Point to point by stallion in Matheran
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
42
62
Trip End
May 03, 2008
Matheran,
India
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The first hill station that we'd visited in India, Matheran seemed an appealing option as all traffic, and plastic bags, have been banned. In a country where you have to be careful not to breath in too many motor fumes or trip over the mounds of rubbish in the gutters, this seemed remarkable.
Matheran is reached by getting on a train from Mumbai for an hour and a half, then changing at Neral Junction for the 'toy train' that bumps and jolts its way far up into the hills for a further two hours. The scenery from the toy train is pretty amazing. Once you've tried to forget that the train seems to be almost overhanging some pretty precarious cliffsides at times and you could have *sworn* that bridge was reinforced with gaffer tape... It was a bit hazy so I dare say our photos won't do justice to the view, so you'll have to take our word for it that it was good - the steep forested and rocky hillsides dropping sharply away to the flat, village-speckled plains below
Roz on the toy train to Matheran
. Occasional cows. Occasional women carrying firewood. The odd little cluster of crumbling concrete uglynesses full of children and scraggy dogs that somehow you manage to forget the second they pass. Matheran itself is very, very quiet - as you'd expect from somewhere with no traffic, but not startlingly so. It sort of reminded me of a seaside town, with competing resorts advertising swimming pools and discos and little amusement arcades (ok, so the place had very intermittent electricity so they were very small, but still managed to make their beeps and pings and little tunes part of the backdrop of noise). What was surprising was the horses. They were everwhere - and they were healthy and well behaved! Possibly the first well-cared for, dare I even say loved, creatures we'd seen in India, Matheran is full of beautiful, glossy and fit horses. No sorry looking fat tourist ponies here - the horses giving rides to the viewpoints and back to the sack-of-spuds bit-overweight still-wearing-sparkly-flip-flops-and-saris Indian tourists would have put most British stables to shame.
So, even though no one was wearing a hat, we decided to arrange for a ride (figured it was less dangerous than crossing the road in Calcutta...). So, by mid afternoon we were introduced to our transport for the next three hours (yep, THREE hours...still feeling the pain....but for 700 rupees, or 10 pounds for both of us including a guide - a saving of, what, 100 pounds? on home prices, we thought we'd make the most of it!)
Toy train to Matheran
. And oh-my-god mine was a stallion. And massive. And called Bustino. And I was going to have to a) get into the saddle somehow and b) stay there.My experience of horses in Britain isn't exactly extensive, as I only really ride when far out of London and its prices, but I'm fairly confident in saying that no British stables would give a rider they didn't know a stallion to ride. Especially when we were about to go on a ride that would involve passing a lot of other horses. I thought the guy had gone mad. Hugh was on a nice girl-horsey, who was quite a bit smaller than mine and looked as if, even if she'd wanted to bolt, you could probably have a good go at keeping her in check. With mine I reckoned I had no chance.
And I was right - our guide insisted that I rode beside him all the way so that whenever we turned onto a nice straight bit of path, he could grab Bustino's bridle to stop him thundering off into the distance. Surely, you'd think, he could have just kept pace with mine if that happened, and headed us off.
But Bustino was moonlighting with the tourists. Bustino was actually a race horse. I'm not even joking. I thought our guide, Sami, was joking when he told me, but no....Bustino has even won races..
Viewpoint, Matheran
.Keeping Bustino out of full gallop took every muscle I had.
Making Bustino trot rather than canter was useless. Think I managed it once. For about 30 seconds.
So we had a marvellous ride - so unlike the plod-plod-little-trot efforts that you usually get at home. We raced around the little tracks between view points (although getting on an off to take photos got harder and harder as we got more and more tired...). The horses were beautifully behaved - Bustino was totally in love with our guide's horse and thought being required to rub-shoulders with her all the way was great (something which, at home, would normally get both horse and rider kicked). The horses didn't spook (although Sami did warn me that Bustino was afraid of cows. AFRAID OF COWS?! IN INDIA?! Thankfully there aren't many cows in Matheran - although I tensed whenever we turned a corner - but it's funny that it's not just a British horse phobia!) or try to eat all the way around or do any other naughty things. Our guide was clearly horse crazy and talked to them in Hindi all the time, checking over their legs and feet whenever we got off. We were very impressed with Indian horses.
Very impressed until we came across a large group of pack horses, who were bringing supplies up from car park into the village. Dirty and staggering under the weight of the sacks, some had eye infections, others were lame. Clearly they hadn't made the grade for tourist-come-race-horse and so were not loved at all.
