Delicious
After a month in Central Asia I was finally eating something delicious, and of course it came the day before I would have to stop eating entirely.
In years past I'd spent Yom Kippur at home in Sydney or, as was the case last year, I celebrated the holiday overseas but still in a Jewish community. On this Day of Atonement, though, those options were not available.
And so I decided I'd spend the day by the water. This was a rare privilege in the land-locked locales of Central Asia. Thousands of miles from the ocean, seeing a body of water larger than an overflowing bathtub was a rare luxury.
Lake Issyk-Kul, as every tourist brochure will tell you, is the second largest alpine lake in the world. A feat no one really seemed to care about. A silver medal in the race no one was watching. At fifteen-hundred metres above sea level (a measure which seems unhelpful given that most people in this region have never seen the sea), in mid-October the temperature around the lake is a little cooler than low-lying Bishkek. Surrounding the lake are rows of mountains with snowy peaks for as far as the eye can see.
Cholpon-Ata, a resort town on the north coast of the lake, was the place I'd spend a day fasting and asking myself, in my annual tradition, what the heck not eating and drinking has to do with repenting for people I called a dickhead in the last year. Staring into the reflective waters of the lake I'd seek my own spiritual reflection. Amongst nature's tranquilly I'd regain my own sense of self and feel revitalised going into the new religious year. It all seemed so apt.
When I arrived in town I revised my pre-classification of Cholpon-Ata as an outdoor day-spa crossed with a Jerusalem of the east. Sure, the lake was expansive and clear and the town was very close to the water's edge. But it was a little dead. And cold. The increase in altitude had decreased the temperature. Winds were howling down from nearby valleys and made the lake feel less pristine. I tried reading a book at the water's edge but barely lasted four pages before deciding to turn back.
Many of the lakeside hotels frequented by Kazakh and Russian tourists were already closed for the season, making the place feel eerily abandoned. On top of that, a lot of the places to eat were closed or far away from the guesthouse I'd chosen near the bus station.
So I headed to the supermarket for snacks. With the start of the fast approaching, they weren't going to be snacks I intended to eat for very long. But I had not eaten lunch or much food at all that day. And it was three o'clock already. Not eating much, I'm told, is not particularly advisable before going into a period of not-eating. In fact, some would suggest that eating quite a bit before not-eating is a good idea before not-eating.
So I gathered my supermarket haul and prepared to shovel large quantities of the food into me at my room in the guesthouse. Among the chips, biscuits and chocolate I intended to eat in the next half-hour was a bag of seemingly innocuous children's cereal. My next breakfast was thirty-six hours away but I had still bought the breakfast item. Maybe it was because of the exciting, green-and-red cartoon dinosaur on the packaging, maybe it was because of a childhood seldom filled with sugary cereal, maybe it was divine intervention. Whatever it was, something had drawn me to the packet of chocolate pillow-shaped cereal that was probably more sugar-filled than eating a bowl of Mars bars with milk.
I attempted to open the packet so that it could be resealed but a small tear caused much of the cereal to spill out. Maybe it was a sign of things to come. I reached in amongst the overflowing bounty and removed a single brown pillow and placed it on my tongue. Its taste was pure bliss. It was like I was tasting for the first time. Not just sweet, not just chocolatey, but also with a delicate hint of saltiness. A salinity that enhanced the deep chocolate notes that made waves over my palate. Biting down, the wheaten chocolate exterior gave way to a smooth chocolate centre. Chocolate two ways, if you will.
I knew from that moment that I was a goner. Bite after bite, handful after handful, before long I had consumed most of the packet. Milk might have made things better. Or worse. I didn't have the time or the milk or the bowl to find out. It was like true love, a pining to make the most out of this and every moment.
Three-quarters of the way through the cereal packet I realised dinner would need to happen in the next hour. But I didn't want dinner. I was full on happiness and chocolate cereal. But I knew that this was a battle I would not win with myself. Not eating lunch or an actual dinner was definitely not the thing to do before not-eating for a day.
So, shortly after my cereal-shovelling frenzy, I waddled my way to the one restaurant nearby for an early meal before sunset. I force fed myself noodles as my stomach sought to reject any further nourishment. I stood over the shower just before the fast began, my body convulsing at the sheer quantity of food I had ingested in such a short period of time.
And all the while the last quarter of the cereal packet sat on the hotel room table. The eyes of the green-and-red cartoon dinosaur stared at me for the next twenty-five hours, calling out to complete the job I had so eagerly begun.
This post was uploaded two weeks late due to a site blocking issue in Kazhakstan.
