Zanzibar, Madagascar, India, Indonesia and Jordan… the list sounds evocative enough in anyone’s voice, but add Joanna Lumley’s breathily seductive tones to the mix and it all gets very spicy indeed. Which is appropriate, because the screen siren and travel aficionado is visiting them all in Joanna Lumley’s Spice Trail Adventure, beginning this week on ITV1. “It’s my most epic voyage yet,” says Lumley of her 10,000-mile trek in the footsteps of those who brought vanilla, nutmeg, pepper and all those other rich, mysterious flavours to a world waiting hungrily for them. But though undeniably exotic, all those destinations are accessible to ordinary holidaymakers, too. Ready for a taste?
1. INDONESIA NUTMEG AND JAGGER
Lumley ’s first stop is Indonesia’s Banda Islands – microscopically small, but once of huge global significance as the only place on Earth where nutmeg grew. Nutmeg is still harvested there today, and the landscape looks much as it did back when Portuguese sailors returned from the Banda Sea with tantalising tales of jungle-covered, lagoon wrapped specks of coral sand and palm during the Age of Discovery.
Later came celebrity solitude-seekers – including one Mick Jagger – and tourism is still pretty low-key round here: Seram is the nearest “big” (still tiny) island, also nutmeg-scented and rising from a gorgeous coral sea teeming with turtles, and where even today you can find an overwater bungalow for £90 a night. Be ready for a journey, though: Seram is a four-hour flight and 90-minute speedboat from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
2. INDIA PEPPER AND GREAT-GRANNY FIGHTING
Pepper might be a commonplace now, but it was once so rare and so valuable that it was known as “black gold” and a cornerstone of the wealth of India. Returning to the country of her birth to investigate, Lumley starts in the “lost city” of Hampi, in the state of Karnataka. Here, enigmatic ancient stone monuments – including a never-moving chariot of solid rock that looks a little like something from the Alien films – sprawl over a huge site and date back some 600 years. After that, Spice Trail Adventure heads south to Kerala, on India’s Arabian Sea coast, where 400 miles of exquisite, palm-shaded beaches segue into molasses-slow backwaters. Here, most tourists spend a night or two on a traditional wooden houseboat modelled on the grain barges or spice transports of a few millennia ago – and Lumley meets an 89-year-old great-grandmother who practises and teaches Kalaripayattu, a terrifying traditional martial art involving vicious-looking swords and maces.
3. MADAGASCAR VANILLA AND GOLD DUST
Brave this Indian Ocean republic’s infamously pot-holed roads (they rattle even the normally unshakeable Ms Lumley) and you’ll find an island full of incredible endemic creatures.
There are Coquerel’s coua, sickle-billed vangas, white breasted mesties, greyheaded lovebirds and as many kinds of saucer-eyed lemurs as you can shake a prehensile tail at. And then there’s vanilla, the world’s second-most expensive spice. Not valuable enough? You can also visit the island’s gold-mining communities.
4. ZANZIBAR CINNAMON AND DREAM BEACHES
Watch the lateen-sailed wooden dhow boats tack in and out of Zanzibar’s little harbours, and you could still be in the glory days of the Spice Trail, with traders plying the waters between East Africa’s Malindi Coast, India’s Malabar Coast and Arabia’s Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The boats’ elegantly curved prows and distinctive shark-fin sails haven’t changed much since then, and neither has Zanzibar’s role as an entrepôt between those great civilisations – as well as a grower of its own spices, including cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and black pepper.
Stone Town, the little Tanzanian island’s ancient “capital”, is a bustling melting-pot of all those foreign influences (see it in the architecture, the religion, the music and – yes! – the food), but the beaches of the isle’s northern and eastern coasts are a largely unspoilt Indian Ocean fantasia of soft sand and fresh seafood brought straight in on those dhows.
5. JORDAN CARDAMOM AND INDIANA JONES
Lumley’s journey ends in Jordan, where cardamom is used to flavour everything from coffee to sweets, and where another great trading empire arose as the Nabateans took control of the Silk Road, the Frankincense Road and various maritime routes joining India, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar and Arabia, with Jordan’s access to the Gulf of Aqaba crucial. Tourists can enjoy the Red Sea resort city of Aqaba itself, as well as a night or two in the vast echoing desert of Wadi Rum (which has featured in films from Lawrence of Arabia to Star Wars Episode IX: the Rise of Skywalker).
This is best experienced, just as Lumley does, from the back of a camel. But even more magnificent is Petra (also celebrated on the big screen, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade): the capital of the Nabateans, it’s a desert city carved out of the rose-red sandstone but now a ghost-town of ancient tombs and empty temples. Lumley has her breath taken away, and so will you.
