We knocked on a yurt to buy the local drink

After the deserts, Kyrgyzstan arrived green and lush, with horses and cows on the plains and yurts scattered across them. Then we saw one close to the road with an old Mercedes parked beside it, the same car we were driving, and there was only one possible response. Go and say hello.

We needed a pretext, because admiring somebody's car felt thin. So we decided to ask for kumys, the region's traditional drink, made from fermented mare's milk. A properly respectful, culturally curious excuse to knock on a stranger's door in the middle of the steppe, and a way to finally try the stuff.

A woman opened up, and they invited us straight in without hesitation. We sat down in the middle of the yurt, and she cheerfully produced a full supply of the stuff. We arranged to buy a bottle. Then, of course, she offered us some to try, right there.

It was disgusting. There is no polite way around it. Sour, sharp, faintly fizzy, animal, and completely unlike anything my palate was prepared for. I drank it, and I smiled, and I remain grateful that we now owned an entire extra bottle of it.

That bottle then travelled around Central Asia with us for days, sloshing in the back among the tents. It resurfaced at a canyon in Kazakhstan, where it became the forfeit in a card game: whoever lost the round took a shot of kumys. Time, I can report, had done nothing whatsoever to improve it.

I would not drink it again. I would absolutely knock on that door again. The drink was an excuse, and it worked perfectly.

Knock anyway. Then decline seconds.