On April 1, 25-year old Becky Sampson and her 10-year old paint horse Bertie’s Quest set off on an adventure of a lifetime: a four-year ride that traces the ancient silk trading routes. The journey will take her over two continents and 15 countries ending in Japan.
Her route will cover Western and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and Japan. Challenges ahead include the Tien Shan Mountains and the Taklamakan Desert (which translates as “he who goes in does not come out”)
Sampson’s goal is to raise £15,000 for the charity SOS Children (the world’s largest orphan charity), £1 for each of the 15,000 of the route. Along her ride she will visit villages built and run by the charity and will deliver letters and pictures from schoolchildren in Britain.
Sampson’s interest in long-distance riding is long lived. She has dreamed of a long distance ride since she was 10 and started riding longer distances several years ago when she rode her horse home from university. This experience gave her an introduction to the challenges faced by long riders: where to ride, how to deal with carrying food, wear on horse shoes, and where to find places to spend the night.as on her way to Kashgar – a major trading port on the Silk Road.
Sampson intends to cross Europe during the northern summer and spend winter working in Turkey as a teacher (she has a certificate in teaching English as a Second Language), before pressing on.
In 2010, she intends crossing into Iran and through the Central Asian states, wintering in Kyrgyzstan.
The following year she will enter China and head for Xian, then Shanghai. If everything goes to plan, she will journey by boat in 2012 to Osaka and then head on to Tokyo, then Nara.
You can follow Becky and Bertie’s adventure on twitter and on her website. Her twitter entries are really interesting!
That kid is living my dream. More power to her for not allowing the zillions of people who told her NO to get to her.
I’m going to post about this on my blog, too to get more people following her. She needs all the support she can get.
Please do help get the word out. What an amazing adventure! I recently noticed on some photos that her horse uses hoof boots rather than shoes!
Liz
I think that the charity she’s suporting is well worth the attention. And the fact that she’s using boots should not really come as a surprise,, really. How would she get a farrier in all those places? Better to use a healthy, reliable boot (or series of boots, I guess) that she can depend on for continuity than take her chances with strange farriers. Yay for boots! What a wonderful promotion for them.
This is wonderful! Can’t wait to follow her trip. It will be a vicarious thrill. 🙂
literaryhorse
a thrill, indeed. if only we had all been that adventurous at that age. or even now.