Breakfast at the Abdyldaevs'
Saltanat Abdyldaeva has been feeding strangers in her courtyard since 2009. Two rooms, one oven, and a rule that nobody leaves the table hungry.
Morning in the Abdyldaev kitchen.
The kitchen is the warmest room in the house at six in the morning, and Saltanat Abdyldaeva is always in it first. By the time her guests come down, the dough for the day’s bread has been rolled, her daughter-in-law Gulmira has the first loaves out of the oven, and her grandson Adilet has filled the big kettle twice.
The Abdyldaevs’ house stands in a lane a few minutes’ walk from Bazar-i Kalan, one of two family guesthouses in the Old City. Saltanat’s late husband’s grandfather built the courtyard; the vine over the tea platform is older than anyone can say. In 2009 a cousin asked whether a pair of visiting teachers from America could stay a week. “They stayed three,” Saltanat says. “When they left, they gave our address to their friends.” Two rooms became a guesthouse, and in 2011 the family was one of the handful in the Old City who founded Konok Üy.
What breakfast looks like
Bread, first of all, broken by hand. Then thick cream, apricot jam made in July, eggs from the neighbour, a plate of cheese, and tea, black with milk in the northern way. In autumn there are walnuts from the Fergana Rim and grapes from the vine over your head. If you are leaving early for the bus to Iyık Janyl, Saltanat will wrap bread and boiled eggs in a cloth for the road without being asked.
Why people come back
“Guests ask me for the best restaurant in Talas,” says Gulmira. “I tell them, you have already found it.” She is joking, mostly. Supper is not on the price list, but nobody has ever been refused it.
Erkin, Saltanat’s son, drives for guests who want to see the valley: Jety-Kaiyng and its red pillars, the stud farm, the Kara-Suu Canyon. Adilet, who is sixteen and learning English at school, writes the family’s emails and has strong opinions about which teahouse makes the best samsa.
What the family asks of guests is simple. Take your shoes off at the door. Don’t put bread on the floor. Tell Saltanat what you saw today, because she has lived in Talas for seventy-four years and still wants to know.
If you’d like to stay with the Abdyldaevs or another family in the Old City, write to us at hello@visitirad.com with your dates, and we’ll pass it on.