Written and photographed by LAURA FRASER

In the heart of Old Delhi, a bustling market street called Khari Baoli serves as the home of Asia’s—and perhaps the world’s—largest spice market. Along both sides of this street sit heaping mounds and baskets of turmeric, cardamom, coriander, and all the other spices that give Indian cooking its distinctive, complex flavors.

The vendors on this street have been selling their wares here for generations. The Khari Baoli market’s roots go back to the 17th-century Moghul era,  and the myriad shoppers, wholesale dealers, and chefs who have long come to the market still spend much of their time haggling over more than a hundred different spices—as well as teas, dried fruits, nuts, lentils, pickles, preserves, and herbs.

Khari Baoli lies in the shadow of Jama Masjid, the mosque built in 1650–1656 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who also built the Taj Mahal and established the walled city of Shahjahanabad, when he moved the Mughal capital from Agra to Delhi. His daughter, Jahanara Begum, built the first market in the area, in 1650—a bazaar called Chandni Chowk, or Moonlight Square, which originally had 1,560 shops and drew traders from all regions of India and beyond.

At the western end of Chandni Chowk was a stepwell—a rectangular stone cistern with inclined steps that lead down to a freshwater reservoir—where travelers slaked their thirst and watered their horses and camels (Khari Baoli actually means “stepwell”). When the well became brackish in the 18th century, it evolved into the current spice market. Once the Khari Baoli was turned into a street, in the 1920s, any remnants of the old well ceased to exist.

Long known as the “Land of Spices,” India has been using and trading spices for thousands of years, not only for cooking but also for medicinal purposes. Adding spices to food or water has long been considered a way to avoid illness. This belief has been upheld as modern studies have shown that many spices do indeed have antimicrobial properties.

Today, many of the world’s most popular spices are native to the Indian subcontinent. Though they’ve spread all over the globe since trading began thousands of years ago, 75 percent of all spice production today is in India. The list includes everything from black pepper, cloves, and a particular type of cinnamon to cardamom, coriander, star anise, fenugreek, turmeric, and perhaps ginger (whose origins are murky).

The long-distance spice trade—which constituted the first episodes of globalization—began around 1000 BCE, as traders moved Cinnamomum verum, or “true cinnamon,” from its native India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Myanmar to Egypt. (This genus is different from Cinnamomum cassis, which is native to China and has become the most commonly used cinnamon in contemporary cooking in the U.S.) The Egyptians soon added their own approach to spices, using them both for medicine and for preserving mummies. Anthropologists have found that spices indigenous to India were cultivated as early as the 8th century BCE in the gardens of Babylon, which were in what’s now Iraq, and were traded at ports along the Red Sea.

By the first century CE, maritime trade routes had been established among India, Africa, and the Middle East, and overland routes—called the Silk Road by the 19th century—were developed between India, Southeast Asia, and China. Arabs, the middlemen in the spice trade for roughly a thousand years, were secretive about the provenance of their wares—most likely, in an effort to intrigue buyers and ward away competition—sometimes spinning stories about wild, winged beasts that delivered spices from the air.

Rana Safvi, an author and a medieval historian who has written books about Old Delhi and Mughal cuisine, says that the Mughal Shah Jahan deliberately designed his new city to attract nobles. He invited them from all over the world, and his daughter’s market ushered in far-away traders. “Shahjahanabad became very cosmopolitan” in the second half of the 17th century, Safvi says. “Travelers brought their own cultures and foods.”

Originally, she says, Mughal cuisine was mainly flavored with black pepper. But as the city grew and became more cosmopolitan, with more styles of cuisine, more goods from faraway countries began appearing in the Khali Baoli market. They’re still there today (as are almonds from California).

Still, the biggest market was for medicines. “Even today,” Safvi says, “the largest market for these spices is for Ayurvedic medicine.” Spices that heat or cool the body are common Ayurvedic uses. Anyone who has taken turmeric for inflammation or ginger for a sore throat is familiar with such prescriptions.

The biggest change in the types of spices offered here occurred in the 15th century, when Portuguese and Spanish traders—thinking they were taking a shorter route to India—opened up the New World. They began bringing in chilis and other spices (allspice and vanilla) native to the Americas. As Safvi puts it,“Columbus went looking for black pepper and found chilis.”

Since then, chili has become a staple in Indian food, particularly in the south. “The spices in Indian food are the result of several centuries of evolution,” Safvi says. “Delhi doesn’t have its own cuisine, but it is the epicenter of trade—from all over the world.”

As spices became more widespread, European nobles developed a taste for them, with the British leading the charge around 1600. In an effort to corner the spice markets from the French and Portuguese, who also had eyes on India’s rich resources, the British secured a royal charter for the East India Trading Company to trade spices and cotton. Taking advantage of instability in the Mughal empire in the mid-1700s, the British eventually entered Delhi, claiming it—and ultimately, the entire country—in 1803. “The spice trade,” says Safvi, “led to the colonization of India.”

