Chandra rests before the drama begins...

Chandra rests before the drama begins...
Originally uploaded by caitrionaoleary

And so we reached Bhotaliya, well a temple with a load of chai shops and the usual village madman wandering about shouting. Foucault would have a field day watching the insane in India. The attitude is not one of medicalisation, that the “mad” must be hospitalised and treated, it’s accepted as normal; “half mind” or “mind crack” are used to describe the babbling lunatics of whom there is always at least one in each village. In this one he herded cattle, and danced and ranted and sang nonsense. As long as he stayed away from my horse I didn’t care. So I tied Chandra to a tree behind the shops. There were walls on either side and at the back and so only a narrow entrance, it seemed secluded and peaceful. I was in too much pain to do anything, to put it in context: my leg had swollen from ankle to knee and was more painful than the two I had operated on here, for which I was given morphine and all I had there was some ibuprofen. My boyfriend John called from England and managed to convince me that my stubborn pride in wanting to ride the remaining 60kms to Govindgargh was not worth risking losing a leg to infection over. So I arranged for a pick up truck as I couldn’t ride anymore, it was to be three hours so I sat and drank more chai. A local came by who owns a mare, then we went away. An hour later a mare in heat came trotting down the road.