Horsing around
Torontonian’s wild ride across Mongolia,
A 34-year-old Torontonian traversed Mongolia as part of the annual Mongol Derby, involving 36 riders and 1,220 horses. The cost was the entrance fee, a year of training, and the skin on her thighs. She reflects on ‘the experience of a lifetime’ on
I thought I was hallucinating when I rode past the rotting horse carcass sprawled on a dusty trail somewhere in middle-of-nowhere Mongolia. But the swearing behind me confirmed my fellow rider Thomas had seen it, too.
We halted our horses and stared at the cracked, drying hide receding from the animal’s skull, wondering if it was disease, predators or starvation that had ended its time on Earth. Buzzing flies provided the only white noise in the stillness as Thomas Ellingsén brought out his camera to snap a picture, a permanent reminder of the fragility of life in the wild.
It was mid-afternoon of the fourth day of the Mongol Derby and the sun was frying our helmet-clad heads. The next horse station, where we could get more water and new mounts, was more than 25 kilometres away across a wide-open plain and over a small cluster of mountains.
Only10 minutes before, Ellingsén, a rider from Sweden not used to such extreme temperatures, had vomited from heat exhaustion. My other riding companion, Paddy Woods, a 52year-old Irish jockey, was flushed and gasping as we pressed on. This was the third day of 40-degree heat, and my mouth felt like it was stuffed with wadded cotton balls, my vision was blurry and my balance was going. As I calculated our speed and distance on my GPS, I let out a sob. It was going to take us at least two hours to reach our next destination.
As my horse plodded on, I closed my eyes, imagining a tall glass of ice water, then licked my cracked, sunburned lips and started laughing that I’d willingly signed up for this torture. This was the adventure I’d spent12 months preparing for, and in the moment, it didn’t seem I would finish.
The Mongol Derby is a 1,000-kilometre race across one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries. It’s the longest, toughest horse race on the planet, so I hadn’t taken preparation for it lightly. In the winter months I spent hours upon hours in the gym increasing my cardio fitness and weight training for my legs so I could endure the demands of the Derby: up to 160 kilometres of horseback riding per day. And in the six weeks before I departed for Mongolia, I took a leave of absence from my desk job and moved to southern Utah to train in the desert with an endurance-riding expert. There I rode eight to nine hours a day in
It’s the longest, toughest horse race on the planet, so I hadn’t taken preparation for it lightly
temperatures that reached 45 C.
But nothing could prepare me for the realities of this physical and mental test, where I had to navigate through the wilderness and ride 28 different, semi-wild horses for nine straight days.
When I heard about the Derby a few years ago, I filed it into my bucket list category.
It was something I wanted to do, but figured I probably would never have the resources for (the entry fee is $17,000). However, my life circumstances changed — I received a small inheritance and decided not to become a homeowner — and I realized this adventure was obtainable. With a “now-or-never” attitude I dashed off an application, sat through two interviews and was offered one of the 36 spots to compete in the race. And so began the experience of a lifetime.
I rode unfamiliar feral horses in a foreign land for 13.5 hours a day, for nine days. I was chased by wild dogs, experienced a painful fall, wept from exhaustion and nearly fainted from dehydration.
But in enduring these hardships, I left a piece of my soul in the heartland of Mongolia.
On the ninth day, just five kilometres from the finish line, I began weeping. Some of that crying was due to having no skin left on my inner thighs, but most of it was caused by the realization that my journey was winding down. I finished in the unremarkable 50th percentile, but this achievement was still more satisfying than anything else I have ever accomplished.