Kayla Welsh Say hello

Horses

I work and travel around the world, drawn to places where horses are still at the heart of the culture.

Kayla smiling at a grey horse she holds by the reins, on golden grassland below the snowy spires of Fitz Roy, Patagonia
Patagonia · below Fitz Roy on the Gaucho Derby, 2024

The Gaucho Derby

The Gaucho Derby is one of the toughest horse races in the world: days of riding across Patagonia on local horses, navigating yourself, camping wild and changing horses along the way.

I rode it in 2024 and finished in the adventure category.

A bay horse grazing on the Patagonian steppe under a pink evening sky
A dun horse in a halter, tied to a post in the shade of southern beech trees

Patagonia · on the Gaucho Derby route, 2024

Patagonia · Gaucho Derby race film, 2024 · by The Equestrianists

The Chaar horse project

The Chaar is an ancient spotted horse of the Kyrgyz nomads, being brought back from near-extinction. I built the project's first website, so it could reach visitors from around the world and raise more money for the breed. I'm in charge of its media, and I helped run the first and second annual expeditions through the Tien Shan, in 2025 and 2026.

As a thank-you, the project gave me one of its stallions: Chaarlie is my horse, and this year he got his own herd of 18 mares.

A lone tent pitched below snow peaks
Horses grazing below a glaciated ridge

Kyrgyzstan · the Chaar expedition, 2025

Head portrait of a leopard-spotted horse
A leopard-spotted horse grazing, close up
Two spotted horses lying down in a meadow
A spotted horse alone on a ridge

Kyrgyzstan · the Chaar horses, 2025

Kayla laughing with Chaarlie, a white leopard-spotted stallion, his head beside her
Chaarlie standing in a wide green valley with Kayla beside him
Kayla with Chaarlie at camp, Alice Shirley and a black horse behind them

Kyrgyzstan · Chaarlie, my horse, 2025

A loose herd of Chaar horses below a glacier wall in the Tien Shan

Kyrgyzstan · the Chaar herd below the ice, 2025

Around the world

A rainbow-bordered postcard of riders at a Moroccan fantasia, held in Kayla's hand
Morocco · a postcard from my eight months there, 2022–23

I've ridden and worked with horses all over the world. In Kazakhstan I joined Cross Cultural Chairs: 15 of us and two Kazakh saddle makers made five saddles in two weeks as art pieces and showed them at the Kasteev Museum in Almaty. We made a film about it too, Astride. In Georgia, Tusheti Tour invited me to document their five-day ride through Vashlovani.

I also love looking after horses and pets.

Kayla's saddle, deep blue, on a white trestle in front of an orange cloth hung on the open steppe
A rider on a dark bay horse on a grassy hillside below forested mountains, Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan · my saddle for Cross Cultural Chairs, 2022

Kazakhstan · Astride, the film, 2022 · directed by David Leon Fiene, on NOWNESS

Ushba mirrored in a mountain lake, Svaneti
Riders at a lake below the Shkhara glacier

Georgia · Vashlovani and Svaneti, 2025 · Vashlovani filmed for Tusheti Tour

A mounted eagle hunter above the valley

Mongolia · eagle hunters of Bayan-Ölgii, 2025 · with Erik Cooper Adventures