Meet the Horses Day 1

Today we get to meet our horses, but not until we do a 2 hour 4 wd trip. All the horses are white so if your horse has a distinguishing mark you need to take a mental note.

 The horses dont have names so we gave our horses one. Ann called hers Ghengis so it was only fitting I called mine Khan. The horses are around 14.2 hands, but these  are renowned for their stamina and endurance.  After being assigned a horse, and setting our stirrup heights we were soon under way. They almost immediately go into a trot and with shorter legs than our own horses, it is harder than we are used to. We trotted and walked for about an hour and we eventually got our rhythm. We had covered 6.5 km and we got a call to rescue. It seems both 4wd vehicles were bogged  and need to be pulled out. It was quite comical watching everyone hooked up to a rope and horse tethers trying to pull  4wd out of an axle deep bog. The horse tethers snapped and all the ladies hit the dirt. Peristance paid off and we eventually we got one out so he could pull the other out. 

With the four-wheel drives out of the bog we continued on for about another hour before stopping for lunch. Lunch stop was for about 30 minutes and then we're back on our horses again and on our way. The countryside that we rode through reminded us a lot of our trip in Kyrgyzstan.  The rolling hills turned into mountain passes with tree lined slopes. These horses continued to trot and eventually progressed into a canter. Most of the time I would post on every second trot or stand while trotting, but the canter was quite smooth and tolerable. These horses didn't give an inch they kept trotting and trotting and trotting until I couldn't trot any more. Khan didn't want to stay at the back of the pack he continually trotted and kept increasing his speed and pace until he got to the front every time. After a solid eight hours of riding and 10 hours all up for the day we found our campsite and settled in for the night. Everyone was feeling the effects of trotting for the day and Trying to find their land legs again. The Wranglers had put up our tents And we had set up our beds for the night just as the rain  started to fall. 

With our beds all set up we headed over to a small but effective mess tent and had some dinner. We also had some very much need remedy from Russia AKA vodka. A few of our riders weren't feeling too flash, and shortly after dinner I started feeling nauseous and faint. I decided the best thing to do was to go and lay down and sleep it all off and hopefully the next day I would be right as rain. I slept solidly for the whole night, and at one stage rolled over thinking that my legs had departed from my body. I have no idea what the overnight temperature was but it was pretty cool outside and we had had a bit of rain.  About 6am in the morning we could hear munching near the side of the tent. One of the horses had got off its tether and was grazing right next to our tent. I was waiting for the horse to trample the tent with us in it, but that didn't happen. I could feel my legs again so that was a positive sign and going for a walk was certainly a good way to start the day, The camp dog decided to join me, after I stood on his paw backing out of the tent. He had been running up and down the hills along the ride, so he would have covered twice the distance we did. In total we covered around 33 km on our first day so it was a bit of a shock to the system when we may ride 5 km a month if we are lucky.