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The World Ride |
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by Basha O’Reilly, FRGS “Look, here’s an interesting expedition going to Mongolia. I don’t fancy it, but you might,” said my daughter as she handed over a leaflet from the SES in 1994. She knew I yearned for the East. I had already spent time in Russia, and had dreamed of buying some of the Cossack’s legendary horses and riding them back to England. But I had one problem: I had not been able to figure out how to find an hotel every night. After all, my European parents thought that “roughing it” meant staying in a four-star hotel instead of a five-star one. So I went to Mongolia with Colonel John Blashford-Snell (JBS) and his Scientific Exploration Society (SES) team and learned how to live in a tent, drink kumis and negotiate with the natives!
That experience liberated and educated me. Thanks to JBS, it also provided me with the resolve and practical knowledge I needed to make my 2,500 mile ride from Volgograd to Suffolk on my Cossack stallion, Count Pompeii. Meanwhile, an Irish-American journalist, CuChullaine O’Reilly, who had been collecting information about equestrian travel for twenty years, was trying to contact all of the world’s equestrian explorers. He even heard about my journey from Russia to England while I was still in the saddle. CuChullaine and I corresponded by email for four months while I was still in England, and in 2000 we agreed to co-host the first international meeting of Long Riders. Five equestrian explorers from three countries met for a weekend in Kentucky Blue Grass country and talked non-stop about the secrets known only to Long Riders. Oh, and CuChullaine and I got married! During a visit to England shortly after that, we made a special trip to Expedition Base in order to meet JBS and discuss how he had used horses during his famous crossing of the Darien Gap jungle. Armed with that information, in April 2001 we launched The Long Riders' Guild website. At 2,000 pages, the LRG is now the largest repository of equestrian travel information in history and has been visited by more than a million people. In the autumn of that year we created Horse Travel Books, the publishing arm of the LRG. Most equestrian travel books had fallen out of print, even the most famous one of all, Tschiffely’s Ride, about the Swiss Long Rider Aimé Tschiffely’s astonishing journey from Buenos Aires to Washington in the 1920s. We have now published more than a hundred books in eight languages in the Long Rider Literary Collection. In 2004 we extended The Guild’s publishing mission to include non-equestrian travel books, and launched the Classic Travel Books collection. I am proud to say we have rescued dozens of travel books which were languishing in undeserved obscurity, including works by Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Scott, the royalties for which are donated to preserving the endangered huts used by those famous explorers.
In 2007 we launched The Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation, the world’s first global hippological study. Its motto is “Science, not Superstition,” and it is already the repository of an astonishing collection of equestrian wisdom and history. The Long Riders’ Guild has now grown to include every major equestrian explorer in the world and has Members in 39 countries, all of whom have made a journey on horseback of more than a thousand miles. There is no fee to join The Guild: an invitation is extended to those who qualify. Interest in equestrian travel has risen by 3,000% since The Guild’s website was launched and the LRG has supported some 130 expeditions in the past seven years. One of the most remarkable was a journey undertaken by Australian Long Rider Tim Cope who rode in the tracks of Genghis Khan from Mongolia to Hungary. The Guild is currently supporting British Long Rider Steve McCutcheon, who is riding from Delhi to Beijing, South African Long Rider Christine Henchy, who is riding from Tunisia to South Africa, and New Zealand Long Rider Ian Robinson, who has already ridden through Mongolia and Tibet, and is now riding across Afghanistan. One of the great strengths of the LRG is that Members are only too willing to help each other. For example, French Long Rider Louis Meunier, who lives in Kabul, is helping Ian. There is absolutely no spirit of competition, just camaraderie. With The Guild thriving, the endangered books saved, and eight websites under our belts, CuChullaine and I are now preparing to set off on the World Ride. Twelve men have walked on the moon, but no human has ever ridden around the earth! Along the way we will be collecting hairs from the horses we meet so as to create a complete equine DNA library and JBS has kindly agreed to safeguard these precious hair samples while we are in the saddle.
Equestrian travel is undergoing a remarkable international renaissance thanks to mankind’s never-ending love of adventure travel and the horse. But there would be no Guild if I hadn’t made the trip to Mongolia, which led me to ride across Russia, and then use my equestrian knowledge to help found The Long Riders’ Guild. These days an increasing number of people call themselves “explorers.” Most are self-serving egoists, keen to grab attention and make a fast buck. In contrast, Colonel John Blashford-Snell has devoted the greater part of his life to encouraging people like myself to venture into the unknown. Here at The Long Riders’ Guild we believe in the concept of the “citizen explorer” and no-one better represents that than JBS and the members of the SES. That is why, in addition to his more widely-known accomplishments such as Operation Raleigh, the Founder of the SES can take pride in having helped launch this remarkable renaissance of equestrian travel. Back to Basha's page Home |
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