3 Years and 6,000 Miles on a Horse | Short Film Showcase

When I was 21 years old, I found myself in the Gobi Desert, and that's when I first came across these amazing nomadic people. So, I came up with this idea that I too could get up on a horse and ride all the way from Mongolia to the edge of the steppe in Hungary, and to ride through Kazakhstan, southern Russia, Crimea, and Ukraine. Learning to look at the world through the eyes of nomads.

The only problem was: I couldn't ride a horse. I set off, and within five days, my world had come crashing down. The horses were stolen. Life on the steppe without a horse is like being on the ocean without a yacht. Yeah, you're really in trouble.

I kind of miraculously found them. The guys who had my horse said, "Well, you must have tied them really badly. They came to meet themselves." But they taught me a very valuable lesson. There’s this Mongol saying that if you ever have to rush in life, rush slowly.

Why are you rushing while you're trying to leave this place? You're just cursing yourself. That was a turning point for me on this trip: just to let go of my plans and to accept that humans don’t get to dictate; it’s the environment that decides when you can leave, when you can go.

Time is more measured by the rise and fall of the sun, the seasons, by the availability of grass. I planned the journey to take 18 months, and it was three and a half years by the time I arrived on the Danube. By that stage, I couldn't live without horses, and there's no turning back after a journey like that.