“Ride and explore India”
14 Day Premium Safari and Horse Riding Tour in India
Kutch Classic Resort Camp, Rann Utsav, Kutch Classic Rider Camp Near Gorewali Water Tank - Village - Gorewali, Road, Dhordo, Kutch, Gujarat, India
India Horse Riding Tour
KCRC Safari invites you to come and discover India on horseback. Ride off the beaten track on majestic Marwari horses and discover the beauty and wilderness of India.
Key information
- Rider Weight Limit: 198 pounds / 90 kilograms
- Horse Breed: Marwari
- Horse Height: 60-64 inches
Highlights
- 12 days of horse riding
- Approximate daily riding time: 4 - 6 hours
- Ride through deserts, villages, hills, and caves
- 13 nights accommodation
- Daily meals
- Transfers to and from the airport
Skill level
- Intermediate
Styles
12 days with instruction in English
The organizer also speaks: Hindi, Spanish
Group size: 6-30 participants
Airport transfer included:
Bhuj Airport / Bhuj Rudra Mata Air Force Base
Accommodation
Check-in Time:
09:00
Check-out Time:
12:00
You will stay in heritage or resort hotels, luxury desert camps, and large comfortable safari tents. The safari tents are tall and properly furnished with ensuite washrooms, offering an excellent level of comfort during the ride.
Traditional Bhunga (mud houses)
Immerse yourself in rural Gujarat with overnight stays in traditional Bhungas, designed to provide comfort and a unique cultural experience.
Tents
Experience nature in comfortable tents, providing a cozy retreat with essential amenities for a blend of rustic charm and modern comfort.
Program
Daily itinerary
Day 1: Arrival day
Your representative will greet you at the airport and take you to KCRC Resort Camp in the White Desert. Upon reaching the resort, you will be received with a royal welcome and shown to your accommodation. Accommodation at the resort is in luxury Swiss tents with permanent fittings, so you can enjoy spacious, fully furnished tents with air-conditioners, ensuite bathrooms, and hot showers.
During the ride, accommodation is based on two people sharing but first two nights at the resort you can choose to stay in your own private tent at no extra cost so you can totally relax and rest after your long flight. In the evening, you will take the jeeps and head out into the White Desert, giving you your first glimpse of this unique and breathtaking landscape. You will watch the sunset over the salt flats and visit the Rann Utsav Festival, before returning to KCRC for dinner.
Days 2 - 3: Ride out
Rising early, with tea or coffee served at your tent, you will find your horse prepped and ready, awaiting you in the half-light. You will take a short ride out into the White Desert, where you stop to watch the magnificent sunrise over this unique landscape. Breakfast will be served here, at a stunning location out on the salt flats, a surreal and otherworldly dining experience to start the day. After breakfast, there will be time to explore this unique landscape and take some great photos before heading back to KCRC to freshen up and head out in the jeeps.
You will visit Nirona village, famous for the workmanship of its traditional artisans. Perhaps the most famous tradition in Nirona is Rogan art, a unique and intricate form of freehand painting on textiles using natural dyes, made famous when Indian Prime Minister Modi gifted a Rogan art ‘Tree of Life’ to Barrack Obama on his official visit. Rogan art is a tradition that has been passed down through one single family in Nirona for over 300 years and can only be found here.
In addition to Rogan art, you will visit traditional craftsmen working with leather, metal, and wood, giving you a glimpse of traditional village work which carries on now as it has for hundreds of years. Unlike the commercialized experiences of many ‘craft villages’ Nirona still retains its original charm. These are real craftsmen, working in their home studios without fanfare, using the same traditional techniques as their forefathers.
You continue by jeep to the intriguing Fossil Park for lunch, then on to the hills of Dhinodar, where peacocks roam and leopards prowl. Dhinodar Hill is an inactive volcano with striking basalt rock formations, offering spectacular views across the ChhariDhandh wetlands towards the Rann, with a shrine at the top and the 12th-century Hindu Than monastery at the bottom. The monastery itself is a fascinating, well-preserved site with many interesting stories and legends about its foundation and features.
You will visit the monastery, before continuing to ChhariDhandh Bird Sanctuary, home to vast numbers of migratory birds, including flamingos, cranes, painted storks, and spoonbills, amongst others, where you will enjoy the sunset before returning to KCRC for dinner.
