Pamil Tea

If you want to enjoy a cup of properly brewed fragrant green tea, Osh is the place to do it! Here, even in the height of summer, the locals sip hot green tea in the shade of plane-trees, sitting on a traditional tapchan.

Osh owes its tea culture to the Peshawar and Kashgar merchants who once traded tea from India and China. Different sorts of green and black tea were delivered along the Silk Road to Ferghana Valley: almura, almura shibi, lunka, kumush lunka, pari-chai, navzugur, and patta. Today in the old Osh bazaar you can still buy these varieties of tea, and then watch as the blacksmiths make huge samovars for the teahouses to serve them.

Even centuries later, green tea is still the most popular drink in Osh. The famous green tea No. 95 is still in high demand due to its mildness  and aroma. There are gourmets who like to brew a mixture of green and black tea, which is half-jokingly called “rais tea”. Osh residents sometimes add milk, melted butter, or fragrant cloves to their favorite brew.

In Osh, locals are used to drinking both black and green tea without sugar, but sometimes sweet sunflower seed halwa or yellow “navat,” crystallised sugar resembling rock candy,      is served alongside it.

By the way, local black tea is called “pamil tea.” You wouldn’t find this word in any of the dictionaries of the Turkic languages, but it has an interesting origin. More than a hundred years ago, “family tea,” as it was labelled by Russian merchants, was sold in shops. There was no letter “F” in the local language, so the term “pamil tea” was born!