The Whole Horseback Series in One Place (and How to Find Your Ride)

A few months ago my Instagram feed decided I needed to see horses. Every day, more of them: people cantering next to giraffes, white horses galloping through the surf in the south of France, riders swimming their horses out into water so blue it did not look real. I could not stop watching, so I did what I do best around here and went all the way down the rabbit hole. What came back out was this whole series, one ride at a time, and I will be honest, it turned into a much bigger project than I planned.

Now that it is all here, this is the map. Every ride in one place, sorted the way I would actually walk you through it if you asked me which one was yours.

The one rule behind every single ride

Before anything else, the rule I set on day one and never broke: no nose-to-tail trail rides. Not one ride in this series is the single-file line of horses plodding down a path with a teenager leading the front one. Every trip here is a real ride. You get your own horse, you actually steer it, and depending on the trip you canter, you gallop, you move cattle, or you ride out among wild animals. That was the whole point, and it is the thing that ties all of it together. If you want the overview first, the flagship roundup is where the whole thing started.

Start here: how much do you actually ride?

This is the first question I ask everyone, because it changes everything.

If you have never really ridden, or you get nervous, you have more options than you think. Monument Valley with Navajo guides is the gentlest ride in the series and maybe the most beginner-friendly trip I found anywhere, all place and people and almost no skill required. Iceland's day rides welcome complete first-timers on the smoothest-gaited horse on Earth. An Argentine estancia is the one I would send a couple to where one of you rides beautifully and the other is starting from scratch. And in the African safari post, Ant's Nest in South Africa flexes to your level, so a nervous rider and a confident one can be on the same outing, both among giraffe. Even swimming with your horse has a gentle, affordable version in Bonaire.

If you can canter and stay in control, and you want the trip of your life, this is where the big ones live. Cantering among giraffe in Botswana and galloping with the migration in Kenya is the one I genuinely cannot stop thinking about, and it is for confident riders only. Mongolia's steppe is the purest free-riding adventure left, days in the saddle on a tough semi-wild horse. Rajasthan on a Marwari, the war horse whose ears curve inward until the tips touch, is a spirited palace-to-palace ride for intermediate riders and up. The full Wadi Rum crossing in Jordan means long canters across open desert and nights camped with the Bedouin. And the famous beach gallop in the Camargue is for riders who can truly canter on a forward horse.

Or start from the dream

Sometimes you do not care about the difficulty, you just know the feeling you are chasing. Sorted that way:

• Wildlife: the African riding safari, hands down. Nothing else puts you inside the herd instead of watching it from a truck.
• Water: swim with your horse, gentle and affordable in Bonaire or full bucket-list at Nihi Sumba in Indonesia.
• Cowboy: a real working ranch week in Wyoming, Montana, or Colorado, with your own horse and actual cattle.
• History you can ride into: sunrise at the pyramids of Giza, Petra and Wadi Rum, or Monument Valley with the people whose land it is.
• Another planet: Iceland's tolt across the lava fields, or Mongolia's endless steppe.
• Old-world beauty: the white horses of the Camargue and Europe's most beautiful rides, from Spain to Portugal to Ireland.
• Down under: the high country of Australia and New Zealand, straight out of The Man from Snowy River.

My honest favorites

Since I always tell you what I really think: the African riding safari is the one that got under my skin and has not left. Swimming with a horse in the ocean is the most purely joyful thing I found in the entire series. And Monument Valley surprised me most, because I went in expecting scenery and came out caring far more about riding restricted ground with Navajo guides than about the photographs, which are also unreal.

The part that ties every one of these together

Here is the thread through all of them. Not one of these is something you book off a website with a credit card and simply hope for the best. Every single one runs through a small, specialized operator, and the whole game is matching the right one to your riding level, your dates, and what you actually want out of the trip. That matching is the part I handle, and on most of these it costs you nothing extra to book through me.

So if any one of these has been sitting in the back of your mind, tell me which one. Email me or send me a DM, tell me honestly where you are as a rider, and I will help you find the ride that is yours.

Talk soon, Cindi