Zanzibar, Madagascar, India, Indonesia and Jordan… the list sounds evocative enough in anyone’s voice, but add Joanna Lumley’s breathily seductive tones to the mix and it all gets very spicy indeed. Which is appropriate, because the screen siren and travel aficionado is visiting them all in Joanna Lumley’s Spice Trail Adventure, beginning this week on ITV1. “It’s my most epic voyage yet,” says Lumley of her 10,000-mile trek in the footsteps of those who brought vanilla, nutmeg, pepper and all those other rich, mysterious flavours to a world waiting hungrily for them. But though undeniably exotic, all those destinations are accessible to ordinary holidaymakers, too. Ready for a taste?
1. INDONESIA NUTMEG AND JAGGER
Lumley ’s first stop is Indonesia’s Banda Islands – microscopically small, but once of huge global significance as the only place on Earth where nutmeg grew. Nutmeg is still harvested there today, and the landscape looks much as it did back when Portuguese sailors returned from the Banda Sea with tantalising tales of jungle-covered, lagoon wrapped specks of coral sand and palm during the Age of Discovery.
Later came celebrity solitude-seekers – including one Mick Jagger – and tourism is still pretty low-key round here: Seram is the nearest “big” (still tiny) island, also nutmeg-scented and rising from a gorgeous coral sea teeming with turtles, and where even today you can find an overwater bungalow for £90 a night. Be ready for a journey, though: Seram is a four-hour flight and 90-minute speedboat from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
2. INDIA PEPPER AND GREAT-GRANNY FIGHTING
Pepper might be a commonplace now, but it was once so rare and so valuable that it was known as “black gold” and a cornerstone of the wealth of India. Returning to the country of her birth to investigate, Lumley starts in the “lost city” of Hampi, in the state of Karnataka. Here, enigmatic ancient stone monuments – including a never-moving chariot of solid rock that looks a little like something from the Alien films – sprawl over a huge site and date back some 600 years. After that, Spice Trail Adventure heads south to Kerala, on India’s Arabian Sea coast, where 400 miles of exquisite, palm-shaded beaches segue into molasses-slow backwaters. Here, most tourists spend a night or two on a traditional wooden houseboat modelled on the grain barges or spice transports of a few millennia ago – and Lumley meets an 89-year-old great-grandmother who practises and teaches Kalaripayattu, a terrifying traditional martial art involving vicious-looking swords and maces.
3. MADAGASCAR VANILLA AND GOLD DUST
Brave this Indian Ocean republic’s infamously pot-holed roads (they rattle even the normally unshakeable Ms Lumley) and you’ll find an island full of incredible endemic creatures.
There are Coquerel’s coua, sickle-billed vangas, white breasted mesties, greyheaded lovebirds and as many kinds of saucer-eyed lemurs as you can shake a prehensile tail at. And then there’s vanilla, the world’s second-most expensive spice. Not valuable enough? You can also visit the island’s gold-mining communities.
4. ZANZIBAR CINNAMON AND DREAM BEACHES
Watch the lateen-sailed wooden dhow boats tack in and out of Zanzibar’s little harbours, and you could still be in the glory days of the Spice Trail, with traders plying the waters between East Africa’s Malindi Coast, India’s Malabar Coast and Arabia’s Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The boats’ elegantly curved prows and distinctive shark-fin sails haven’t changed much since then, and neither has Zanzibar’s role as an entrepôt between those great civilisations – as well as a grower of its own spices, including cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and black pepper.
Stone Town, the little Tanzanian island’s ancient “capital”, is a bustling melting-pot of all those foreign influences (see it in the architecture, the religion, the music and – yes! – the food), but the beaches of the isle’s northern and eastern coasts are a largely unspoilt Indian Ocean fantasia of soft sand and fresh seafood brought straight in on those dhows.
5. JORDAN CARDAMOM AND INDIANA JONES
Lumley’s journey ends in Jordan, where cardamom is used to flavour everything from coffee to sweets, and where another great trading empire arose as the Nabateans took control of the Silk Road, the Frankincense Road and various maritime routes joining India, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar and Arabia, with Jordan’s access to the Gulf of Aqaba crucial. Tourists can enjoy the Red Sea resort city of Aqaba itself, as well as a night or two in the vast echoing desert of Wadi Rum (which has featured in films from Lawrence of Arabia to Star Wars Episode IX: the Rise of Skywalker).
This is best experienced, just as Lumley does, from the back of a camel. But even more magnificent is Petra (also celebrated on the big screen, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade): the capital of the Nabateans, it’s a desert city carved out of the rose-red sandstone but now a ghost-town of ancient tombs and empty temples. Lumley has her breath taken away, and so will you.
ED GRENBY