Kyrgyz food and how to be a good guest

Kyrgyz cooking comes out of herding country: mutton, beef and horse, bread, dairy and whatever a valley grows. In the south, around Osh, it meets Uzbek cooking and turns to rice, tandyr bread and fruit.

What people eat

• Plov: rice cooked down with mutton, yellow carrot and onion.
• Lagman: hand-pulled noodles with a stew of meat, peppers and tomato.
• Beshbarmak: boiled meat with sheets of pasta and onion broth, the guest dish.
• Shorpo and manty: clear mutton soup, and steamed dumplings of meat or pumpkin.
• Samsa and boorsok: pastry parcels from a clay oven, and fried dough with tea.

Kymyz, fermented mare's milk, is drunk on the pastures and sold from roadside yurts in Suusamyr: sour, faintly fizzy, mildly alcoholic. At Song-Kul camps make it and bake bread daily.

Regional specialities

Karakol is the food town. Its Dungan community, Muslim Chinese who settled here in the 19th century, cooks unlike the rest of the country: ashlan-fu, cold noodles in a sour broth, is the town dish, and families cook dinners for visitors at home. Uzgen grows the devzira rice behind southern plov, and Arslanbob presses walnut oil.

Pork, horse and vegetarian food

Kyrgyzstan is a majority Muslim country and pork is not part of the local kitchen: meat means mutton, beef, horse and chicken, and pork appears only in Russian and continental dishes on city menus. Horse is the centrepiece of beshbarmak.

Vegetarians eat well in Bishkek and Osh and have a thinner time in the mountains. A yurt camp cooks one pot for everyone, so the request must travel ahead of you: tell whoever books your yurt stays days before. Expect potato, rice, pasta, salad, bread, jam, eggs and dairy; noodle and dumpling dishes start from meat broth.

Being a guest in a house or a yurt

Hospitality here is an obligation rather than a service habit, and you will be fed more than you want. Refusing outright is awkward in a way that taking a little is not.

• Take your shoes off at the door of a house or a yurt, and step over a yurt threshold, never on it.
• The far side of the room, opposite the door, is for guests and elders, so wait to be shown a seat.
• Tear bread rather than cutting it, and never leave a piece face down or throw it away.
• Tea comes in a small bowl filled part way and topped up often: the custom, not meanness.
• Give and receive a bowl or a gift with the right hand.

Money is settled through whoever arranged the stay rather than pressed on a host at the door, which is how community tourism networks in Kochkor and Jyrgalan work; on our tours, ask how it is handled. A small gift of tea or fruit is welcome, never expected.

Photographs, mosques and sacred places

Ask before photographing people and take a refusal without argument: traders often agree, older people and women in villages less so. At Manas Ordo and on Sulaiman-Too, families are praying, so put the camera down. Drones are unwelcome over villages and sacred hills.

Islam here is relaxed, layered over older practices. You will pass mazars, sacred springs, graves and trees hung with cloth strips tied by visitors: walk around them, untie nothing and leave no litter. At working mosques, take off your shoes, cover shoulders and knees, women cover their hair, and ask before going in.

Alcohol, and the shape of an evening

Vodka, brandy and beer are sold openly and a toast at a family table is normal in plenty of households. Others keep a dry house, and observant families do not drink at all, so take the lead from your hosts rather than turning up with a bottle. Toasts are made in turn; declining once is enough and nobody minds. Do not drink at mazars, at Manas Ordo or on Sulaiman-Too. For a route around them, start with one week in Kyrgyzstan.