Day 4
You set off on the safari adventure, riding across the Banni grasslands, home to many different species of wildlife including chinkara (Indian gazelle), Nilgai, blackbucks (antelope), wild boar, golden jackals, caracal, and desert foxes. Today, as every day, the camp team will head out to gather supplies, arriving ahead of time to the lunch spot to set up tents and kitchen before your arrival. After lunch, you will take a short rest, before continuing to Hajipir for overnight camp.
After dinner, you will head out into the desert with high-powered telescopes and some astronomy experts from Stargazing India for a look at the stars. The Rann of Kutch is recognized as one of the best places to go stargazing, and experts will help you to identify key features of the night sky, along with an explanation of their significance in both Western and traditional Indian astronomy.
Day 5
You ride out from Hajipur, leaving the Banni grasslands and passing through stretches of thorn forest and scrubland, interspersed with small farming hamlets, as you make your way West to Siyot Caves, meeting the camp team halfway for lunch and making overnight camp near the caves. The caves at Siyot are a series of five rock-cut caves dating from the first century AD.
The larger main cave was originally used as a Shiva temple, with additional smaller caves added as individual meditation cells sometime between the 1st and 6th centuries. The site has been used by both Buddhists and Hindu Shaivaites over the centuries. Here, you will find no ticket office or tourist development. Just a beautiful, ancient piece of early history, carved into the landscape in such a way that it retains its original sense of peace and tranquillity almost 2000 years later.
Day 6
From Siyot, you continue your journey west, scrubland and thorn forest giving way to the sandy coastal desert terrain surrounding Lakphat. An impressive sight, Lakphat is a fort town, surrounded by seven kilometers of high walls, fortified by ramparts and round towers. Once a key trading port with 15,000 inhabitants connecting Gujarat with Sindh, its fortune changed when the 1819 earthquake altered the course of the Indus River to flow into the Arabian Sea further north.
Lakphat lost its importance as a port and by 1850 all trade had gone, along with most of the inhabitants. Today, Lakphat stands alone on the horizon like a fanciful mirage, rising where the sandy Kutch desert meets a salty inlet of the Arabian Sea; a sparsely populated ghost town, where just 500 inhabitants live amongst the crumbling ruins of the ancient city with a magnificent fort surrounding them.
You will arrive at Lakphat on time for lunch and stay camped here overnight, leaving the afternoon to explore the fort, followed by a sunset ride along the shore. The camping experience within Lakphat is wonderfully atmospheric; tents sheltered within the ancient fort walls, lantern light dancing on the old stone as you make your way to dinner, an al fresco feast, sharing your table with the ghosts of a glorious past.
Day 7
After breakfast, you will take the jeeps to visit Narayan Sarovar, Koteswar, and Mata no Madh, continuing to a meeting point where you will rejoin the horses and have lunch. From there, you ride on to the historic village of Tera, where you will stay overnight in the fort. Tera was once an estate (jagir) given by the rulers of Kutch to their brethren. Tera Jagir consisted of 41 villages, and was one of the largest jagirs of Kutch, with the ruling family residing in Tera fort.
The approach to Tera is quite striking, as you ride down a narrow strip of land between two of the three manmade lakes at the edge of Tera village. These interlinking lakes are a remarkable feat of ancient engineering, fed by canals carrying rainwater from up to 20 kilometers away which enters the first lake and is progressively filtered as it moves through to the third. Traditionally, these lakes provided all the water needed by the inhabitants of the village, with one for drinking, one for animals to drink, and one for washing clothes and utensils.
Even today, it is quite likely you will see herds of goats, sheep, or buffalo drinking from the lake on the right or the ladies of the village washing clothes to the left. In contrast to the vastness of Lakphat, camp at Tera Fort is a much more intimate setting. Here, the village lies outside the castle gates, while only the ruling family lives within the fort. Similarly, when you settle into camp, you will light a fire, close the gates, and have the fort all to yourself for the night.
Day 8
The area close to Tera is known as Nilaya grassland, home to many species including peacocks, great Indian bustards, chinkara, blue bulls, golden jackals, wolves(rare), and hyenas (rare). From Tera, you ride southeast, stopping for lunch halfway and camping overnight at a beautiful spot near the river at FotMandev.
Day 9
Continuing east, today you ride to Devpar, stopping for lunch along the way. Your accommodation will be at a beautiful heritage property in Devpar, once a small palace, now a boutique hotel. KCRC Safari usually has this property to themselves. Upon arrival, the grooms take your horse while you settle into the hotel, relaxing in the courtyard, taking in the beautiful features of this 110-year-old haveli. Dinner will be served in the courtyard. The kitchen at Devpur serves delicious, home-cooked Kutchi meals, and a cooking demonstration can be arranged for interested guests.
