The morning sky looks badly bruised, with angry welts of dark gray, as if each clap of clamorous thunder through the night was a punch.
We do a school that we found on the fly since our itinerary was supposed to have us out of the area today. We’ve done a few schools by now, so the machinery is well-oiled and people fall into a pattern of tasks. The entire school—a few hundred, lines up. They dance and sing for us, we de-worm and distribute. We have it down to a bit of a science now. Their faces remain magical.
After we get back from the school, the rain has paused this morning so we do group yoga in the wet sand. Stretching, moaning, bored and looking for something to occupy us. Each of us contributes our own stretch suggestions, and we all get a pretty good, if inexpert, stretch. The mood is lackadaisical. Some have drifted away to their tents to read or nap. Some are fidgety. The group that gathered for yoga does some cursory chakra chanting, which is quite grounding.
No matter how grounded we get, the actual ground…and we…are wet, wet, wet.
The horses are on the verge of getting ill, unused as they are to standing, unprotected, in day after day of rain. If one horse gets strangles or pneumonia, it will pass through the pack as rapidly as we humans are passing around this flu I have a touch of…but the horses probably wouldn’t survive it. As a precaution, the grooms burn a mixture of herbs in the bottom of a galvanized steel bucket that smokes terrifically, then go from horse to horse, holding it up to their muzzle, making them breathe in the healing smoke. Some seem to recognize that it is therapeutic and lower their heads to inhale calmly, others are confronted and rear away, tossing. It is fascinating, and another of many examples of how loved and well taken care of these Marwari horses are.
Bonnie—the head honcho of the horse company—arrives at our little lost outpost late in the night. He is a formidable man with a great silver moustache and aristocracy written all over him. Like the Thakur of Tantwas, Bonnie is the prince-like leader of many villages. I’m told he has about twice as many villages in his domain as the Thakur. He smiles broadly, and truly seems to enjoy providing the horse experience for foreign guests. He and Sunayna have many deep conversations. Alexander is in on some, but has to leave to drive several hours to pick up the dentist who is volunteering at the all-day medical camp we will do tomorrow (weather permitting). At some point, among dozens of variable plans, only a couple of which we are privy to, the actual one we will take has emerged. We spent the afternoon in and out of the common mess tent and our own tents, spells of torrential rain beating down and re-soaking everything, watching brilliant lightning shows across the horizon and a late afternoon double rainbow, while the powers-that-be made up their minds. After tomorrow’s medical camp, the horses will be loaded into a trailer, our wet and muddy camp will be broken, and we will be loaded into a bus for a 5-hour drive to Dundlod Fort, Bonnie’s ancestral home and the home base/stables for the horses. This is where most of the previous RRI rides have been based.
The news disappoints some of us, and thrills a few who were closer to the end of their rope than I had realized. I think I had found some sort of peace with he weather—reveling in the drama of it. I was as wet and damp as anyone (except perhaps Charlene and Curtis from their private flood) but it seems in hindsight I was less disgusted by these particular challenges than some. That’s not a better/worse judgment call…I had just not wrapped my head around the possibility that moving elsewhere was possible. I had felt a little under the weather and evidently slept through a group meeting where this was discussed, so I was surprised to learn we were moving…retreating actually.
My biggest concern was the villagers where we were expected to distribute livestock. If we abandoned this itinerary, and this entire region, what would come of their expectation and planning on receiving goats? The village leader had been told, families notified goats were forthcoming, a goatherd contacted and he had already assembled the goats for us…were we leaving them in the lurch? The group is given two options: either we can do goat distribution at a village near Dundlod where we are headed, or we can arrange for the villagers who were planning on receiving them here to simply receive them without the pomp and circumstance of us being the ones to actually hand them over in a village ceremony. I am heartened to see that we agree to get the goats to the folks who had begun to build their plans and expectations on getting them. If the livestock can truly change the lives of the recipient, I hate to think what being promised such a change, then having it ripped away would have done.
We retire mellowed, each of us with some level of relief, I’m sure. At least Bonnie and Sunayna have a plan, and decisive action will be taken. We are concerned nobody will come for the medical camp tomorrow since the weather is so extreme, but we are hopeful and dedicated to honoring that commitment, come hell or, inevitably, high water.
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