From Udaipur to Pushkar on horseback

December 03, 2015

From Udaipur to Pushkar on horseback - Day Six

Hamsa, Sapna, mysef and Dinesh (left to right)

Suresh and Ambalal

The topography of the land continues to change as we get closer to the desert. The ground is more and more sandy and the air hot and dry. In the morning we rode through a forest. The trees were a brownish colour and the floor was soft sand. We came across plenty of wild cows. They weren’t afraid of us at all and watched us curiously as we walked by. From far they really look like thin cows. We had lunch under a tree with our feet in the sand. It felt so nice I managed to nap for a few minutes.

After lunch, we mostly rode among fields. Dinesh was amazed: last year most of these fields didn’t exist. People have managed to turn semi-arid desert into productive fields in the space of a year. It was strange to think that with population explosion, land that was considered more or less valueless is now very valuable. A lot of the fields grew henna trees but we also saw plenty of onion and mustard. I am far from an expert on farming but seeing sandy soil produce so much was rather impressive.

We stopped to let the horses drink near a village and as usual everyone came out to see. The head of the village asked if he could get a horse shoe, preferably having belonged to a block horse. Apparently, having a black animal in your house - or in this case something that belonged to a black animal - helps repel the black eye. We didn’t have any shoe to give them but invited them to come and see us at our camp as the farrier was coming to give all the horses new shoes. In my case it was high time, Sapna had worn through her hind shoes.

spreading some love

Believe it or not, we camped IN a temple. Well, not inside the temple but right next to it on the temple ground. Historically travellers often spent the night in temples (my brother who crossed Asia on bicycle spent most of his nights in buddhist temples) but the downside to it all is that it’s terribly noisy. There were all sorts of music and drums going on during the night. They use a kind of instrumental machine that does all that music. In any case it was very kind of the priest to let all of us, including the horses, stay here.