We spent a lot of time in taxis as my friend Dinara and I traveled 2,200 kilometers (1,300-plus miles) from flat land through mountains to more mountains in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia.
Instead of booking a bus or train, travelers in Kyrgyzstan head to a parking lot where the taxi drivers wait for customers. You can take the ride immediately if you are willing to pay for all of the seats in the vehicle. If you wait, the driver fills up every seat, the fare is cheaper and you will ride with strangers.
I must say, riding with strangers was a great way to see the country and hear a wide variety of perspectives. Dinara is an English teacher and she was willing to translate the many conversations. This is no small job and can be exhausting after an hour or more.
Nowadays, people don’t always like to chit-chat on airplanes and certainly not on the subways. However, we had really good luck, quite possibly because Dinara has such an open personality and her face is very inviting. People also seemed interested to hear about America from an American and from Dinara who spent a month in California.
“What do you like most about your country?” I asked on the first day we rode from the second largest city to Dinara’s village. We were in a mini-van packed with two middle-aged men, two men in their mid 20s and one teenage boy, plus the driver, Dinara and I.
The man sitting near us rattled off some of his favorite things — “the people, the landscape, clean water …”
“Clean water? What do you mean?”
He elaborated but I wouldn’t understand the full importance of the country’s clean water until later. Over the next 10 days we sampled water in streams, sipped handsful of water that gushed from the side of a steep gorge, and gathered special water from a spigot in a public park. We saw lakes that were blue from glacier water and teal-colored rivers. People often traveled with empty plastic containers in the trunk of their cars to fill the containers with water if they had an opportunity.
It makes sense there are so many locations with crystal clear water. The country has nearly 10,000 glaciers.
About an hour into our journey that day in the taxi, I learned of another thing dear to the hearts of people in Kyrgyzstan — kumis.
“Have tried kumis yet?” the same man said in a gruff and rather assertive voice, as he asked the driver to pull over at a roadside stand.
I needn’t bother to answer the question because he soon jumped out, ran ahead and bought me a plastic bottle filled with cream-colored liquid.
I understood it was horse milk, but didn’t know much more. As I took a sip or two I tried to keep my face neutral because everyone from the car was watching me.
“Hmm … interesting.”
One of the younger men in our minivan said I would be wise to go easy the first time, to make sure the milk did not upset my stomach. Maybe he was being kind because he could tell I didn’t love the taste.
I found it sour and overly salty, but the locals love it. I didn’t like Greek olives until I had them a few times, so I’m sure kumis would grow on me.
Kumis is not simply horse milk; it’s fermented horse milk. This may sound strange, but we drink a lot of kefir in the United States and kefir is fermented cow’s milk. One difference with kumis is that mare’s milk has more sugar than kefir and the fermentation results in a very small amount of alcohol in the brew. I never saw kumis chilled, but always at room temperature.
We traveled a lot and saw much of the country, thus there were many taxi cab conversations.
You can learn a lot about people by the questions they ask.
Sometimes people asked about prices in America – for cars and houses, or even the cost of my plane tickets. A few younger men wanted to know about work in America or how they could learn English. Dinara and I laughed because almost every person we met wanted to know my age, whether I was married and whether I had children. Some folks asked about politics, but I said that was a subject better left to the politicians. We all agreed that the scenery to the right and to the left was stunning and that clean water is a very good thing.
Source: Chicoer
