The herb bath is the longest thing on the Bustani menu, and the one guests are most curious about. It is also the one that is hardest to picture from a menu line, so here is what actually happens, and what actually goes in the water.
What a herb bath is here
The herbs are boiled first, in quantity, and the liquor goes into the tub — so you are sitting in an infusion rather than in water with leaves floating on top. Fresh mbono leaves are then laid over you in the bath. There are two tubs in the treatment room, which is why couples can do this side by side.
The bath is the middle of a longer sequence, not the whole of it: it opens with a foot massage and closes with a 30-minute full-body massage. Set aside an afternoon rather than an hour.
The plants, and what they actually are
Zanzibar is a spice island, and the bath draws on the same plants that grow in the gardens and the shambas around Michamvi. Some are native, some arrived centuries ago on the monsoon trade, and one is a nineteenth-century import — the mix is a fair picture of the island itself.
- Lemongrass — mchai chai in Swahili, which is also the name of one of the massages. It is the smell most people notice first.
- Neem — mwarubaini. The Swahili name is built from arobaini, forty, from the belief that the tree treats forty different ailments. It is a member of the mahogany family, native to India and South Asia, and was brought to East Africa in the nineteenth century by Indian settlers who planted it for exactly that reputation.
- Mbono — Jatropha curcas. Only the leaves are used, and that distinction matters: the seeds of this plant contain curcin and phorbol esters and are genuinely toxic. The green leaves are what goes in the bath and what is laid over you in it.
- Basil — grown all over the island, and added to the bath for its scent and its long use in Swahili home remedies for the skin.
- Mint — sharp enough to cut through the sweetness of the flowers, and the reason the room smells cool rather than heavy.
- Lemon — the fruit and the peel. It brightens the whole infusion, and it is the ingredient people recognise blindfolded.
- Bunge — Ferula assa-foetida, the resin sold in every spice market as asafoetida. It is tapped from the root of a giant fennel relative and it is pungent; the Persians called it food of the gods, and the English-speaking world has often called it devil's dung. Both names are fair.
A word about what a bath does and does not do
These plants carry centuries of traditional use behind them, and that is genuinely interesting — it is why the treatment is built the way it is. But traditional use is not the same thing as medicine, and we are not going to tell you that sitting in an infusion cures anything. What a herb bath reliably does is make you warm, unhurried and slightly drowsy for the massage that follows. That is enough.
If you are pregnant, on medication, or have skin that reacts to things, say so when you book. The therapists will adjust the blend or steer you to something else.
The other two baths
The herb bath is one of three, all of which share the same shape — foot massage, bath, closing massage.
- Floral Spice Fusion — dried hibiscus and rose, sea salt, dried lemon peel, rosemary, clove and cinnamon. The sweetest of the three.
- Cleopatra Bath — milk and honey, with a soft back scrub made from coconut crusts and milk. The gentlest, and the one to choose if your skin has had a week of sun and salt.
Booking one
The spa is open every day from 09:00 to 18:00, in its own building in the garden. Ask your butler, or walk over. Baths take longer than anything else on the menu, so they are worth booking a day ahead — and if you would rather have the closing massage in your villa or beside the pool, the therapists will carry the bed over.
Prices, durations and the full treatment list are in our guide to every treatment at Bustani Spa.
