away with a German merchant.
Her chronicles are the first composed by a woman of Arab descent from a royal family.
We check into our room, known as Beyt al Chai, a three level stone house in Stonetown where the rich of the sultanate once sipped a cup of tea in the middle of small chat.
It has been perfectly repaired as a town house open to visitors with each room donned in exquisite silk and brocade with time old wooden furnishing of teak and other hardwoods.
The cafe serves the best sea-food on the island with platters of seafood baked with skill and specialisation.
At early morning, we hike into town. The narrow alleys are bustling with Scooters, gigantic four-wheel drive vehicles all fighting for space with pedestrians.
So many houses in this town still don the wood carved classical doors that have been gazetted as cultural.
At the Ancient Slave Market, we stop, where the Anglican cathedral now stands with its upside down posts, statues of the slaves and the altar where the slaves were canned and beyond from the tree underneath where Dr Livingstone is interned - he waged an untiring war against the ruthless trafficking of slaves.
As the sunsets and dusk sets in, we wander out of the Old Fort which was built from the rubbles of what was the Portuguese church and into Forodhani Square.
The backyards were laid out early in the 20th century (1935) to remember the silver jubilee of King George V and the exquisite fountain and seats were put up to remember 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 tourists take leisure in the spicy tastes of the Zanzibar island feasting on delicacies and fresh juice.
The age of the sultans stopped with the revolution of 1964.
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