The bad taste abroad

I Drank the Fermented Cheese That Smelled of Rot to Please Our Hosts

My drink was an act of bravery

I’ve always been the kind of person who takes one for the team.

I’m the one who volunteered to present the group project to the class in middle school, the one who agrees to be the notetaker at work meetings.

So it should come as no surprise that I was the one who agreed to take the obligatory swig from the cup of foul-smelling fermented cheese we were offered on a mountainside outside of Leh Ladakh, India.

It all started, as you’d imagine, with a trip to India. My now-husband and I planned a trip with a mutual friend in India for the final months of our summer vacation in law school.

We agreed on a hiking trip to Northern India, where the high elevation and dry desert climate would accommodate our need to travel during the peak summer months.

Leh Ladakh, the main city in this region of India, was breathtaking.

We landed there from Delhi early in the morning, and I immediately threw up in the airport bathroom from the altitude change. Leh sits at an altitude of 3,524 meters, which is more than double the altitude of Denver.

Leh and its people don’t look like most Americans’ images of India. Leh is very close to the border with China, and most people there are ethnic Tibetans. Ornate Buddhist temples sit atop hills surrounding the buildings of the city, and the air smells heavily of incense.

We only stayed in the city of Leh for a few days before venturing out on a 3-day trek through the mountains. To do this, we hired a guide.

I don’t remember our guide’s name, but he was delightful. Our guide insisted that we needed his friend and a few donkeys to help carry our gear.

So it was me, my now-husband, our friend Spencer, our Ladakhi guide, his Ladakhi friend, and 2 donkeys making our way over a mountain in Northern India.

The hike was grueling but gorgeous.

Our boots crunched on gravel trails overlooking steep mountain drops. We passed farms and small villages strung with prayer flags. We scrambled over boulders in valleys between rolling hills.

After one of our water breaks on our second day of hiking, our guide’s smile widened as he told us where we would be stopping for lunch that day.

We would visit the village where he had grown up.

When we arrived at his village, a frenzy of activity began. Small children came running out to greet us. Older women beckoned us toward a main building, and our guide disappeared as he greeted his family and friends.

We took off our packs and sat against the stone wall of the building in the shade.

A few moments later, our guide came back out carrying a tarnished goblet in both hands, a line of his curious relatives trailing behind him.

He presented the goblet to us with pride.

Inside this goblet was an indeterminable creamy substance with the consistency of vanilla pudding. It smelled exactly like my childhood friend Holly’s mom’s Honda Civic after she left a gallon of milk in the trunk one July and forgot about it.

“Labo,” our guide explained. “It’s a delicacy here. This is special just for you. Please… try it.”

I eyed my travel companions. One of us was going to have to take a sip of this spoiled-milk cheese drink.

I looked at my now-husband, and then at our friend Spencer, and we all knew that I would be the one to gulp down this substance.

So I held that goblet up to my lips and took a sip.

It tasted how you would imagine milk to taste if you had left it outside in the sun for 15 days. It tasted a little bit like milk might taste if somebody drank it, threw it back up, and then asked you to drink that.

But I swallowed it and smiled for our hosts, thanking them for their generosity before they ran back inside to prepare the rice for lunch.

Once they were fully out of view, I reacted more honestly to my labo experience. My friend documented this reaction in the photo below.

My reaction was not meant to mock the tastes of our hosts on that mountain in India.

The fact is, I’m grossed out by even the most un-rotten tasting milk.

I have always been repulsed by milk. As a little kid, my mom forced me to drink milk each night at dinner to give me “calcium for my bones.” I remember holding my nose as I downed it as fast as I could.

Then came my work in elementary schools, where milk is just disgustingly everywhere. I still gag thinking of the “milk buckets” we had to pass around our class so that students could pour out their leftover milk before recycling the milk cartons.

That bucket of milk was the stuff of nightmares.

So my acceptance of this culinary offering from our hosts in Ladakh was more than a simple act of kindness.

It was more than an act of generosity to my travel companions, who sure as hell were not willing to accept the offering themselves.

The sip I took of that fermented cheese drink was an act of true bravery.

And I’d take that one for the team again in a heartbeat.

Thanks to Sally Prag and all the badassery at Badform for their “Bad Taste” November writing prompt.

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