Bringing Humanitarian Relief to India – on Horseback

By Bethany M. Dunbar

Photo: Margaret Michniewicz

Ilene Douglas astride her steed Steele, back home in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Ilene Douglas was looking for an adventure. At age 61, she felt that life as a wife and grandmother in her newly renovated home in Morgan was a little too comfortable. A horseback trip with Relief Riders International to the backcountry of India was just the thing to remind her how uncomfortable life can be.

Described as a “humanitarian adventure,” the trip combined the excitement of a vacation to places most tourists never see with the good feeling of helping out. For three weeks in October, Douglas and the other riders traveled through the northwestern part of India and the Thar Desert on the Rajasthan Relief Ride, covering approximately 100 miles and providing humanitarian aid to six remote villages along the route.

Relief Riders International was started by the U.S.-born Alexander Souri, son of a French father and mother from India, who is now a Hollywood special effects technician, and Kanwar Raghuvenra Singh Dundlod. Dundlod is the son of a cavalry officer and has renovated his family’s fort into a hotel where the relief ride experience started. Riders bring medical and educational supplies and AIDS information to people in need. The trip is physically strenuous, and riders must be prepared to ride 20 miles a day and spend the night in tents and forts. The trip was coordinated with the Indian Red Cross, and Douglas’ caravan included eight doctors. Camels carried supplies, and the caravan brought 100 goats to villagers along the way. As part of her contribution, Douglas purchased two of the goats, which she presented to villagers during the trip. “The government [of India] supplies books, but nothing else,” Douglas explains, so basic supplies delivered by the riders, such as pencils and notebooks, are, she says, “a real luxury.”

Douglas grew up riding horses through the orange groves of Florida, and now owns two Morgan horses that are boarded at the Perry Farm in Brownington. Douglas returned to pursue her passion after a hiatus caused by a serious, nearly fatal fall from a horse named Saddam that threw her over his head while she was riding in Italy in March 2003. She credits Neal Perry with instilling in her confidence to get back in the saddle. Now, she smiles, “I may not ride as fast or as hard as someone in their twenties or thirties, but I like to think I do it with great style.”

Douglas has taken exotic horseback trips before, including a ride in Greece three years ago. It was wonderful, she says, but it was purely a tourist experience and did not compare to the India trip for that reason. She has enjoyed traveling ever since she was in college, when she did missionary work in East Africa.

“It was the beginning of helping me ‘step outside’ [everyday life],” she explains. She believes her generation of women has not always done that. “We tended to be women who do what you were supposed to do.”

Douglas found life in India’s Thar Desert to be so vastly different that it seemed like another planet. Transitioning from a cool Vermont fall into 110 degrees, she arrived to find Brahma cows walking around in the airport parking lot.

“I originally wanted to go,” she says, “because of the Marwari horses” [horses indigenous to India] and for what a fine experience she imagined it would be to see a foreign land off the beaten tourist track. But once Douglas got into the villages, she realized her reason for being there was the people – especially the children. At one school where the group brought pencils and notebooks, the children came running and surrounded them, holding up each pencil and thanking the riders. Their gratitude for such a simple gift touched the Vermonter’s heart.

“I don’t think you could ever be prepared,” she says of the extreme poverty she encountered. People cannot afford basic health care, not to mention the cost of traveling to obtain it. One man they met was walking on his hands because of injuries to his legs. Women saw gynecologists for the first time in their lives. A dentist was also available among the visiting riders. Many of the people in the desert suffered from eye problems created by the dust.

Douglas remembers a tiny boy, so emaciated he could not walk, who was carried by his parents to the caravan’s medical tent. But the medical supplies, basic antibiotics and simple checkup equipment, were inadequate for determining the child’s illness. Douglas says he was 11 years old and looked about four. The doctors in the group said that he needed to get to a clinic, but the parents could not afford to bring him. Before they left, each of the riders chipped in enough money to get the boy to the clinic.

Douglas got a first-hand look at the treatment of women. “They still have arranged marriages in the villages,” she says, describing unions between a man who has more than one wife and a girl about 14 years old, who may be dragged kicking and screaming from her own family in order to be married. Yet when a woman achieves the status of grandmother, her status is supreme. “Everyone defers to her [then].”

Many people in the villages had never seen Americans. “It was kind of like we were in a zoo,” but people were extremely friendly and essentially treated the riders like royalty, Douglas reports.

Douglas felt inadequate at times because she possesses no medical skills. Yet she got satisfaction from being able to help with paperwork and hand out supplies. The experience of merely giving someone a goat was powerful. At the time that she bought two goats to give away, it seemed like a nice enough idea. When she actually did give one, it was to a grateful older man who cried and clasped her hand; she then realized what a substantial difference this one small gift would make in this man’s life. Although they did not speak the same language, Douglas readily perceived the man’s gratitude.

“We live very cushy lives. We don’t have to worry about the basics. And to be in a place where the basics are not available on a regular basis, to see people who were going ahead and trying to make a life...How could it not be life changing?”

As for the riding, Douglas was not disappointed. “We rode into the sunset every night,” she says with a contented smile. And the sunsets in the desert were always spectacular, though possibly enhanced because of the prevalent dust. One night they arrived at their camp by the light of a full moon. She even tried riding a camel – no easy feat even for an experienced equestrian; her attempt is documented in an amusing series of snapshots from her photo album from the trip.

Douglas describes feeling “overwhelmed,” especially at the contrast between the cities and desert villages. “Village life is difficult, yet people make a life for themselves with the resources they have at hand. In the cities, poverty is more extreme. People sleep in the streets,” she says.

“It seems to me there are two Indias,” she observes. “I don’t know… It’s a magical land that is torn.”

Having been on such a physically and emotionally challenging journey, Douglas is not the sort to sit back and be satisfied with just memories. She wants to return, and possibly go further into the desert. No doubt she will be off on another adventure before long.

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, and I’m having a grand one.”

Bethany M. Dunbar of West Glover is the mother of two and co-editor of the Chronicle, a weekly newspaper in Barton.