October 2024

Have you ever heard of Beshbarmak? It means "five fingers" because nomads traditionally eat this dish with their hands. It’s essentially a stew: extremely thinly sliced mutton or horse meat, mix with dough and an onion sauce called chyk. Its the kyrgyz national dish. And we were headed to Kyrgystan. And Uzbekistan. And Kazakhstan.

We were headed there for multiple reasons. Crossing things off of bucket lists, a weird fascination with brutalism, a stray thought of “I wonder what’s on the other side” when looking at the Tian Shans from Xinjiang ten years ago, the urge to see a gazillion LADAs in their natural habitat.
Whatever the reasons, they’re all valid, so with sixty rolls of film and thirty hours of travel in our backpacks we emerged from the Manas International Airport into the rain in Bishkek, Kyrgystan.

What followed was exploring - neighborhoods at night, abandoned theaters, solar power plants, miles of markets built out of shipping containers, soviet subway chique, and oh so many LADAs.

And we found oh so many things. We found that policemen on Kazakh long distance trains don’t like cigarettes but do like extortion. That pianos kept in abandoned theaters stay surprisingly in tune over the decades. That dogs police deserted Almaty hospitals.

That people are amazing.
And that Beshbarmak tastes best with RC Cola.