Disaster Strikes

We know it’s going to be a brutal ride out from the reindeer people – six full days, seven hours a day, riding fast as we can over the boggy terrain.

And we’re making relatively good time when we break the summit of the last valley before the taiga, the woods disappear, and the landscape opens up into views of the open valley with its lyrical, meandering river where we spent the night before last.

Zac’s riding with the Mongolians, for some reason. I’m with the Westerners. Our group heads off for a splendid, thundering gallop across the hilltop, my butt – thanks to my rapidly developing thigh and stomach muscles – stuck firmly to the saddle, and we’re just closing into woodland when…

… Oh god.

I hear this cry of “Help!”

I turn.

A few hundred metres from me, Shorty is in full gallop with Zac clinging at the weirdest angle to his right side.

Baatar yells. Maahar yells. I let out a feeble squeak: “Oh Jesus, no.”

But there’s absolutely nothing we can do. Shorty’s galloping; Zac’s lost control; finito. The situation is beyond not only my limited skills but the horsemen’s too. The only thing we can do is watch, which is what we do, with a sense of utter, sickening horror, as Shorty thunders across the summit and down the hill, towards the treeline.

He’s dragged behind the horse, arms trailing, spare leg dangling, his flimsy helmet bouncing over rock, after rock, after rock, towards the treeline that masks the sharp descent down to the river below.

Zac slips, slides but – oh god! – doesn’t fall.

His foot’s caught in the stirrup. This is rocky ground: a savage landscape of low-cropped grass studded with large, sharp, pyramidal volcanic rocks.

He has the helmet that Ganbaa gave him – we’re both wearing helmets, a prerequisite of this ride.

But he’s dragged behind the horse, arms trailing, spare leg dangling, his flimsy helmet bouncing over rock, after rock, after rock, towards the treeline that masks the sharp descent down to the river below.

No sound. He does not make a single sound.

The treeline, with its entanglements of branches, approaches rapidly nearer.

And then – I can’t tell whether it’s a conscious or unconscious movement, but it looks deliberate to me – his foot is up, and it’s clear, and he’s on the ground, and Shorty’s galloping.

And I’m off my horse and running, emitting this weird, repetitive, pathetic squeak: “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…”

Zac is silent. And, because he’s in a depression in the ground, I can’t even see if he’s moving.

Sweet Jesus god. I’m running. Triangular rocks and all, I’m running like I’ve never run before.

“Are you alright?” I ask, Britishly. “No,” he spits. “My arm is broken.” “Can you feel your toes?” I ask. “Yes, I can feel my toes,” he hisses, irritated.

And Matt’s behind me, still on horseback. “Can you see him?” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can see him. He’s moving. He’s alright.”

This is, it turns out, something of an overstatement.

I get to Zac shortly before the horsemen. He’s bright red in the face, absolutely livid with pain, and swearing vigorously about horses.

On the basic parenting principle that, if a child is vocally cross, they’re almost certainly OK, this is by some way the biggest relief of my life (even better than the time he fell over a metre face first onto concrete as a toddler in the course of “helping” with the recycling and waited an agonising few seconds before starting to howl).

“Are you alright?” I ask, Britishly.

“No,” he spits. “My arm is broken.”

“Can you feel your toes?” I ask.

“Yes, I can feel my toes,” he hisses, irritated. “My fucking ARM is broken, not my back!”

Under Zac’s thin thermal is an enormous bloody bump that wasn’t there before. I’ve never seen a broken bone before, but this one is impossible to miss.

A rush of serene endorphins floods through me. This is all, now, totally fine. However long it takes, this is all totally fine.

“Oh,” I say, Britishly. “Why do you think your arm is broken?”

“Because I can feel the bones moving, you [exact expression removed at Zac’s request],” he replies, pain seamlessly segueing into rage.

Yep, I think. Nothing wrong with his neural functioning. And…. they’ve got to be able to fix a broken arm in Outer Mongolia, haven’t they? They must see horse riding injuries all the time…

I look around the desolate hilltop. I’m not at all sure any of us even have phone signal. Further, we are out of water, and the river’s about a mile downhill.

Baatar is slumped on the ground, his hat over his face, as if the world has ended.

Maahar tries to remove Zac’s coat. “NO!” I say, deploying my abysmal pidgin Mongolian, while making scissor signs with my fingers. “Houtek! KNIFE! Houtek! Ugui! Houtek!”

Bill’s there with scissors, and we cut the coat off him. Under Zac’s thin thermal is an enormous bloody bump that wasn’t there before.

I’ve never seen a broken arm before, but this one is impossible to miss. Hmmm, I wonder. Where the hell do we go from here?

Read on.

Travel insurance is vital for adventure travel anywhere, but especially in remote parts of the world.