Finished with 8 days of horseback riding across the Mongolian Steppe for hours at a time. Quite an experience! Had a strong horse that always wanted to be out front and had to beat everybody at galloping and running!!! Very exhilarating to be flying across the grassland on a 1200 pound horse holding on with only your legs, gripping the reins, wacking the horse's back end with my hat and yelling "Choo" to get him going as fast as possible!!!!
But apparently my (the horse's?) aggressive riding style was out of sync with the normal routine of the operator of the ride. They kept admonishing me to go slower because I might "injure" the horse!!!??? I ignored them and showed them they were completely wrong!!! The horse finished the last day as strong as the first and was never beaten by any of the other (much younger) riders.
I did have a couple of incidents and have blisters on my fingers, a gouge in my forehead and "riding" sores...but nothing unexpected after more than week of hard riding. Some of it in the pouring rain. But mostly nice days with cool breezes and partly sunny days. The festival itself was very small townish but so horse-centered that nothing else really mattered but being with a horse all day and have it the "in" thing to do!
So I accomplished all my horse-riding goals in Mongolia with room to spare. No falls, no broken bones and lots of "speeding across the steppe" memories!
