tongba time

so i am sick, tired, and, since the gas heater in my office is producing more odor than warmth, increasingly unable to type as my fingers seize up with the cold and i go lightheaded from the fumes.

however, i am warmed by the discovery of this article, "20 iconic and unusual hot drinks from around the world", and the realization that it has become the most magical time of the year in kathmandu. yes, the pollution gets worse every day there's no rain (aka until monsoon starts again in june). yes, we are already facing electricity and water shortages. yes, you have to sleep with two comforters and your sleeping bag, because there's no way to heat the brick and concrete bunkers in which we live.

 my own bunker in happier (warmer) times. we had about 6 people living in 3 rooms 

during a one-week bandh, not to mention the friends who live nearby and wandered 

over for meals, etc. this is when our house got nicknamed "the commune". 

i won't pretend for a second that i don't love it.

that said...the onset of winter means that it's TONGBA TIME. the list in the article above includes the two kinds of tea served in nepal, the chiya of the plains and hill folks (like masala chai in india), and the butter tea of the high mountain and tibetan ethnic groups (which tastes like the salted inside of a yak...in a good way). but no tongba, which is a tragedy.

when my brother came to visit last year (almost exactly a year ago, actually) for a month, he and i discovered tongba together. we first had some when we went out to see my friend annie, who lived in boudha, an area of town dominated by the tibetan community (which is unusual, most parts of the city aren't really very ethnically segregated, with maybe a couple of exceptions). dave and i were pretty much instantly addicted, and made a habit of going a few times a week to the hole in the wall joint right near our place (called "separate choice kitchen", which never ceases to please me) to grab some after work.

my brother's first taste of tongba.

so what is tongba? you might rightly ask, having read this far. well. tongba is a warm, lightly alcoholic beverage served throughout eastern nepal. it's made of fermented millet grains, which are steeped in hot water in a wooden vessel, and sipped through a perforated metal straw in a process not unlike drinking mate. the wooden vessel (also satisfying to warm your hands on) will be refilled with boiling water until the grains have lost all their flavor (usually about three or four times). it has a sort of sour, grassy, and slightly nutty taste, and is very warming, but even after three hefty refills (or even a second serving of millet), you don't feel unpleasantly drunk, and never wake up with a hangover. basically, it's the ultimate session brew for the long winter nights in nepal, when the lack of electricity makes your best choice sitting around with friends, trying to stay warm, and shooting the breeze. when my brother visited, it was the first time we had lived together, independently from the parents, as (something resembling) adults. it was both really fun and a really interesting time in our relationship, and we did a lot of that interpersonal re-negotiation with tongba in hand.

anyway, i'll spare you (for now) the tongba-inspired, tired, proust-ian reflections on the passage of time and my life in nepal...but i will advise you to try to find a nepali/tibetan grocery or restaurant and try some if you can. i haven't had my first serving this winter, but i'll definitely be going for it this week. it's just that time of year.

update: wikipedia tells me tongba refers to the vessel, not the drink. could be, although i've never heard it distinguished that way.