Day 10
Turning south from Devpur, you ride to Roha. Roha was once the leading jagir of Kutch, ruling 52 villages, and is situated in a stunning location, covering 16 acres on a hilltop 800 feet above sea level. You will explore the fort and take lunch here before continuing south to your overnight camp. Upon arrival, the grooms will receive the horses while you take the jeeps to visit ChavdaRakhal.
ChavdaRakhal is a pristine, dense forest reserve, untouched for many years and still owned by the royal family of Kutch. There is a lake at its center, home to over 300 crocodiles, surrounded by a dense forest of ancient teak, banyan, babool, and numerous other trees and herbs, where Nilgai and leopards are found. You will explore the ChavdaRakhalby jeep and return to the overnight camp for dinner.
Day 11
Today, your penultimate riding day, you have a full day in the saddle. Making your way to the sea like a river, you ride through varied terrain, crossing scrubland and meandering through sleepy villages as the landscape becomes greener and more tropical on the way to the shore. You stop for an overnight camp approximately 15 kilometers from Mandhvi.
Days 12 - 13
Today, you ride south, leaving the desert behind as palm trees appear alongside small farms growingkesar mangos and dates, salt on the wind as you approach the shore. You finish your ride with an exhilarating gallop along the water’s edge at Mandhvi, a beautiful seven-kilometer stretch of white sand beach. There is nothing quite like plunging into the ocean after 11 days in the saddle, and the horses love it too.
They remove the saddles so you can stroll along the shore bareback, cooling the horse’s legs in the waves. When you are ready, the grooms will receive the horses. The accommodation tonight will be at a beautiful beachside resort. They will show you to your accommodation and give you an hour or two to relax, swim, and enjoy the beach before lunch. After lunch, you take a stroll up the beach to Vijay Vilas Palace.
Built of red sandstone, the palace is a beautiful example of Rajput architecture and has been used as the setting for many Bollywood movies. Once the summer resort of the Maharao, the royal family of Kutch now resides here permanently. After visiting the royal neighbors, you will return to the resort. There will be an optional sunset beach ride, for those who would like, to before you reconvene at the resort for a grand farewell dinner.
Day 14: Departure day
Optional morning activities can be arranged for guests with a later departure time. Transfers to Bhuj will be organized based on suitable timing for your onward travel plans.
About the tour
Camp within the walls of ancient forts and experience rural village life and culture as you ride through uncharted territory, soaking in the sights, sounds, and vibrant colors of this stunning region. Experienced and knowledgeable guides will lead you through varied landscapes, from the famous salt desert to vast open plains and small hamlets, making it the most wonderfully unique and incomparable riding experience. This meticulously crafted safari package will lead you to off-the-beaten-path locations, ensuring an unparalleled experience of the area's pristine natural scenery.
The classic rider camp offers a unique horse safari in Bhuj, Gujarat, providing tourists with authentic cultural experiences and adventure, aiming to create sustainable economic opportunities while preserving and promoting Gujarat's heritage. Explore the beauty and wilderness of Kutch on an off-road journey riding majestic Marwari horses. Stay in ancient forts, immerse yourself in rural village life and culture, and take in the sights, sounds, and vibrant colors of Gujarat. Explore diverse landscapes from salt deserts to open plains on this unique horse safari in Kutch region, Gujarat.
Join KCRC Safari for an incomparable riding experience and discover Kutch on horseback. This horse riding tour caters to medium and experienced equestrians. Your guides will match you with a horse and route suitable for your skill level. Generally, participants must be at least 12 years old. Younger riders may be accommodated on special family safaris or private rides.
Please inquire for details. Safaris take place rain or shine but will be adjusted for severe weather to ensure safety and comfort. While wildlife encounters are possible, this safari focuses more on exploring scenic landscapes and enjoying the thrill of horseback riding. They adhere to wildlife viewing guidelines to minimize disturbance.
