Cinnamon & Spice Workshops in Matara – Scented journeys into Sri Lanka’s culinary soul.

In the fragrant southern hills near Matara, spice gardens are classrooms of the senses. Here, cinnamon curls like ribbon from tree bark, turmeric glows golden in mortars, and cloves dry in baskets under the sun. Farmers explain how each spice has its own season, its own story. You try your hand at stripping cinnamon bark, feeling its smooth inner layer release a scent both sweet and sharp. Later, in an open-air kitchen, you learn to roast spices and blend curry powders the traditional way—with patience and rhythm. Lunch is a feast of what you helped create: rice fragrant with cardamom, curries bright with tamarind, sambols that sing with lime and chili. The experience is more than culinary—it’s an initiation into the island’s fragrant heart, where every meal begins as gratitude to the earth.