Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Kazakh tea is taken with
milk, salt and butter - the
nomadic equivalent of fast
food - hot, tasty and high in
calories.
available only in spring and
summer, when mares are
foaling, and takes around
three days to ferment. The
milk is put into a
chelek
(wooden bucket or barrel)
and churned with a wooden
plunger called a
bishkek
(from where that city de-
rives its name).
Locals will tell you that
kumys
cures anything from
a cold to TB but drinking
too much of it may give you
diarrhoea. The best
kumys
comes from the herders
themselves; the stuff avail-
able in the cities is some-
times diluted with cow's
milk or water.
Kazakhs and Kyrgyz also
like a thick, yeasty, slightly
fizzy concoction called
bozo,
made from boiled
fermented millet or other
grains.
Turkmen, Kazakh and
Karakalpak nomads like
shubat
(fermented camel's
milk). An early morning
glass of breakfast
chal
(camel's milk) in Turkmeni-
stan will wake you up faster
than a double espresso.
Where to Eat & Drink
Dining options include
streetside stalls and ca-
fes, private restaurants,
chaikhanas (teahouses) and,
best of all, private homes.
A few midrange and
top-end restaurants
(meyramkhana
in Kazakh
and Kyrgyz;
oshhona
in
Uzbek) in bigger cities offer
interesting Central Asian,
Turkish, Chinese, Georgian,
Korean or European dishes
and earnest service. The oc-
casional Siberian salmon or
black caviar livens things up.
Beware menu prices in
top-end restaurants, as they
are often given as per 100g,
not per serving (which is
more like 250g to 400g).
In some restaurants main
dishes are just that and
you'll have to order gar-
nishes like rice, potatoes or
vegetables separately.
What most locals want
from a restaurant in the
evening is a night out - lots
of booze and gale-force
techno music or a variety
show. Even if there's no
music blasting when you
come in, the kind staff will
most likely turn on (or turn
up) the beat, especially for
the foreigners.
The canteen
(stolovaya)
is the ordinary citizen's eat-
ery - dreary but cheap, with
a limited choice of cutlets or
lukewarm
laghman
.
Certain old-town neigh-
bourhoods of Tashkent
and Samarkand (both in
Uzbekistan) have home
restaurants offering genuine
home-style cuisine. There is
rarely a sign; family mem-
bers simply solicit custom-
ers on the street.
VODKA & BEER
The Islamic injunction
against alcohol has had little
obvious impact in ex-Soviet
Central Asia. Most Central
Asians enjoy a drink and,
like the Russians who intro-
duced them to vodka, take
their toasts seriously.
Given the depth of Cen-
tral Asian hospitality it's
impolite to refuse the initial
'bottoms up' (Russian -
vashe zdarovye!
), and/
or abstain from at least a
symbolic sip at each toast.
But there's usually heavy
pressure to drain your glass
every time - so as not to
give offence, it is implied -
and the pressure only in-
creases as everybody gets
loaded. The Russian phrase
chut chut
may mean 'a little
bit', but when applied to a
shot of vodka it generally
gets translated as 'up to
the brim'.
You'll find a wide range
of Russian and European
beers
(pivo)
. St Petersburg's
Baltika is the brew of choice
and comes in a wide range
of numbers from 0 (nonal-
coholic) to 9 (very strong).
Baltikas 3 and 6 are the
most popular.
Popular local beers on
tap include Tian-Shansky,
Shimkent (both Kazakh),
Sim Sim (Dushanbe) and
Siberian Crown (Russian).
Kyrgyzstan has a growing
range of small microbrewer-
ies, including Arpa, Nashe
Pivo, Zhivoe, Hoff, Akademia
and Venskoye. Draught beer
is advertised in Russian
as
na razliy,
razlivnoe
or
svezhee pivo
(fresh beer).
TEAHOUSES
The chaikhana (teahouse;
transliterated as
chaykhana
in Turkmen,
chaykana
in
Kyrgyz,
choyhona
in Uzbek
and Tajik,
shaykhana
in
Kazakh) is male Central
Asia's essential socio-gas-
tronomic institution, espe-
cially in Uzbekistan. Usually
shaded, often near a pool
or stream, it's as much a
men's club as an eatery -
although women, including
foreigners, are tolerated.
Traditional seating is on
a bedlike platform called
a
tapchan,
covered with a
carpet and topped with a
low table. Take your shoes
off to sit on the platform,
or leave them on and hang
your feet over.
SELF-CATERING
Every sizeable town has a
colourful bazaar
(rynok
in
Russian) or farmers mar-
ket with hectares of fresh
and dried fruit, vegetables,
nuts, honey, cheese and
bread. Private supermarkets
across the region now sell
a decent range of European
and Russian goods.
Korean and Dungan
vendors sell spicy
kimchi
(vegetable salads), a great
antidote for mutton over-
dose. Fresh honey on hot-
from-the-oven nan makes a
splendid breakfast.
KUMYS & OTHER
ATTRACTIONS
Kumys
(properly
kymys
in
Kyrgyz;
qymyz
in Kazakh)
is fermented mare's milk, a
mildly (2% to 3%) alcoholic
drink appreciated by most
Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. It's
