A food trail through the ancient silk route in Kyrgyzstan leads to moveable feasts | Eye News,The Indian Express
The country's food is a testament to a borderless world that once was and what still can be.
The lantern is swinging wildly in the mule-drawn cart as it follows the light in the watch tower and nears the inn next to the bazaar….And what a bazaar it is! A colonnade of the most richly decorated shops, wrapped in velvet and satin, each pillar coated with copper and gilt, gigantic tiered lamps fed by butter, burning like the sun and fairy lamps on the parapet etching their brilliance against the night sky…. There’s everything that you thought only belonged to bahisht, gold, silver, jewels, gems, silk, brocade, carpets, porcelain, spices, even the finest horses. They say they melt gold here continuously in the mint and the king sleeps on a gilded bed of ivory and jasper. The merchants are bedecked in the finest attire as are the Turkmen, their beards waxed and curled. The plebeains retire in tents. The innkeeper refills the samovar, lines up fresh fruits from his orchard, keeps the lentil soup on the boil and stews the meat in its own juices. Meanwhile, the carpets, coats and pillows warm up the weary traveller. And he sleeps with stories, of how the tower was actually the home of a warlord’s daughter. How her father confined her there to protect her from a prophecy that she would die of a spider bite at 16 and how he cried so loudly the day she died after being bitten by a spider hidden in her fruit basket. They say his heart-breaking grief shattered the tower so that it broke into pieces. Tomorrow is another day on the road.
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Today, centuries later, we are at the same place, the tower still in a tumble, at Burana, which rests on the remains of the ancient city of Balasagun, one of the largest medieval cities in Kyrgyzstan’s Chui Valley. Along with Kashgar, now in China, Balasagun was one of the capitals of the Turk Khanate and a key town on the ancient Silk Road. This segment of the Chui Valley, situated between the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek and Lake Issyk-Kul, became one of the main political, economic and military centres in Eurasia. Archaeological excavations revealed towns and monumental constructions, dating from the fifth to the 12th centuries, reflecting the cultural and artistic traditions of many countries and peoples, from Byzantium in the West to India in the South and China in the East. It was believed that Balasagun was quite advanced for its time, with its own sewage and irrigation system and quarters for all religions.
The museum here has shards of memory — in porcelain jars, terracotta vats for storing grains and water, bronzed tools and weapons, oil lamps and hair tweezers — each documenting civilisational extremities. Till it all returns to dust, leaving just the tombstones. Strewn all over the Steppes grasslands and amid remnants of millstones, where travellers ground their wheat to make their own breads, are stone figures of the dead. Be it a warrior who had won many battles with his mighty sword, the man who held a chalice of peace, Mongols, Tartars, Persians and Chinese, Buddhist monks and women, each has left a footprint in the sands of time. But their food continues to keep us alive.
Our local host welcomes us into her yurt and serves kompot (compote), the way it was made in the days of wandering nomads, cold in summer, hot in winter. She had stewed berries, apricots, peaches, apples, rhubarb and plums in a large cauldron of water with raisins and cinnamon. Did an Indian traveller trade the cinnamon here aeons ago? After all Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang did walk these paths on his way to India.
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