Eating in Central Asia

As my time here dwindles, I have just ten days left, I wanted to reflect on the food that I have eaten here. While traveling, I make a conscious effort to avoid eating at the western style fast-food restaurants, of which there are plenty in Almaty, including Hardee's, KFCs, Pizza Hut and dozens of knock-offs. Instead, most of my food intake is street food from kiosks or food from the same restaurants that the locals frequent.

Like clockwork, when noon rolls around, I leave my computer in the office and walk to the underground walkway on Abai street near Baizakov Street for my daily samsa. Dana, one of my colleagues, jokingly named Antoine and I the samsa club. Unfortunately the other half of my club is now in Shymkent, so I am forced to go buy my lunch on my own. Samsa is a stuffed pastry. In Kazakhstan, the pastry is the texture of a croissant with either chicken, cheese or meat fillings. I almost always get samsa with cheese, the meat can be a little suspect. The best thing about samsa is the price, it costs 70 KZT or $0.50. The other great thing about samsa is that you can find it just about anywhere. Samsa in Almaty is not the same as the samsa which is sold in Bishkek. The samsa in Bishkek is made out of a heavier pastry and is not flaky. It was also smaller and more oily than the Almaty samsa. Another major difference is that Bishkek samsa has more an additional filling option, cabbage, but cheese by itself is less common. 

From my earlier posts, you know that I also enjoy Shashlik. Shashlik, or shish kabab, is a staple of the region. It is always done over an open flame and can be any type of meat. In Ufa, my host family would make it with pork and chicken. In Almaty, you can order shashlik sticks of mutton, chicken, beef and chicken kidneys and livers and it is served with uncooked onions and a very strong vinegar. The best shashlik that I've tasted here came from a hole-in-the-wall place on Bogenbai batyr street between Begalin and Kastev streets. Unfortunately, the name escapes me.

Fresh fruit is very common and relatively cheap in Almaty and even cheaper in Bishkek. I always supplement my lunch with a banana, an apple or, if the price is right, a small melon. Dried fruit is also very popular and can be purchased for cheap in the Green Bazaar in Almaty or in the Osh Bazaar in Bishkek.  I have been warned that you should wash the dried fruit after you buy it because some of the vendors will cover it in oil to make is seem moister than it is. I think washing it is just common sense because there are always bees and wasps flying around it.

Above all, I have fallen in love with lagman, a Uighur dish. There are two types, one is a soup and the other is dry, I prefer that type. Lagman is made with noodles, meat and vegetables, including peppers and onions, and in the case of the lagman featured in the picture, eggs. It is often served with a very spicy red sauce, laza (in the left hand corner), which I have come to love, though the first taste was quite a surprise. According to Asel', laza is made with spicy red pepper fried in very hot corn or sunflower seed oil with garlic. I hope I can find a way to replicate it at home, else I may have to open up my own import market.

In Almaty, a hearty lagman can be found at Kishlak, on Abai and Seifullin. 

In Bishkek, Acel' took me out to Arzu, on Togolok Moldo Street, for their excellent lagman. 

One of the first things people learn about me is that I have a major sweet-tooth, especially when chocolate is involved. Below is Kazakhstan's national chocolate and it is amazing. Its taste is somewhere between sweet milk chocolate and dark chocolate, like nothing I have ever enjoyed before. I wish I could fill my suitcase up to the brim with it and bring it home. Unfortunately, I don't think it would survive Thailand, either it would melt, or more likely, I would eat it all before I got home.

"This is a Pleasure Hike, not a Death March... That's Next Time."

I climbed a mountain today! And I made it down in one piece, mostly. I consider that a major achievement on my part. 

Jessica, Antoine, Ed and I decided that we were going to hike/"trek” Medau, the mountains to south of Almaty today. I was up and at the bus stop across from the Hotel Kazakhstan before 9 am. While I still hold to may statement that Almaty is a sleepy city in the morning, this particular bus stop began to fill up early, all preparing for a day at Medeu. Once our group was complete, we crammed on the bus, the six, and headed for Medeu. The bus ride was twenty or twenty-five minutes long, but it was hot and uncomfortable. Hikers and bikers had crammed on to the bus with all their equipment, the bus attendant hardly had room to gather the fare.

