How the idea came about

In winter of 2005 I was staying in a village near Udaipur in Rajasthan working at an animal hospital, I wasn't in the best place in my head so I spent a year out there trying to figure out what to do with my life. That winter I wanted to see the Pushkar ka Mela, an infamous camel fair also with a few thousand cattle and horses for sale. My only problem was that I had a horse, Rani, to take care of. Then I thought, "why not ride there?" It seemed a crazy idea but then the more I mentioned it to my Indian friends the more do-able it seemed. So Rani and I set off, ill prepared and not really that sure of what we were doing or where we were going. After a week we had covered over half the distance but Rani's shoes had completely worn down, I had no way of getting new shoes and I didn't have any contacts for the remaining 150 to 200kms that we had left. Rani and I got a lift in a truck the rest of the way and had a great time camping out on the fair grounds for a week. The memories of that journey gave me my first taste of something new. A horse became not a fancy possession to be locked in a stable and trotted in 20 metre circles, instead a horse is a travelling companion who can take me to the shop when I run out of sugar, run errands with me, share my sense of fun and adventure and most importantly make it possible to travel down one road and not turn around half way through the day.

Since that journey I stayed for six months at a good friend's horse ranch. He offered to let my train some of his young horses and I fell head over heels in love with Chandra, then two, who is a nephew of Rani's. He has the most gentle and sensitive temperament I've ever seen. Before leaving India I made Dinesh promise not to sell him and to keep him for me to buy after I graduate.

Just before relocating to London I contracted atypical pneumonia in Ireland. I spent a week in hospital delirious with pain and hallucinating from my fever. In the worst moment of the worst pain all I could think then was that I had to hang on because if I didn't who would ride Chandra? Since then I am obsessed with the idea of riding through Rajasthan with Chandra. I went out there this summer and finally bought him, the funny Marwari colt who (according to the farm workers) gets very excited when he hears my voice on speakerphone.

Returning to live in London, the heart of the developed, office-centred and consumerist Europe has been a huge wake up call for me. A pub charges £3.80 for a pint of beer while that amount would take some of my friends four days of work to earn. I see horses where I ride given the most insanely luxurious lifestyles and left to run round fields full of fresh grass but still they know every bridle path too well, it's only when they get into a horse box that they really wake up. After I graduate with my philosophy degree this year I am returning to Udaipur and Chandra and shall ride the full distance to Pushkar this time. I have some farriers mobile numbers and they can come meet me, I now speak fluent Hindi and my knowledge of feeding, veterinary care, training and my general resourcefulness have come on in leaps and bounds in the last two years. I'm going to raise money for the Tree of Life for Animals (http://tolfa.org.uk/) through this ride. Quite fittingly they had literally just opened two years ago when I visited the hospital in Pushkar. It may seem strange to help animals in a country with so many people living in poverty but what is hard to understand from the outside is that people are animals and in India they depend on each other so much.

India has the highest death rate from rabies in the world and this is spread by street dogs for the most part. The tree of life's dog sterilization program is well documented as being the most effective method of population control and dogs are vaccinated while in the hospital. I saw so many farms in the Pali district where farmers had no access to the most basic veterinary care and so a maggot infested wound is a death sentence for a water buffalo. It's a heavy loss for a poor farmer to lose one of his milk providing buffalo. In an animal shelter such as the tree of life these wounds are easily cleared up in a matter of weeks.

April 2008

Caitriona wrote to The Guild with an update:

Just letting you know that I've updated my fundraising website and added some photos and a blog section. I bought my ticket so will be flying out to Delhi on September 24th, which gives Chandra and me a month to get fit and prepare! In the meantime I'm chipping away at my degree here in London.

http://www.givemeaning.com/proposal/Pushkar2008

http://tolfa.org.uk/articles/2007/09/26/my-ride-for-the-tree-of-life-for-animals/#more-95

To learn more about Marwari horses, please click here.

We wish you the best of luck, Caitriona!

Please click here to go to Caitriona's website.

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