Marwari Horse

Udaipur, Rajasthan 2008

I rode a bay mare with a white star on her forehead, called Rama. Our guide, Dinesh told me to shorten the reins, but I ignored him. The horse rose up in waves under me, growing stronger, her curled ears turning back and forth like wings. I was not connected to her. He warned me again when we came to the open land under the mountains. My mare was overtaking his. I felt like she was going to run away with me. I took up the reins and tried again. The mare came under me. We joined forces. We went thundering across the ochre dust. I held her strength in my hands, singing the words that Dinesh had taught me, ‘baugh! baugh!’ Faster, faster!

The Marwari Horse is an ancient breed from 12th century India. Native ponies were mixed with Arabian horses, and Mogul horses brought from Turkmenistan. This was the Raja’s horse, of royalty, of the Divine, fast as the wind, brave in battle, with arched neck, long back, strong feet. It has a natural ambling gait, or lateral trot, meaning the horse lifts its front and back leg on the same side for each stride. It moves faster than a walk and slower than a trot, and the horse travels straight and smooth as an arrow. In this way, horse and rider are able to travel long distances without tire. I’d had this experience before with horses in Africa and Mongolia. It comes from the old breeds. The Marwari is known for its unique curled ears that can turn inward. The ears touch together forming a window or a heart.

We rode through tiny villages where children called out to us, ‘hallo, hallo…’  Dinesh led on his pregnant pinto mare,  followed by me on Rama, then the Danish couple behind me on a grey and a bay,  a French woman on a 3 year-old brown mare, and an Englishman on a skittish black mare. Water buffalo lifted their wide sloping foreheads, gazing skywards, a puppy yipped and announced our arrival, a small white calf tied in a field moaned in fear, and Dinesh called out soft sounds to calm them. Women gazed from doorways and cows stood in their pens. We swept past an old Banyan tree, with its many trailing roots growing like a forest around the mother trunk. We rode through the smoke of incense wafting from a small temple. There were blue elephants painted on walls  and an icon of a king on a white horse. Our horse hooves went softly on the narrow sand tracks in between hand-built rock walls laid with thistle or embedded with shards of coloured glass. The fields were jade green pools in the dust, or white with barley and golden wheat, and sprinklings of mustard yellow.

We rode to Badi Lake. I’d had a dream just before I came to India, about a lake like this, where women in red saris walked barefoot, and where I was shown pictures of myself, setting off on a long-distance journey. The pictures were from a book already written and they had a luminous quality, a dream within a dream. They came to life. It was as if someone was trying to show me who I was in this moment, as strong and happy and full of light. It was one of those dreams that affect you for weeks after, a dream where you feel you have contacted some deep untouched part of you. This was the lake in me, a beautiful still pool between blue hills, and a series of small white temples on the shore, with stairs leading down to the water. We learned from Dinesh that it was a man-made lake, created in the 1600’s to help the surrounding villages during a drought. It was a lake to nourish the soul.

We turned back. I rode the way I used to ride my old Quarter Horse back home, reins loose, looped in my right hand, my other hand on her side, or fingering the tassels of the saddle, at peace.

                   “The Aravalli Hills”, oil pastel on paper, Erika Connor 2008