Return to India with Mel Fox…
After riding in India for decades, in January 2017 Mel and Bayard Fox scouted a ride in Rajasthan that has now become the riding core of one of Equitours’ most complete India journeys yet: Best of India — a trip that carries you from the saddle of a Marwari horse in rural Rajasthan to the marble domes of the Taj Mahal, and on to a tiger and wildlife safari in two of India’s finest national parks. Join Mel Fox as she travels this full route for the first time, 10 years later in February, 2027.
Into the Villages
After visiting Delhi and Jodhpur, the riding days begin in Korta — a small village of about 1,600 people, roughly half of them Rabbari and Raika, traditional shepherds and camel breeders. You’ll settle into a family-run cottage property surrounded by fields and hills, and meet the Marwari horses you’ll be riding: a breed prized for endurance and instantly recognizable by their curved, lyre-shaped ears.
The days that follow move at the pace of the countryside itself. Mornings bring long rides across dirt tracks, dry riverbeds, and open fields — one stretch from Korta to Kolhar covers roughly 15 miles, alongside farmland and small village roads. In the afternoon you may visit a local home for tea, enjoy a walk through a village temple, or a short ride out to look for nilgai, India’s largest antelope, in the fading light. You may see herders with their livestock in the steets, and children run out to wave as you pass. This is a part of Rajasthan where European travelers are still a rare sight, and the welcome is correspondingly warm — a chance to see a way of life that has changed little in generations.
From Kolhar, the trail threads between two hill ranges known for their leopards, with chinkara gazelle and nilgai often crossing the path. That evening, riders can go out again looking for leopards — by jeep or on horseback. A final riding day follows a canal past small villages toward a dam, before the trail ends at a permanent luxury camp for the night.
Temples, Forts, and the Taj
The riding is only one chapter of the Best of India experience. From the villages of rural Rajasthan, the trip turns toward the region’s history. Visit a Jain temple complex — a 15th-century structure of white marble with 29 halls and 1,444 individually carved pillars, no two alike. That evening’s dinner is served beside a lit step-well, a quietly spectacular setting few visitors to India ever see.
In Jaipur, the Pink City, riders can climb by elephant to Amber Fort, its palaces overlooking the lake below. In Agra, the cultural journey closes with the Taj Mahal itself — the white marble mausoleum Shah Jahan built for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and still one of the most recognizable buildings on earth, and no photograph quite prepares you for it in person.
An Optional Extension: Tiger Country
For those who want to continue the adventure, you can extend the Best of India experience with a wildlife safari through Pench and Kanha National Parks. Pench, the setting Rudyard Kipling drew on for The Jungle Book, and Kanha, one of India’s premier tiger reserves, are both home to Royal Bengal tigers, leopards, gaur (Indian bison), and the hard-ground barasingha deer found nowhere else on earth.
Ride It Your Way
The full journey runs 19 days, but it’s built to flex: you can book the complete trip, the riding portion on its own, or the sightseeing and wildlife portion without the horses. However you plan it, the spirit is the same one Equitours has valued since we began offering rides in India so long ago — that the most memorable way to the culture and history is from the ground with locals; even better if you can cover that ground from the back of a Marwari!