Tree Of Life For Animals

An Epic Desert Ride

Caitriona raised £550 completing a horse ride across the Rajasthani desert. She donated it to us so it can be put to good use when we set up our Community Animal Healthcare Worker scheme as part of our future Rural Development plan.

Caitriona and Chandra

Caitriona’s Story

I first met Rachel when she was researching setting up TOLFA in 2004, having seen how amazing this project has been, I was keen to do something to help the cause as well as the people of India.

My Challenge?

To ride across the desert state of Rajasthan on horseback and reach Pushkar in time for the Pushkar Camel Fair. My hope was to raise enough money for TOLFA to create village education camps in the nearby area. In the dusty, dry heat, a small wound can all too quickly become a death sentence for farm animals.

After a year of preparation my flight had me land into Delhi on September 24th 2008. I had trained Chandra, a Marwari horse as a two year old so we have a very strong bond already. My anticipation at being reunited with him was immense and I wasn’t disappointed. Chandra has grown into a handsome white stallion since I last saw him a year ago and he seemed to recognize me. He’s certainly not a novice ride, but at least he has the decency to check for traffic before bucking or spooking!

The handsome Chandra

Our Route

The planned route for Chandra and I covered 500 kms across desert terrain, rocky roads and dusty tracks and back again. Chandra has a history of being head shy and India has a history of using barbaric, blood drawing bits and so it was very important for me to use the gentle bitless bridle - kindly donated by Zoe Brooks of Nurtural Horse.

In Rajasthan, there is an attitude that women and horses cannot mix and a horse must be controlled by the equivalent of barbed wire in its mouth. Preaching at people never works and so I hoped that my quiet example would at least make people question their ways. What greater challenge is there than a young stallion and no bit? Revolutions have never been made by force, only by gentle example eliciting curiosity in a few.

Converting the locals to bitless

Good Deeds

In my small bag I packed many pills of Ivermectin (a broad spectrum wormer) which I distributed at many of the host farms at which I stayed. One farm that stays in my memory is where the man brought me to his mare to show me a tapeworm hanging like a plastic thread from her rectum. He asked me what it was and so I gave all his animals a dose of Ivermectin.

The contents of the resulting manure are best left undescribed, and while this is no substitute for a regular worming program I can say that this one dose made a large difference in the quality of a few animals lives. Especially in a region where it’s common for horses to die from bot infestation.

Our Desert View

My first night’s stop was with an old friend, Daloo, who I met in 2003. He’s from the caste of those who take animal skins to the tannery and he never went to school. In spite of this he taught himself how to read in Hindi and a little English and is always reading something that is either philosophy or literature. Unfortunately the limited library of such books in Hindi has meant that he thought Stalin was a good guy and was ignorant of World War 2.

Bizarrely though we found we had both read Maxim Gorky’s novel “Mother” in the last month, a book I bought on an order to print basis because it’s that unknown. Daloo’s wife had just given birth to their third daughter, and to his credit he’s working the fields for all they are worth and letting himself go hungry so that his daughters can go to school and he insists that they shall never have an arranged marriage.

Hospitality of Indian villagers

The next few days involved turning up at friends of friends of friend’s houses and hoping to receive food and board for the night. The hospitality of Indian villagers puts us westerners to shame. A bizarre thing happened though one night, I was fast asleep and woke up, sat bolt upright at 3am and ran downstairs to a courtyard to find Chandra’s rope had broken. Being the loyal horse that he is he blinked his eyes at me and nuzzled for more food. If that were Rani (his aunt) she’d have been half way back to Udaipur.

Once into the sandy planes we found that in Rajasthan one needs no plan, whenever we were tired due to the 36-degree heat we could stop in a village by a tree and, as if by magic, armfuls of green grass would appear along with 5 invitations to spend the night. We stayed in ashrams, with Muslims, Brahmans, Rajputs and had offers from Jains. In Raipur Chandra got a 600 year old royal stable with three sets of gates and his own security guard to himself.

Journey’s End

Sadly in my fussing over my horse I neglected myself. I suffer from arthritis, as a result I am accustomed to ignoring chronic pain, it’s a part of daily life for me. As a result I didn’t notice the sore that grew on the inside of my right calf as the stirrup leather rubbed until one night in a shower I saw my leg swollen from ankle to knee and oozing pus.

Being miles from a hospital I took antibiotics but by the time we were 20kms from Raipur it became apparent that I was too ill to ride anymore, the final 75kms was completed with the help of a truck. So after a 10 day epic ride for Tree of Life for Animals my adventure came to an end having covered 400kms.

Chandra had a happy stay at TOLFA on our arrival into Pushkar. For the first time in his adult life he was free to wander and graze like a natural horse and the change in him was amazing. Gone were the rears, spooks and bucks and he became a normal horse, albeit a breathtakingly handsome one at that! I had last seen the hospital three years ago when it had just opened and still under construction, now it is a model of an ideal hospital, organized, clean and efficient.

Luckily Chandra suffered no sores, windgalls or weight loss during the whole of the ride, in fact he gained weight!

Chandra at the 2008 Pushkar Camel Fair

Read Caitriona’s Pushkar blog.