Terelj Trip: Sunday = Horse Riding

On Sunday our plan was to ride horses: in Mongolian fashion we had no idea where these horses would come from. Our ger camp wanted a ridiculous rate to get us (a group of 12 or so) 6 horses; so instead we set off walking down the main road in search of locals willing to lend us their horses in return for some cash. We spotted a group of what was hopefully horses in the distance and set off walking, as we neared two large buses pulled up, filled with school children...they also wanted to ride horses. This led to another typical Mongolian experience - hanging around, waiting...eventually the kids had had enough and it was our turn!

I don't much care for controlling animals, like horses, give me a motorbike anyday! But...these guys are pretty small...everyone else was doing it, how hard could it be..

I got up and expected to be led by one of the horse owners, with the group of riding-newbies. After a minute or so, the owner who was leading me had had enough and reckoned I could go it alone. This was certainly more interesting than being lead at the slowest pace possible - my horse believed he should be in front, and that he should choose when to speed up and slow down. This was all fine in the huge open area we were just roaming straight ahead on - but not when we needed to make a left turn across a road!

Straight ahead was home for the horse, he had a glance around and could see that we were well ahead of any of the owners, so he decided he would attempt to sneak home. It seemed he forgot I was on top of him - no amount of yanking the reigns, yelling "stop", trying "zogsora" (mongolian for stop) would get him to stop, let alone turn left. Thankfully he wasn't moving terribly fast, eventually my owner caught up and lead the rogue horse in the right direction.

Heading up the road home the owner and another mate were now riding one of the horses, cheekily supposing I hadn't had quite enough fun for one day they came up alongside me and got the whip onto my horse, getting us all to travel along at a fantastic pace - only for 250m or so...it was great!