Adventure With a Mission

I'm a spry 60 but haven't ridden a horse in three years, not since my husband fell sick and the world began feeling dangerous. I'd given away my flighty mare. I wasn't looking for a trip, especially not a group trip. But this one just found me -- a newspaper clipping slipped under my door by a neighbor just weeks before the trip was to begin. "See the Subcontinent while making a difference," it read. I was hooked by the unique blend of adventure travel and humanitarian service.

The Group

I and the eight other members of our group set out at dawn from our hotel to the desert in a jumbo white bus. Our driver navigates the traffic-choked maze of Delhi, past a policeman in a gas mask, around a big-humped sleeping cow. We turn onto a bumpy highway and head toward Rajasthan, "land of kings."

My worst fears begin to ease as I meet the other riders and discover that we're all over 50, all first-time volunteer tourists and, best of all, I'm not the least experienced or most rusty rider. Leif, a big Swede, has been taking lessons only since last year. Jonathan hasn't ridden since a car accident five years ago. Barry has ridden only a few times. Then again, he looks like someone who could ride a bull.

After hours of driving, we turn onto an even bumpier road. Citrine green parrots flit among gnarled trees that have just a fringe of leaves at the top. An owl hunches on an acacia branch. After miles of sandy hillocks, silver thorn bushes and scrub, we reach an irrigated section of desert, with iridescent green fields of blooming mustard.

Our bus grinds to a stomach-lurching stop to let a herd of brown and taffy-spotted goats cross the road. The red-turbaned goatherd is thin as a stick.

Barry gets out a camera to take pictures. I ask about his photography. He tells me about shooting sharks. "From a cage?" I ask. "No, outside. You can't get a good shot from a cage."

I am definitely out of my league.

Meet the Fort Master

Once a trading post on the grand caravan route, the town of Dundlod is now at the back of beyond, yet still lively. Camel, bullock and donkey carts rumble over cobblestones. Motorbikes swerve around sacred cows. Tinkers and tailors ply their trade against sherbet-colored adobe walls.

Businessmen who went off with the caravans in the 1800s came home to build mansions called havelis and commissioned artists to paint them with frescoes. Now the walls are crumbling, the paintings of gods, goddesses, warriors and animals almost transparent. Yet the town retains a patina of faded splendor.

Ahead are a moat and a huge arched door. The terra-cotta fort was built centuries ago to protect the Marwari, an Indo-Aryan people, from the onslaught of Mogul hordes. Our bus clears the entrance by inches.

We are met by fort master "Bonnie" Singh, of noble descent, member of the tall warrior caste Rajput. Wearing full dress whites with gold epaulets, he carries the title of thakur , a local lord in the land of kings. His family for years has been hosting upscale horse and camel safaris.

Rajasthan has always maintained a unique semi-independent status in India. It was never fully conquered, and that shows in the character of its inhabitants, especially the Marwaris of this "land of death" Shekhawati region. Chivalry, honor and pride go back thousands of years. These were the men and women who committed mass suicide rather than suffer defeat at the hand of the Moguls.