Riding 400km in 5 days | Shahzada 2017

Hi there!

I realized I never actually made a video of the time Ijjou and I went to Australia for the first time to ride Shahzada (5x 80k endurance ride).

What an incredible experience it was!! Huge huge thank you to the Noble family and Emma Holland for having us and letting us, two complete strangers, ride their horses. And a huge thank you to everyone there for being so welcoming and helping us with this challenging ride.

Ijjou got to ride the full 400km which meant getting up at 3.30am and starting at 04.00am 5 days in a row. Everyday there's two 40k long, very challenging loops to ride. This video really doesn't do it justice, during the hardest parts we needed two hands and couldn't film haha. At the end of the video you can see Ijjou going up 'the steps'. Which is just one of the challenging parts of the ride. So often you had to climb up pretty steep mountains on paths that were just a little wider than your shoulders. Quite scary for two Dutch riders who are used to flat terrain :'). Sadly I had to withdraw during the first day but still got to see parts of the track on foot.

Really hope to go back there and try again one day. This was honestly the most challenging ride I have ever started and the atmosphere was incredible. So many kind people, so much fun.

Thank you for having us! :-)

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