600 MILES ON HORSEBACK
My short-necked chestnut mount darted left around a tuft of shrubby grass, then right, totally out of control and gaining momentum. He stumbled in the soft earth, fell to his knees and grazed his nose on the ground. Without missing a beat, he picked himself up and was off and running at breakneck speed again. It was at that moment that I realized my girth was loose. Gritting my teeth and silently cursing, I grabbed mane and clung for dear life onto my fifth horse of the day. Eventually, the ground flattened out and, by maintaining equal weight in my stirrups, I was able to keep the saddle centered. His frenetic gallop soon became an easy canter. In the fading light, I glanced at my watch and squinted at the horizon. We needed to find a place to stay for the night, and we needed to find it now.
It was the third day of the Mongol Derby, and already I had broken my GPS device, been dragged on the ground by a barely 13-hand stallion, outrun vicious dogs and found myself falling in line with an unexpected group of riding companions.
The annual Mongol Derby is known as the longest and toughest horse race on the planet for good reason. Some 40-odd competitors ride semi-wild horses over 600 miles across mountains, floodplains and open steppe, using their own navigation. Loosely based on Genghis Khan’s horse messenger network, which connected the largest contiguous land empire in history, riders swap their tired horses for fresh ones roughly
