How to Experience the Indian Ocean’s Spice Routes—From Farms to Cooking Classes

Nowadays, most of us take spices for granted — a pinch of cinnamon in porridge, black pepper over pasta or cumin stirred into a curry. Yet for centuries these everyday ingredients shaped the course of history. The trade in black pepper facilitated cultural and economic intermixing between ancient Rome and India, while camels pulled frankincense caravans across the deserts that separated Africa and Asia, taking with them ideas, recipes, music and language. Today, these influences can still be felt in many countries, offering a fascinating, and often delicious, theme through which to explore a place.

Browse the Spice Souks of Muscat, Oman

Located on the Arabian Sea between Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the UAE, the seafaring nation of Oman has long been a link between East Africa, India and Southeast Asia. That story is told in the spice section of Muttrah Souk, the Omani capital’s historic covered market, where technicolour cones of powdered ginger, turmeric and cumin sit alongside piles of frankincense rocks, bundled strands of saffron, and less familiar items like loomi — black, sun-dried limes.

The air hangs particularly heavy with the scent of frankincense, which Omanis use to perfume their homes, cars and traditional robes. Grown in the southern Omani region of Dhofar, as well as in the Horn of Africa, frankincense has long played a crucial role in Oman’s spice trade networks, alongside cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. You can learn all about Oman’s spice-route history — and sample the delicious ways in which it influences modern Omani cuisine — on a food tour with 365 Adventures. Visiting the home of a local family in Muscat, you’ll sip cardamom coffee and learn the time-honoured techniques behind a variety of traditional dishes.

(How to spend the perfect day in Muscat, Oman.)

Peel Cinnamon in Southern Sri Lanka

Although cinnamon comes from several related tree species, Sri Lanka is home to Cinnamomum verum — known as true cinnamon and long considered the finest. Harvested from the delicate inner bark of the tree, its sweet, warming flavour and intoxicating aroma have made it one of the world’s most prized spices for centuries. From ancient Egypt through the Roman era, cinnamon was valued as a luxury spice, used in rituals and embalming, while traders kept its origins secret to protect their lucrative monopoly.

Thankfully, the secret is now out. At Gradely Estate, 45 minutes outside Galle, you can wander through cinnamon groves, learning how the tree’s slender stems are harvested and carefully peeled, and even try the process yourself. A visit to the working factory reveals how the bark is sun-dried, rolled into delicate quills and graded before being shipped around the world or ground into powder. Nearby, Cinnamon Walawwa offers the chance to experience cinnamon in another form: in the kitchen. Over spiced tea, you can learn to prepare cinnamon-infused curries in a lush garden setting.

(Taste Sri Lanka's finest tea right at the source in Kalutara.)

Cook with Vanilla in Mauritius

Sweet, floral and instantly recognisable, vanilla is one of the world’s most treasured flavours, and its story is one of ambition and botanical ingenuity. The plant is native to Mexico, where it’s pollinated by specific bee species, but after many failed attempts to grow it elsewhere, a method of pollinating the delicate blooms by hand was discovered by a slave, Edmond Albius, in Mauritius’s neighbour Réunion in 1841. Within decades, the two islands were supplying most of the world’s vanilla.

Today, traditional farms such as Vanill’Art in southern Mauritius continue to use methods that have changed little since then. The vanilla orchid grows on filao wood, taking five years to flower. The pods spend nine months maturing on the vine before harvest, filling the surrounding orchards with their distinctive creamy, spicy fragrance.

Tours of Vanill’Art reveal the painstaking process behind this prized ingredient. You’re also able to take part in a vanilla-infused rum workshop and enjoy a fragrant lunch featuring samosas and curries subtly flavoured with vanilla.

Take a Spice Farm Tour in Zanzibar

Not for nothing is Zanzibar known as the Spice Island. Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom are among the crops which fill the island’s groves with a heady aroma, best experienced on a spice farm tour. Zanzibar Spice Co will lead you through traditional plantations in the village of Kisongoni, introducing you to local farmers who will demonstrate how they cultivate the island’s rich bounty, from the expensive and labour-intensive vanilla to sweet, earthy turmeric. The plant thrives in the Zanzibari soil and is used as a cooking ingredient as well as a medicine for digestive complaints in Swahili culture.

After tasting some of the raw spices in the gardens in which they grow, you’ll take a cooking class, where you’ll learn to whip up fragrant, richly spiced dishes like urojo soup, flavoured with mango and turmeric; octopus curry with cardamom and cinnamon; and coconut-stewed beans flavoured with plenty of coriander and cumin. Be sure to leave room for the local coffee, spiced with nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon and pepper. It promises to put a spring in your step after even the heaviest meal.

(Where to stay in Zanzibar, Tanzania's 'spice island'.)

Explore Pepper Plantations in Kerala, India

Indian cuisine is famous for its rich combinations of spices, with endemic flavours including turmeric, cardamom, cumin and curry leaf. Nowadays, hot chilli peppers are a crucial element of many fiery Indian dishes, but the ingredient didn’t arrive in the country until the 16th century, when Portuguese explorers carried them along the spice routes from the Americas. Prior to this, it was black pepper which gave Indian dishes their heat, a native spice particularly associated with Kerala’s Malabar Coast. At Pepper Trail in the forested Wayanad district, you can discover the origins of the pepper trade while staying in a 140-year-old colonial-era bungalow surrounded by 200 acres of pepper and spice groves. Learn how pepper vines are trained to climb towering silver oak and mango trees before helping to harvest the just-ripe green fruits, which are then sun-dried into the black peppercorns we’re all familiar with. A handful of fresh pepper berries makes for a fiery snack, while the hotel restaurant showcases the spice in dishes such as Kerala beef pepper fry, a piquant dry-roasted speciality.

(Follow Kerala's water from source to sea for a glimpse into southern India's soul.)