We finally reached the base of the mountain and took a gondola up to the Shymbulak. The view from the gondola was extraordinary, we passed right over top the ice-skating rink, which was used during the Asian winter games and is now a basketball/soccer court. 

The Gondola, 2,500 Tenge both ways. It offers amazing views of the mountains and valleys on the way up to Shymbulak.

The ice-skating rink, which currently has a tennis, basketball and soccer court on it.
Apparently, you can stay in the athlete's dormitories for $10 a night. 

In the valley, a guy had professed his love to a girl in a very dramatic way. "Sveta, I Love You."
This young Romeo was one of many with the same idea.

From Shymbulak, the climbing began. We climbed up from Shymbulak along a road gravel road, passed the hotel; Shymbulak is a ski resort during the winter, and up the mountains. When we came to the fork in the road, we chose the more direct but more challenging route through a dried river gorge. There we were forced to climb over larger boulders and rocks that had washed down when the gorge was filled with water. It was easier to move over the larger stones than through the small stones, which we encountered later. The small stones tend to dispurse when you stepped on them, making it very slippery. We trekked through the gorge for a couple hours, in addition to boulders; we climbed over the ruins of an old ski lift, which had obviously been thrown down there at some point instead of being trashed properly. We made it up and over the boulders and then were faced with a hill of small rocks, which felt like walking through snow. I must admit that I was the slowpoke of the group. Ed climbs mountains on a regular basis, so this must have felt like a hill; he assured me that this was in fact a pleasure hike not a death march, so I could take my sweet time. Antoine wasn’t fazed by the climb and was right behind Ed most of the time and Jessica held her own.

Ed and Jessica, well ahead of me at the beginning of the climb.

In the river gorge: Ed, Antoine and Jessica. Taken from my position well behind the rest of the group.

One of the many items left behind in the gorge. 

The rocky/gravelly hill between me and lunch.
It was like walking through snow, not that I have much experience doing that either.

 I eventually made it to the top, well after the other. It was cold up there. I had worn short, which was good for the physical effort required to reach the top, but once there I couldn’t help but wish I had brought pants. Unfortunately, the weather was closing in, so we didn’t get see much of the magnificent view. We could see snow on an adjacent peak and we had seen others climbing down the mountain with skis and snowboards. 

The adjacent peak from the top of our ridge. The weather was closing in and it was beginning to drizzle.

We ate lunch, quickly, and then walked along the ridge a little ways. I had seen a patch of snow not far from where we were eating and I really wanted a picture with it. This Florida girl has now seen snow eight times. An adolescent Saint Bernard greeted us by the snow patch and played in the snow. When her owner, who was up in the building by the unused ski lift, noticed that she had disappeared he came out calling her, “Shimba, Shimba come here.” Shimba was quite reluctant to leave us, possibly because I had given her a biscuit a few minutes before, but eventually she returned to her waiting owner.

Shimba, guarding her patch of ice and snow.

We continued down the mountain, slipping and sliding. It was much more difficult to go down than to go up. I ended up falling more times than I can count, though I only scrapped myself badly once. At one point Ed said that it was better just to run down, I tried this theory and found that this was in fact false. Antoine had to catch me so that I didn’t run off the edge or slip and fall trying to stop. Didn’t do that again. As we were navigating a rather precarious wet hill, a well-dressed Kazakh man, in a white suit jacket and dress shoes, on a phone ran passed us and somehow managed to navigated the hill without falling and dirtying that pristine white coat. We finally made it down the mountain. Finally! After using the facilities, we rode the gondola back down and took the bus back into Almaty.

Even Ed had to perform some impressive maneuvers not to end up flat on his bum. He succeeded, I did not.

Very furry bovine hanging out on the mountain.

My prize at the end of this was Shashlik, a chicken kabab, which I ate one full stick and packed the other one away for tomorrow’s lunch. Now I am home and about to head to bed. I won’t need any rocking tonight.

Dinner! The bottle in the center holds pink vinegar, according to Ed's flat mate (center),
it is so strong that it is sometimes used to commit suicide. 

Shashlik, bread, onions and cucumbers. My post-trek treat.