Kyrgyzstan - Central Asia - page 297

Pop and rap music sung in both Rus-
sian and Kyrgyz are popular among young
urbanites. Look out for CDs by pop singers
Aya Sadykova and Sezdbek Iskenaliev, and
rapper Tata Ulan, all of whom mix tradi-
tional lyrics about their homeland with 21st-
century beats.

Food & Drink
As everywhere in Central Asia, finding local
meat-free meals is a tall order. In big cities
your best hope will likely be in Chinese or
Italian restaurants.
Tea is liquid hospitality and cups should
only be half-filled - adding more suggests
that one's in a hurry to get away. Bread is
holy and should not be thrown away with
standard rubbish nor placed upside down
on a table.
A great resource on Kyrgyz cuisine is
www.tastes.kg.
Typical Kyrgyz dishes include:
¨ Laghman : Mildly spicy, fat noodles
generally served in soup, though bozo
laghman is fried. There are numerous
other variants.
¨ Beshbarmak : Literally 'five fingers',
since it is traditionally eaten by hand. The
usual recipe sees large flat noodles topped
with lamb and/or horsemeat cooked in
vegetable broth.
¨ Kesme : Thick noodle soup with small
bits of potato, vegetable and meat.
¨ Mampar : Tomato-based meat stew with
gnocchi-like pasta pieces.
¨ Shorpo : Mutton soup.
¨ Jurkop: Braised meat and vegetable dish
with noodles.
¨ Hoshan : Fried and steamed dumplings,
similar to manty (stuffed dumplings); best
right off the fire from markets.
¨ Ashlyanfu : Cold rice-noodles, jelly,
vinegar and eggs.
¨ Fyntyozi : Spicy, cold rice noodles.
¨ Gyanfan : Rice with a meat and
vegetable sauce.
¨ Kymys: Fermented mare's milk, mostly
available in spring and early summer; the
national drink.
¨ Bozo: Thick, fizzy drink made from
boiled fermented millet or other grains.
Jarma and maksym are fermented barley
drinks, made with yeast and yoghurt.
'Shoro' is the best-known brand name with
vendors serving from chilled barrels at
most street corners in Bishkek and Osh.
¨ Boorsok : Empty ravioli-sized fried
dough-parcels to dunk in drinks or cream.
¨ Kurut : Small, very hard balls of tart,
dried yoghurt; a favourite snack.

Environment

Wildlife & Reserves
Kyrgyzstan offers an annual refuge for
thousands of migrating birds, including
rare cranes and geese. The country is be-
lieved to have a population of a few hun-
dred snow leopards with Sarychat-Ertash
a closed reserve partially intended to pre-
serve them. Issyk-Köl and Sary-Chelek
lakes are Unesco-affiliated biosphere
reserves.

Environmental Issues
Fresh water, locked up in the form of gla-
ciers, is one of Kyrgyzstan's greatest natu-
ral resources, but the glaciers have been
shrinking alarmingly - albeit not perhaps
as catastrophically as a 2008 UN report
feared.
Despite a well-established seasonal rota-
tion, there are problems with over-grazing
of meadows near villages. And contrast-
ingly there's a simultaneous under-grazing
of more distant jailoos made inaccessible
by the increasing costs of transport or lack
of infrastructure.
In Soviet days, the Kyrgyz SSR's uranium
mining sector earned the sobriquet 'Atomic
Fortress of the Tian Shan'. A number of
former mine sites still threaten to leak
their radioactive contents into rivers and
groundwater. Meanwhile there remain ma-
jor controversies over the ownership and
operation of active mines, notably the mas-
sive Canadian-run Kumtor Gold Mine. Ac-
cording to the BBC, this operation report-
edly produces around 12% of Kyrgyzstan's
GDP, but its high mountain location at
the source of many river systems makes
its environmental credentials particularly
sensitive. In 1998 a Kumtor truck carrying
almost two tonnes of cyanide and sodium
hydrochloride fell into the Barskoön River
leading to a widespread evacuation, though
the exact number of casualties remains a
source of considerable dispute.