Horses Like Lightning

A tender account - by turns cultural exploration and memoir of a young woman's firsthand experience of change and continuity in one of the worlds most remote regions, through the lens of the horse and "horse culture."

At nineteen, Sienna Craig made her first venture deep into Mustang, an ethnically Tibetan area of Nepal, in the rainshadow of the Himalayas. As an equestrian and a buddhing anthropologist, she sought not only to understand what it was like to rely on horses to navigate through the windswept valleys and plains of High Asia, but also to grasp how horses lent meaning to the lives of the Mustangi people. Through living and working with local Tibetan doctors, veterinarians, and other horse experts, as well as the deep friendships she formed, Sienna began to understand the region's history, and the way life in Mustang was being transformed in the face of temendous social, political, and economic shifts. She learned much about herself and her life's course through her year in Mustang—a place that came to feel, for all its foreignness, like home.