Amara Khalid

📍 Zanzibar, Tanzania

🗣 Swahili, Arabic, English

I was born in Stone Town and grew up in a Swahili family where the kitchen was the centre of everything. My grandmother could name every spice in our garden and what each one cured. I trained as a yoga teacher in Bali ten years ago and have been teaching on the beaches of Nungwi ever since. Female guides are rare in Zanzibar and I work specifically with women travellers who want something more than the beach-and-boat-trip circuit. My sunrise yoga sessions are on the actual beach, not a hotel deck, at the hour when the dhow fishing boats are coming in with the night's catch and the light on the Indian Ocean is extraordinary. I also run Swahili cooking sessions in my family home — proper Zanzibari pilau, coconut fish curry, and the urojo soup that Stone Town families make on Fridays. Zanzibar's food is one of the great undiscovered cuisines in the world.