Adventure With a Mission

Tomorrow we ride into the desert and our first tent camp. We are all up by 6 a.m. Our flag bearer is still winding his orange turban as we prepare to mount. By afternoon we arrive at a school where children are waiting to sing and dance in our honor. When the performance is over, we roll up our sleeves and run a deworming clinic. My job: Count and break open pill capsules.

We camp in yellow tents pitched in a field by dunes. Inside each tent, two cots are made up with thick comforters; a tiny bar of pink soap sits atop thin towels.

Water is being heated in caldrons for our hot-water bucket baths. Curries simmer in stew pots, and dining tables are set up around the campfire. Children gather on the hillside to gape at our luxuries. I grab a towel and head for one of the two mobile washrooms. After dinner I get my first ayurvedic massage from our camp doctor and am instantly addicted.

Our days take on a rhythm. We ride in the morning and the evening. In between: school, clinic or goat distribution. The milking goats have been purchased from local shepherds and are given to the poorest villagers. I learn how to lead a goat -- by the ear.

On the long riding days between camps, we stop and do what the locals normally do -- sleep in the midday sun. The villages fall behind us: Kumas, Sotwara, Meetwas, Thimoli.

At the poorest school, in Thimoli, a child applies red puja blessings to our foreheads. The mayor presents thin chains of mustard blooms. A tiny girl in a dusty green ruffled dress dances barefoot, bells on her ankles. A boy with a pure angelic voice sings a solo. We riders, in turn, sing to them, "Doe, a Deer," in two-part harmony.

Knight to Castle

We have been a fortnight in the desert and have traveled more than 100 miles from the stronghold of Dundlod to the fortress of Mahansar. We have given away five dozen goats, distributed two tons of supplies to 1,200 schoolchildren and helped treat some 700 patients. Later today we will register another 500 people for eye exams. It's estimated that 100 of these will need and receive cataract or lens implantation surgery tomorrow.

In the distance as we ride, I sight the ramparts of the fortress. Sand becomes cobblestone. We clatter into town, past an ominous green lagoon and a turquoise villa with a banner reading: Relief Riders International Eye Clinic.

I pat Durga's silky neck as we enter the medieval courtyard of Narayan Niwas Castle. Huge spikes protrude from the top of the giant wooden door -- anti-elephant barriers. Too soon, after the eye operations are done, we will be boarding a bus to Jaipur. In the Pink City we will walk in the Palace of Winds, dine at a maharani's palace and sleep in a hotel. On our last two days, we will be ordinary tourists. Back in Mahansar, the eye bandages will just be coming off.

I will miss the Great Thar and its warm winds and gaunt khejri trees. I will miss the nights in our butter-yellow tents lit by candles, the sky swarming with stars. I will miss the dunes and the endorphins flooding my body and the sound of my heart beating in the desert.

This trip has been anything but ordinary. Each of us has found the ride we had already in us, brought with us through dreams and time. A fortnight in the desert. It feels as if I've been gone for a thousand and one nights. Yet I know, when I get home, people will say, "Are you back already?"

Relief Riders International (413-329-5876, http://www.reliefridersinternational.com) sponsors three trips to India annually. Upcoming dates: Oct. 1-16, Dec. 28-Jan. 12 and Feb. 20-March 7. Cost, which ranges from $5,950 to $6,300 per person double, includes a night at a five-star hotel, 14 nights in a tent, fort or haveli (heritage hotel), all meals and internal transportation, and the services of horses, guides, cooks and grooms. Airfare to and from India is not included.

The company says that approximately a third of the trip cost goes to the direct purchase of relief supplies and livestock being distributed on that trip. "Ghost riders" are invited to donate goats or contribute to the cost of an eye operation.

Pamela West is a freelance writer living in Rhode Island. She has published two historical novels, a science fiction mystery and a textbook on research.