Dinner in Kazakh Family or Real Eagle Hunters

• Astana City
• Eco

Arrival at the family of Eagle hunters

The family of real Eagle hunters will meet you at the village. From the first minutes of your arrival, you will be met by mischievous children in Kazakh traditional clothes. They usually wear traditional clothes during National holidays or for a celebration of birthday parties and upon the arrival of highly respected guests.

In this journey, you will immerse yourself in the life of truly traditional Kazakh family. You can now hardly meet such families in big cities like Almaty and Astana. Upon the entrance to Yurta (Kazakh traditional house), you will see women. One of whom will be cooking baursak (round fluffy kazakh pastry)  and the other one rolling kurt (a salty snack made from cottage cheese). You can join both of these women and test your skills in cooking.

Kazakh traditional dish – beshbarmak

After testing your skills in cooking you will join our big and sometimes noisy (but good-natured) kazakh family in yurta for a homemade lunch (or dinner). The main dish that will be served to you is beshbarmak. It literally translates as  “five fingers”. Because kazakh people used to and still eat it with their hands. You can also try eating beshbarmak with your hands and we must say that eating it the traditional way, it tastes even better. Kazakhs say that beshbarmak is Kazakh pasta as it mainly consists of boiled dough in square forms like lasagna and lots of horse meat (yes kazakhs eat horse meat:) and beef and onions. But before starting your main course you will need to drink shorpo – mutton broth served in bowls called kese. Drinking shorpo will help your digestion and it is simply delicious.

Typically, shorpo is served as a first course that is followed by beshbarmak and a drink called ak-serke  – shorpo spiced with kumys ( fermented horse milk) or ayran.

Kazakh archery

After lunch head of the house will invite you to join him in element such as kazakh archery. If you don’t know an art of archery he will teach you it! Also, you will hear the enchanting sounds of dombra (kazakh traditional instrument). Dombra can truly be called the queen of Kazakh instruments.

During the visit, you have a unique opportunity to see a bird grand Berkuts also called Golden eagles.

Berkut is a very rare bird and is registered in the Red Book of Kazakhstan.

Hunting with a golden eagle is one of the most unique traditions of Kazakh people. Eagle hunters are called “kusbegi” or “berkutchi”. Currently, we can meet few people with that name. These masters have an inborn gift of teaching wild bird and our head of this family is also“kusbegi.

After digesting your lunch you can try your skills in horse riding and if you don’t know how to do it, this is a perfect opportunity to learn it from our kusbegi.