#96: Kymyz And More

This post was inspired by a brilliant and witty piece about kymyz in the Modern Drunkard Magazine. Last week on the way to Osh, as always, we stopped in Suusamyr Valley to drink kymyz and buy couple of liters home. We stopped at a yurt with the best kymyz I've ever had.

This is what Jake Fleming wrote about kymyz: "Without question the world’s finest alcoholic dairy product, kymyz is a toothsome brew of fermented mare’s milk, and the intrepid inebriate who finds himself in these far reaches would be a fool not to embark on a kymyz-tasting tour."

As you drive due south through the tunnel in Töö-Ashuu Pass, the high altitude Suusamyr Valley opens up with flocks of sheep and goats, and horses grazing in hundreds here and here. (yaks are up higher in the mountains). As the fresh mountain air clears your head, you get the desire to absorb a part of it and take it with you. Kymyz is a sedative for me. I usually drink 2 bowls (1 liter) of kymyz to help me take the 10-hour drives easier and snooze off listening to music or chatter of co-travelers.

Like many Kyrgyz, I acquired the taste for kymyz while spending summers as a kid at my grandparents house in Iyrisuu, Özgön. My grandmother and aunts would milk couple of mares, smoke the goatskin duffel sack with mint, St. John's wort and other herbs, and ferment the milk in the sack to give a smoked and herbal taste to kymyz. After taking care of horses, cows, sheep, and turkeys, at noon we would run home to drink kymyz. Most of the time we would add talkan, cooked corn-flour, to it. It would become sort of a power drink, after which we would run back to to do more chores.

Unfortunately, my grandmother does not prepare kymyz any more as she is 78 now, and none of her daughters or daughter-in-law inherited the skill. Mostly because keeping horses became an expensive thing. The horse culture is slowly fazing out from Kyrgyz people's lives. Here is a picture of me showing off some horsemanship. Not that I am a great good rider, but at least trying to keep the nomad spirit alive in me. :)

Fleming finishes off his article with this: "So fill your flask, pack your bags, and book your ticket for Kyrgyzstan to sample this powerful testimony to humanity’s urge to intoxication." On that note, today we are getting together at Steinbrau to "mourn M's last days as bachelor."