The final day

What seemed like an enclosed place
Originally uploaded by caitrionaoleary

After nine days I had arrived in Raipur, which in itself was a saga. As predicted, Chandra's shoes had worn out. Beawar city was two days ride away and Raipur was on the way. The locals seemed convinced that there was a farrier in Raipur, which was preferable as it is a smaller city and involved less of a detour. My host from Buda Guda village had given me a fantastic route of quiet tracks avoiding the main roads to Raipur. Indeed the first ten kms were sandy tracks, the villages were far apart and there were hardly any people. But then we came upon roads that were tarmac, fresh and soft, oh yes madam you are very lucky this is new road, why only three days ago it was a horrible dirt track, isn’t’ it great now it’s paved? Indeed….The curse of progress, the black tar intrudes into the wilderness bringing traffic and noise with it. And so we arrived in Raipur, by which stage Chandra had lost half of each shoe in the back, making the wear on his hooves uneven and therefore in need of swift repair to avoid having his legs held in unnatural angles. Half the town said there was no farrier, half the town said there was, no one could give a straight answer. After an hours searching I managed to find the town horse man who had shoes and tools with him. So he took off the old shoes, and then put on new ones without adjusting the hooves for uneven wear, or reshaping the shoes to fit the hoof!!!! And so one side had the bars of the shoe sticking out a good inch behind Chandra’s hoof and the other was crooked. Then to top it off he asked for more than the cost of four shoes in Udaipur just for his awful job on two.

That night Chandra got the accommodation he deserved; he stayed in the stable of the old village fort, with three gates and his own security guard. Not to mention the masses of food that he had. I meanwhile stayed with a cousin of Rafeek’s in the town. That night I took a shower and inspected my swollen right leg, at which point a little dot opened up and began pouring out lots of puss. With no decent hospital nearby all I could do was buy amoxicillin and hope I could ride the two days ride to Govindgargh where I could safely leave Chandra and then go to see a doctor in Pushkar.

The aim then on day ten was to ride 35kms to Babra, and sadly the only directions that anyone would give me for the first 7kms was to go on the highway. The highway full of heavy goods vehicles honking horns, over laden with overweight goods and driving like a blind pack of buffalos would run. Not my idea of a safe or fun time, and equally not Chandra’s as he spooked at the monsters that threatened to run us over. Whenever I asked anyone where there was a side road, or a quiet road, or any road in a general north-east direction that wasn’t the highway they thought I was mad. “madam you do one thing, you get rid ride of that horse and get a vehicle” is one of the responses that sticks in my memory for its idiocy. I saw a track goining north so I followed that, wilderness surrounded us with only the sound of the highway on the horizon annoying us for a few kms until we hit field walls and so had to return to the highway side, meaning that once I tried to get off it again all the villagers had to tell me “no you can’t go there, there’s no road! It’s jungle! Why don’t you go on the nice highway?” and they watched as if I was suicidal as I meandered my way through the wilderness. Eventually we reached Bar, an hour and a half later and we had only gone 7kms from where we had begun, my leg was throbbing, my knees were aching and Chandra was wound up and tense from all the traffic noise. The next village Bhotaliya was 7kms on.