Bandits and Bureaucrats

TIt seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Go to Russia, befriend
the Cossacks, buy a stallion and then trot him more than 2,500 miles
back to England. Of course the Soviet Union had just collapsed and no
one had ever been allowed to ride out of that communist empire. But such
minor obstacles didn't deter the author of this singular book.
"Bandits and Bureaucrats" unfolds in 1995 when unstable political
conditions allowed Basha O'Reilly to travel through a recently
off-limits country. What she found was a nation in unexpected
transition. Emerging from decades of brutal governance, for a brief
moment in time Russia's rules were no longer enforced and a rare
opportunity existed to cross the secretive nation on horseback.
Unexpected discoveries quickly followed. Because of decades of
communist repression, ordinary people had never seen a woman in the
saddle and in a landscape devoid of fences Basha rode from Russia into
Belarus simply by crossing a river.
Though she relished the simplicity of this new life, the author had to
contend with the harsh realities of equestrian travel including KGB
interviews, risky rapists and horse-hating bureaucrats. With its rich
details, the book qualifies as an important addition to the history of
equestrian travel. Yet there is more to this tale than reaching a
distant geographic goal.
Written by one of the foremost female equestrian explorers alive today,
Basha's story explains how the journey encouraged her to change the
direction of her life. When the western obsession with possessions was
replaced with a love of personal liberty, what appeared to be the end of
a journey was only the beginning of a life lived at the gallop.
Sometimes our soul's song stirs. The ice that has confined us begins to
crack. Lethargy burns off in the heat of a newly-discovered passion.
Gypsy blood, long denied, sings to a moon long ignored. And our life is
suddenly taken away from where we lived, from what we knew, from who we
were. Here is the tale of how a brave woman discovered a horse that took
her past frontiers, both physical and spiritual, into a new history, a
new life, and a new name.
The result is that this is not a simple travel tale. It is the
remarkable story of a woman's transformation and the magnificent Cossack
stallion that went on to become the symbol of the international Long
Riders' Guild.