Sunday, February 25, 2007

horse riding in the desert

Location: Cairo (a late post, but here nevertheless)

My back is aching. My bum is aching. Sitting on anything but the living room couch is proving to be agonizing. And the pain has decided to kick in 48 hours after we came back from my first ever venture into horse-riding.

Now I’ve always had this romantic idea of horse-riding. I think it was the SE Hinton books I read as a teenager, I always thought I had a perky little Texan lass in me (I once owned a black cowboy hat which I would proudly wore around Singapore) and I felt that in some past life, I was prone to riding around on my black stallion with my long braid of hair flying behind me as I made my equestrian slave do my bidding.

Right.

So 2 mornings ago, I organized a trip that goddamn, even SOUNDED romantic. Horse-riding by the Pyramids at the break of dawn. Knowing my track record, getting up at 4.30am was just not going to happen. So I stayed up all night instead. (It worked, so I must remember this for next time). 5 of us took a taxi to Haram Rd and met up with Karim and his brother, our hosts for the morning.

When we got to the stables, we first had to wake the stable owner guy up. Then we waited for him to wake some other dude up for the stable keys. All with a lot of banging and calling out. Then, I have no idea, I think they were trying to wake the horses up or something, because we had to wait a goddman long time for them to show up. I was starting to worry we were gonna miss out on the sunrise, which would kinda supremely suck, given the circumstances we went through to get there at such a time.

So finally the horses came. We got on them. Because me and Natasha were first-timers, our horses were given the privilege of being led ahead by some dude on a donkey. A donkey. The former-texan-hottie-in-a-past-life in me just couldn’t bear the shame of it. Just because we were the only girls, we were made to proceed staring into a donkeys behind. Some of the other guys were first timers too, but nooo they got to ride alone.

So anyway, we started a slow gallop to the desert. Reaching the desert, we started going a little faster, but frankly speaking, 2 horses and a donkey tethered together really do not a heart stopping ride make. I watched as the guys flew into the desert until I could see them no more. I decided I’d had enough and told the donkey dude to let me free. I did what the other guys did, I kicked my horse on the side. Nothing. I kicked harder. Nothing. I kicked until my shins hurt but all it did was make my animal pass some gas. And boy did these big boys know how to fart. Yes, I’m talking about the horses.

Turns out these dumbass horses don’t listen to anyone but the stable guy. And he was up ahead with the guys. So I continued on my slow pace of death, as by now both Natasha and I were freezing our arses off. It’s winter, it’s dawn, it’s the desert. It is NOT horse-riding climate. We moaned and teeth-chattered and trotted along all the way until we caught up with the guys at this little middle-of nowehere-tea stand. Stood there clutching my hot cup of tea and cursing myself for even coming on this goddamn outing. It was proving more torturous than any fun. I just wanted to head back asap.

This time though, before getting back on our horses, I chose to change mine. I got on someone elses horse hoping it would like me a bit better than my first one. We started on our way back. To my pleasant surprise, my horse started galloping faster along with the other horses. And then suddenly, it starts competing with Miguel’s horse. At this point, it ceased being a ‘gallop’, I suddenly realized we were FLYING across the desert. I was TERRIFIED. I was also on one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I have ever experienced. There was no stopping this horse. He was totally out of my control. I was literally hanging on for dear life, at some points one hand grabbing on to the saddle and the other hand trying to keep my woolly from flying off my head. I was a HOLLERING. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut – if you were a bystander in that desert, all you would’ve seen was a black blur shooting from one side of the desert to the other, with an accompanied “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” My ass was smacking violently up and down on the saddle but I paid no attention. Near the end we were approaching this wall at the end of the desert, at like 200 miles an hour or some shit, and then I realized, alright I need to stop this rabid animal. I jerked on the reins until it finally stopped like 2 feet away from the walls……as we slowed down, I looked around for the others and found a horse galloping away near me, but with noone on it. I looked around for the accompanying human being, perhaps on the ground, but saw nothing (turns out it was Mustafa who fell off his horse hahahaha).

Now if this was a negative post…..I would’ve ended off with the following: And because of the fog, we couldn’t even see the bloody Pyramids! Grr…

But actually…in the end, I came off much happier than when I first started off. I smelt a little like horse poo, and my fingers were blue, but hell – I’d been to the other side, and I wasn’t comin back!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I am glad u enjoyed it..... i guess. :D see u in Egypt soon.

Anonymous said...

i wanna go horseriding in the desert now.

Anonymous said...

It was a lifetime experience. LoK