On Thursday I took the Daewoo bus up to Peshawar again. Dr. Shahabat met me once again and we had breakfast at Brooke’s clinic. This was the first clinic opened by Brooke in Pakistan in 1991. Our programme was to spend Thursday looking at 2 or 3 Afghan horses and for me to spend some time with Habib to learn from the real masters of horsemanship. Then early tomorrow morning we’d go down to have a look at the market.

I spent the morning with Habib in his dusty village on the outskirts of Peshawar. The Afghans really know how to look after their horses. In the cruel wind of winter Habib’s horses were well wrapped up and fed to keep their energy levels up. Habib was riding to the Ghoraa mandi (horse market) to sell an old mare at tomorrow’s market. However, I hadn’t realsied how thin and weak the mare was until we started riding. Habib kept tugging the mare and he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t go any faster. Eventually half way through our ride she collasped and wouldn’t get up. Habib’s men started trying to pull the mare up by her head. I had to shout at them to stop and immediately rang Brooke to send a medical team to meet us at the Ghoraa mandi which we had almost reached. Habib wouldn’t let Brooke take her in their van as he “wanted to take her in tomorrow”. This seemed a likely story, but we couldn’t force him since that would destroy the trust between Brooke and the people. I thus made him promise that he would bring her in tomorrow in front of the whole horse market that had by now gathered around the scene.

Apart from that incident the Afghans are like one with their horses. Sweat hung in the air which rang with the vibrancy of 500 nervous horses and donkeys and thousands of people haggling over them. These people could ride in an instant. You merely had to blink and an Afghan had flowed onto the horse and galloped it down the centre of a crowded corridor in the middle of the trading arena. Saddles meant nothing and with a quirky grin and a wink, a Pashtun steps from the ground to the horse. The horse was merely another pair of his shoes to be worn as he wished.

I hung in that moment for some time wishing to be an Afghan before starting my search for the perfect horses. With a pashto friend of Dr. Shahabat called Jangir, we battled past galloping hooves and the heated raucous cries of traders. We quizzed dozens of traders and it wasn’t long before word got out that an angreji was looking to buy afghani horses. Suddenly every horse became an Afghan horse as every Tom, Dick and Harry approached us bringing every manner of horse from donkeys to giant thoroughbreds. A combination of search and elimination finally revealed two horses which might be suitable, but just not as a packhorse. Then just standing off to one side, as if minding his own business, I saw the perfect Afghani horse. Even Jangir couldn’t believe that he hadn’t spotted him earlier. He was barrel chested with a short stocky body and full main and tail. Afghanis prefer not to cut a horse’s hair and so this one had a distinctly shaggy look about him. He didn’t even seem mildly preturbed by all the commotion going on around him.

Mounting on each one’s back, I rode them, rather unsteadily at first, without a saddle down the ‘test’ corridor of the arena. All three were calm amidst the surrounding storm but the shaggy one wasn’t really a ‘trotting horse’ as Jangir put it. We got all three of them examined by the Brooke mobile team which also shows every Friday. Dr. Shahabat arrived and we agonized over the next 2 hours on which one would be suitable. I honestly fell in love with a gray dappled Punjabi horse which was a dream to ride but didn’t make sound sense to ride in the mountains. The two remaining horses (males) were whitish gray and their owners were both grizzled old horse trading veterans in traditional pashtun dress. They were sticklers at their price which was about a third higher than the market one. We haggled in a separate room for about an hour. Both came up with every excuse under the sun why his price was correct but in the end we settled around market price and both went away with a smile and a thumb-printed contract because they couldn’t sign their name.

We found another horse trader who was also taking his horses to Delhi to sell at the Sunday market, however the main problem was that you can only enter Lahore with livestock during night hours and with a 12 hour journey ahead it was already nearing 5m. The horse trader wanted to leave the next day but I was convinced we could make it. So we found a large brightly coloured Pakistani truck nearby and loaded our horses onboard. The drivers name was ‘Aziz,’ which means friendship in Pashto and I hoped he was as I sat up all night keeping him from speeding down the rocky road to Lahore, whilst his big brother (bara bhai) snuggled up asleep next to me!

We eventually arrived at six the following morning and I offloaded both horses at Brooke’s Static clinic 2, just North of Lahore in Shahdara - home to the famous Mogul emperor Jahangir’s tomb. I confirmed their previous diet of barley and chana to the staff there to avoid dietary problems later. Brooke’s in-house vets checked both horses and once again I must thank them for all the help they have given me during my stay in Pakistan.