THE BOND BETWEEN

There is something secretive between a horse and a good rider.
An unspoken language. An understanding.

It exists everywhere horses and humans meet, from the polo fields to the dressage arena, from the plains of Argentina to the high mountains of Lesotho.

And yet, in much of the modern Western equestrian world, this bond can become obscured, layered beneath gadgets and force. What is often explained away as training, safety, or necessity sometimes reveals something else.. a gradual loss of conversation, a forgetting of the partnership itself and a descent into egoistic control.

Here, in these mountains, the reality is different.

The Basotho ponies do not have an easy life. They work hard. They may wait for hours in the sun for their owners. Hard feed is rare. Life is practical, direct, and often difficult.

And yet what is visible, again and again, is care.

The saddles are the best their owners can afford. I have not seen a single one placed on a pony’s back without a numnah or thick padding beneath it, often a brightly woven cloth, cheerful and proud, sometimes a piece of Basotho blanket.

Many saddles are old, some date back to British army days. But they are polished, repaired, stitched together again and again. Nothing is thrown away while it can still serve.

Stirrup leathers may be replaced with baling twine. Sometimes there are none at all, stirrups are sometimes attatched, sometimes absent.

Bridles are assembled from pieces of leather, hand-stitched and adapted- a headpiece here, a noseband there, a webbing browband holding it together. Bits vary from simple snaffles to old western styles. Sometimes there is no bit at all, and the horse is guided only by a rope around the neck.

Nothing is decorative. Nothing is excess. Everything is functional.

These are not wealthy men. Most are subsistence farmers. And yet they feed, tack and shoe their horses as best they can. Shoes, despite their cost, are bought second-hand from South Africa, sold at co-ops here and replaced roughly every six weeks,a quiet sacrifice made so the ponies can travel the mountains comfortably.

The horses graze in wide valleys of green grass, often roaming freely. They look well fed. Foals stay with their mothers, following them through rivers and across open ground, skittering behind as they learn the paths of the hills, they don’t seem to wean them the same way we do in the west with forced separation. They just stay with the mares until they are backed.

The horsemen of Malealea sit quietly on their ponies, riding on loose reins, and they do not hurry here They do not rush through these mountains. They move slowly, steadily. The result is that any pony you mount settles immediately into this rhythm, picking its way through steep rocky passes with the calm certainty of an ibex.

There is dignity in this way of riding, and a quiet respect for the horse.