Kyrgyzstan, the land of hospitality. A place where simply walking down the street with a smile earns you invitations into people’s homes for shared meals and accommodation. A place where nobody worries that you might be a psycho killer or a robber because you’re a guest to their country. A place where money is lacking but natural resources and centuries of nomadic knowledge provide food for everyone, especially in the summer months.
Hospitality–defined by Webster as “generous and friendly treatment of visitors and guests”–generally increases the further you get from tourist hubs. Overall, people in less touristy areas are more excited to see someone new and more keen to give a good impression of their region. Kyrgyzstan, being just about as geographically far as you can get from any popular tourist destinations, exceeds in this front. This is not only due to its location, though, but also has to do with long-standing traditions, culture, religion, and national pride.
After spending the previous four months in Georgia and Turkey, I was already quite accustomed to random acts of generosity, but the Kyrgyz really took it to the next level. The hospitality we experienced ranged from random people asking us if we’d like to have a cup of tea with them (which always included a huge amount of bread, homemade jam from the fruit trees, and homemade butter and yogurt from their cows) to offering us a place to sleep for the night and refusing to let us stop eating–something that we could only categorize as “aggressive hospitality”. There were times when we literally had to hide from people because we were so full from the last family who invited us in that our stomachs hurt, and nobody would take “no thanks” for an answer, but there were also times when we left a house feeling as if we had just met the greatest people in the world.
Every household is prepared for guests, so inviting us in was no problem. It’s extremely common for family members to visit from other villages, so there is always extra bedding waiting to be used. Many village houses are just two rooms with no furniture. The whole family (minimum 6 people) sleeps on handmade sheep’s wool mattresses–tushuks–laid out on the floor every night, and piles them up in the morning to make space. Meals are eaten on a table if there is one, or if not then on a large scarf laid out on the floor. There are rarely chairs, only the tushuks to sit on. When invited to stay for the night, we were always given our own room no matter how much we told them it wasn’t necessary, while the family all slept in the other room(s). Every time we were asked if we want our mattresses together or separate, and normally our answer “together” was met by surprise, even though we told everyone that we’re married.
The reason for this extreme hospitality varied from one household to another. Some did it because they were curious and wanted to learn more about us, others did it because they wanted to give foreigners a good impression of their country, others did it because they believe that feeding people will get them a golden ticket to heaven, and yet others did it because they just liked to help out and believe in a world where everybody is kind to each other.
We were hosted by a range of people from the extremely poor to the wealthy, the super religious to the agnostic, the very pushy to the laid back, and our experiences also ranged from extremely uncomfortable to giving us a huge amount of faith in humanity. The least pleasant hospitality (if you can call it that) we experienced was in a small mountain village in Alay, Southern Kyrgyzstan. It’s always an extremely uncomfortable situation when somebody does something nice for you and then is so pushy that you cannot decline their further unwanted generosity. After our second meal of the morning, we told our hosts that we were too full and couldn’t eat more, and should really get back on the road, but they wouldn’t take that for an answer. “We’re going to cook more, you must eat, it’s for you” they replied, as they filled up another bowl of sheep lard and potatoes. This went on for two more meals until we were well beyond the point of stomach aches and diarrhea.
It’s difficult to know how to act in this situation, straddling the line between incredible discomfort and being rude to the family that gave us so much (declining their food is interpreted as telling them they’re terrible cooks). How do you politely decline a gift that you don’t want without offending the giver, in a country where you don’t really understand the gift giving culture? Finally we got away after being dragged around the town on a “tour” with a guy who asked us how we liked his tour every 5 minutes while chewing tobacco like a maniac, spitting on the ground every few seconds, and constantly boasting about how great of a Muslim he is. We spent the next few days eating rice and buckwheat over a campfire, pretending we didn’t understand any Russian whenever somebody talked to us, and went through about 12 rolls of toilet paper.
Not every experience was unpleasant, though, and, in fact, the majority of our experiences with Kyrgyz hospitality were incredible. The food we were given was almost always homegrown and delicious. Many people we met were the type of really wonderful people who honestly wish for the best for everyone. One family picked us up while hitchhiking and took us out to lunch, invited us to their home and then took us on a hike to a waterfall and cooked us dinner. We offered to help them with some farm work and talk to their kids in English and they were so overjoyed about this that they invited us to stay for a month. Another family pulled over randomly when they saw me walking down the road alone, the man told me his wife is at home cooking a special meal, and asked me if I would join them.
It wasn’t just families, even businesses were incredibly generous to us. Some guys who own a jeep tour company saw us hiking, stopped to say hi, and after a tea asked us if we want to come with them to scout the road conditions at 4,000m in their jeep. Then they took us to their dacha (vacation home) outside of Bishkek for a barbeque and let us stay there for a couple nights. Check out Travel Land Kyrgyzstan here.
I emailed a family-run tour company in Karakol to ask if I could volunteer for them on ski touring trips, but since they were already finished skiing for the season, they offered us a room in their guesthouse for a few nights to practice English with the crew instead. They were the most amazingly generous family who knew just about everything there is to know about Kyrgyzstan, and even cooked several meals for us so that we could experience the traditional cuisine. Check out Kyrgyz Tours here.
We tried to get hiking permits from a tour operator in Batken, southern Kyrgyzstan, but when the police wouldn’t grant him the permits in time, he offered us a place to stay in his home instead, and invited us for huge bowls of kymyz, Kyrgyzstan’s famous fermented horse milk. Check out Batken Travel Service here.
It was a wonderful surprise to see these people whose jobs are to make profits from tourists be so kind to us simply because they’re good people. This was the most unique thing about Kyrgyz hospitality–nowhere else in the world had we been treated like friends by tourist agencies, previously we were always treated as customers.
[Note that not all tourist agencies in Kyrgyzstan were so generous. There were some – CBT Sary Moghul for example – who seemed to be fueled by embezzlement. The three listed in this article were amazing, though, and I highly recommend contacting them if you’re planning a trip to Kyrgyzstan! Indy Guide is also an incredible resource to connect with local tour providers all over Central Asia and Mongolia.]