- Experience with tradition: Visits to traditional villages where you can experience the work of the local artisans
- Folk music: Traditional music and dance performances in camp
- Visit to Rann Utsav Desert Festival
- Night sky view: Stargazing night in the desert, with a high-powered telescope and professional astronomers on hand to help you enjoy the wonders of the night sky
- Beach ride: A ride on the beach will allow the riders to view and experience the beauty in the water of Kutch
Objectives
- Adventure tourism: It is tailored to adventure enthusiasts in search of unconventional experiences
- Economic impact: Their initiatives aim to generate revenue for local communities through tourism-related activities and the sale of artisanal products
- Cultural preservation: Strive to instill pride in local heritage and crafts, nurturing their preservation and transmission to future generations
- Environmental stewardship: Advocate for responsible tourism practices that reduce environmental impact and contribute to conservation efforts
Activities
1. Horseback riding
Embark on an unforgettable adventure as you explore stunning desert landscapes and peaceful rural villages on expert-led tours. They provide a wide range of accessories and equipment for horseback riding. Expert grooms are dedicated to providing top-notch assistance for unforgettable long-duration horse safaris. They offer a well-trained and disciplined herd of Marwari horses, one of the world's oldest horse breeds, originally from Rajasthan.
2. Cultural experience
Explore local villages to connect with skilled artisans, admire traditional crafts like embroidery and pottery, and immerse yourself in the vibrant world of Kutchi folk music and dance. Join them for a traditional folk music and lively zippy dance event, followed by a bonfire for relaxation in the evening.
3. Nature trails
Explore the diverse flora and fauna of the region, including visits to wildlife sanctuaries, star gazing, and birdwatching spots. Home to over 300 species of birds, this location hosts the world's largest gathering of flamingos and cranes.
Safety measures
Experienced guides, well-trained horses, and adherence to safety protocols are in place to ensure a secure and enjoyable experience.
Marwari horses
One of the oldest breeds in the world, Marwaris are as beautiful as they are tough. With distinctive curved ears and a fine confirmation similar to Arabian horses, they are capable of covering large distances in harsh desert climates with ease and grace. This rare breed can only be found here in India as exports were banned to preserve the breed.
The route
Your ride takes you from the Great Rann, one of the world's largest salt deserts, through the Banni grasslands and Chhari Dandh wetlands, covering wide open stretches of scrub forest and sandy desert, passing through small hamlets and curving south, where the landscape turns lush and green before you reach the south shore of Kutch, finishing the ride by swimming with the horses in the Arabian sea.
Location
The tour will take place in India.
Beautiful riding terrain
Kutch is one of the largest and most geographically distinct regions in India, boasting vast open spaces without roads or fences and some of the most unique landscapes on the continent.
Wildlife
The striking landscapes of Kutch include a number of unique habitats and the region supports a vast range of native and migratory species, from flamingos and cranes in the wetlands to Indian gazelles, buffalos, wild camels, and desert foxes on the plains, leopards in the hills and crocodiles in the lake, each different habitat offers a new surprise.
History
History comes alive on this ride as you camp in ancient forts, stay overnight in heritage properties that were once small palaces, and visit historical landmarks along the way.
Food
You will be served daily meals and non-alcoholic drinks included in the price. Rajasthani chefs accompany the ride, preparing delicious meals at camp with fresh local ingredients each day. After enjoying the safari on horseback, on the last day of the ride, it will be a time to party and enjoy with everyone in a group.
The following meals are included:
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Snacks
- Drinks
The following drinks are included:
- Water
- Coffee
- Tea
- Soda
- Alcoholic beverages
The following dietary requirement(s) are served and/or catered for:
- Vegetarian
- Lacto-ovo Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten Free
- Organic
- Regular (typically includes meat and fish)
- Hallal
- Lactose Free
- Other dietary requirements on request
If you have special dietary requirements it's a good idea to communicate it to the organiser when making a reservation
What's included
- Comprehensive tour covering extensive regions
- Visits to remote areas or hidden gems
- Flexible schedule allowing for leisurely paced riding
- 13 nights accommodation ranging from comfortable Heritage Castle’sto tented camps
- Diverse meals reflecting local and international cuisine
- Expert guides offering detailed knowledge of the terrain and wildlife
- Airport or railway station pick-up and drop-off
- 1 complimentary night stay for late departure
- GST
What's not included
- Flights
- Travel insurance
How to get there
Recommended Airports
BHJ
Bhuj Airport / Bhuj Rudra Mata Air Force Base
53 km
Transfer included
Arrival by train
You can travel by train to Bhuj railway station in Gujrat.
Airport: Bhuj Airport / Bhuj Rudra Mata Air Force Base
Airport transfer included: Bhuj Airport / Bhuj Rudra Mata Air Force Base
No additional charges. You can request this in the next step.
Cancellation Policy
- A reservation requires a deposit of 25% of the total price.
- The deposit is non-refundable, if the booking is cancelled.
- The rest of the payment should be paid 15 days before arrival.
For this organizer you can guarantee your booking through BookHorseRidingHolidays.com. All major credit cards supported.
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