Sarah + Mike: Huffy the wonder horse

Deepest darkest Sichuan. We just got back from a two day horse trek in Song Pan. Definitely one of the most awesome experiences of the trip so far (ok I know it's been just over two weeks so that's not saying much...)

Anyway Song Pan is this gorgeous little mountain town in the middle of bloody nowhere - a ten hour bus ride through incredible mountains, over raging rivers, passing little towns festooned with Tibetan prayer-flags and being solemnly watched by shaggy white yaks standing at attention by the side of the road. When we finally got to Song Pan, Sarah, myself, Thomas the French lad and Sophie from Belgium were the only non-Chinese people in town. So of course we grabbed a horsey each and a couple of Tibetan guides and took off into the hills.

Absolutely stunning (hopefully I can find a place that will help me work out how to post some photos). Sarah's horse had a few issues however. Firstly there was a touch of altitude sickness which we noticed as the poor bugger was huffing and puffing already after the first few steps, when the other horses were just calmly trotting along. Huffy also decided after going uphill for a while that he really wasn't an uphill kinda horse, so he attempted to turn around and charge headlong down the mountain "Man from Snowy River"-style. Thankfully one of the guides grabbed him in time. After that we spent most of the trek on narrow and extremely muddy mountain paths where in many places the path had literally slid away down the cliff, but good old Huffy wasn't scared, no siree, he was constantly determined to pass the horse in front and always on the precipice-side of the path, stomping proudly on the crumbling edge of the path.

What else can we say about the Huffster? Well there was that one time when my horse was following close behind and Huffy suddenly had an explosive gas attack. This startled my horse so much that he reared in shock and almost bucked me off. And I found out later from Sarah that Huffy's fart had in fact scared himself so much, that even he reared and whinnied in surprise at his own explosive powers.

Anyway the amazing scenery and farting horses lost their charm in the late arvo when the snowstorm began. I actually expected this to be a beach holiday so I was wearing boardies and a VB singlet at the time. No not true, I was wearing the only jumper I have (which I flogged from Sarah in Korea) and a pair of trakkies which I bought last week, but they weren't much of an improvement on the boardies in those conditions. Thankfully we stopped shortly after I had been soaked to the skin, and found a delightful dark smokey stone room to sit in front of the fire and watch our clothing steam.

We passed round homemade moonshine and sang traditional songs (after the Tibetans had their go I was forced to show them up with a solo accapella version of Walzing Matilda that brought the house down) and then passed the coldest and most uncomfortable night of our lives using mouldy old saddles as pillows as we lay on the stone floor of a barn while the snowstorm continued raging all night.

We were all a little bit cranky the next day, but the sun came out and everything was snowy and incredible and we rode up and over another mountain which was even more sensational than the day before. At one point we were trotting past terraced fields in the middle of nowhere when we saw an old woman in traditional Tibetan dress standing alone in her field, scattering manure. This breathtakingly idyllic rural scene was only marred when she put down her carved wooden manure-holder to answer a call on her mobile phone...

So apart from Huffy ignoring the path and attempting one last charge directly down the mountain, we arrived back in town safe and sound and ready for our BUS RIDE FROM HELL! But more on that later...