From the time of British rule, trading—and Delhi itself—grew steadily. To walk along Khari Baori today is to have your senses assaulted: Rickshaws and tuk-tuks jockey for space on the streets, blaring horns. Shoppers bargain loudly. Vendors hawk baskets of brightly colored marigolds and spices. Throughout it all, an overwhelming aroma of spices stings your eyes and makes you cough. Dawdle too long in front of a stall, and traders with huge sacks of chilis or cardamom pods will bump you out of their way.

One reason the Delhi spice market is Asia’s largest is that Delhi is such a vast, cosmopolitan city: With nearly 34 million people, it is currently the second-largest city in the world (after Tokyo). Most of the spices sold here are not grown in this region, but farther south—particularly in Kerala.

In the center of Khali Baori is the Gadodia Market—the wholesale section. This area doesn’t have the tidiness of the shops along the street. It leans instead to the dark and disorderly, with wholesalers hauling in enormous bags of spices and plopping them down on the concrete floors and hallways. An unlit staircase takes you to the second and third floors, where there are few casual shoppers and even fewer foreigners.

Traders who have traveled with their goods gather in the upper reaches of the Gadodia Market, relaxing on top of the sacks of cumin and chilis, some bathing at a water spigot after their journey. Like much of the Old Delhi neighborhood architecture, the top floors of the market were once elegant apartments. Today they look ramshackle and distressed.

The market has changed as cooking habits have done the same. “When I was small,” Safvi says, “my mother would buy everything fresh every day, including turmeric, and grind it every day with a pestle and mortar.” In some homes, a man with a grinding mill would come around each day to grind spices and flour. “Indian food,” says Safvi, “is very labor-intensive.”

Then along came powdered spices, starting in the 1980s but becoming widespread during the global COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone wanted individual packets to ensure that they were not contaminated. “When I first saw powdered turmeric, I thought it was greater than sliced bread,” Safvi says. “But I realized eventually that what you save on time, you sacrifice in flavor.”

But in cooking, as in so many artisanal enterprises, quality is no match for convenience. Safvi says far fewer people nowadays cook with fresh spices. “Things are changing,” says Safvi, “and taste is getting diluted.”

Outside the wholesale area, back on Khari Baoli, one of the oldest and tidiest shops is Mehar Chand and Sons, in business since 1917. Anshu Kumar, who is part of the family that has owned the shop since then, says that the spice market keeps growing as the population grows. The market has also expanded from spices to include other commodities: nuts, grains, teas, sugars, and more.

“Everything is just flowing through,” says Kumar. The popularity of some spices as medicines or superfoods also creates demand, which so far, India has been able to meet. “Turmeric has always been produced and used in India,” Kumar says, “but now it has the eye of the world on it.” Today, he says, the spice currently exported to 192 different countries has also been found useful for industrial applications—particularly for dyeing cloth. “But it’s always been there—especially for people who haven’t had access to modern medicine.” A good part of Kumar’s business is now online.

It’s difficult to leave the shop without several packages of tea and spice mixtures, plus a small amount of saffron, especially if you like to cook paella or risotto. This queen of the spice world is made from the pistils of crocus flowers, handpicked and worth three times their weight in gold.

Two hours away from the spice market is Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. There, at an ordinary Marriott hotel, a beautifully decorated outdoor restaurant called Anise features tables strewn with rose petals, exceptional food, and traditional Indian musicians playing ragas.

The chef’s specialty is a dal, served with a lot of clarified butter. Like most Americans, I have eaten dal numerous times in the U.S, sometimes at highly rated restaurants. But this dal was different. Its flavors were more subtle and mysterious, and a bit unfamiliar. When I asked about the spices used in the dish, the chef, Iman Khan, brought out a plateful of them.

White pepper, fox nuts (the seeds of prickly waterlily), star anise, clove, and kokum (which, like tamarind, adds a sourish flavor to dishes) were just some of the spices Khan used, ground fresh, to prepare meals that evening. The fox nuts in particular caught my attention. They are airy and chewy, like popcorn, with a neutral, slightly nutty flavor that takes on the flavors of the dish. They’re also nutritional powerhouses, full of protein.

The next morning, Khan noticed this Western diner eating a bland egg-and-toast breakfast. In his boundless hospitality, he made a dosa—a light, crepe-like pancake typical of Southern India, with aloo masala (potatoes spiced with mustard seeds, cumin, chili, and curry leaves) and a hot-and-sour dipping sauce. It was a spicy breakfast for a Westerner. But it was made with such labor and care—so many spices crushed and roasted—that it was impossible to refuse.