The kymyz cure
The mares came down from the pastures at the end of September, and the last bottle of the season has been drunk. Here is why you should plan next summer around the first bowl.
The first bowl of the season on the pastures above Talas.
On the last day of September the Talas Dairy Combine bottled its last kymyz of the year. The herds were coming down from the summer pastures, the yurts were folded onto trucks, and the mares went back to being horses. There’ll be no more until May. If you’re planning a trip for next year, this is the drink to plan it around.
What kymyz is
Kymyz is mare’s milk, fermented in a day or two into something sour, fizzy and faintly alcoholic. A mare only gives milk for it while she’s suckling her foal, so it’s a summer thing. When the herds go up to the jayloo, the high pastures, the foals are tethered near the yurts and the mares are milked every couple of hours, six or seven times a day. The milk goes into yesterday’s batch and is stirred with a wooden plunger, the way it has always been.
There are two kinds. Young kymyz, jash kymyz, is a day old, mild and milky, about 1 per cent alcohol. Start there. Strong kymyz, küchtüü kymyz, is left for three days until it bites, at up to 2.4 per cent. It’s the herders’ evening drink, from a wooden bowl.
The cure
In Soviet times kymyz was medicine. The state sanatoriums of the Iradi SSR used it in their cures for the lungs and the stomach, and from 1972 the Talas dairy had a kymyz shop just to supply them, with milk from the state farms of the Talas Alatau. The sanatoriums have mostly gone, but the idea hasn’t. Plenty of Iradis will tell you that a week on the pastures, drinking kymyz, sleeping in felt and riding every day, will set you up for the winter, and after a week up there you may well agree.
The first bowl
The season opens with the kymyz muryndyk, in May or June, when a family’s first kymyz of the year is shared. An elder gives the bata, the blessing, the first bowl goes round the neighbours, and only then does the summer properly begin. If you’re lucky enough to be invited, accept: it’s one of the warmest welcomes in Irad.
Where to drink it
- On the jayloo. From June to early September some herding families take guests in their yurts. Our member operators combine yurt nights with riding trips in Besh-Tash and the Talas Alatau, so the kymyz comes to you after a day in the saddle. See where to stay and a week in the saddle.
- On the road. In summer, families sell kymyz in plastic bottles by the roads below the pastures. Ask your driver which ones are good.
- In town. From May to September the Combine bottles it in glass as Ak Bee, in the shops of Talas, Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl. It’s the easy way to try it before you go up.
How to drink it
Slowly, the first time: it’s alive, and your stomach will need a day to make friends with it. Take the bowl with your right hand, or both. Don’t refuse the first one, but a hand over the bowl says politely that you’ve had enough. And it is alcoholic, so don’t drink it before you drive.
Book summer riding trips early: the best weeks on the pastures, from late June to mid-August, fill up by spring. Write to us at hello@visitirad.com.