tent

Abigail Aguirre has been sleeping terribly.

Too many times, she said, residents of a nearby homeless encampment have partied late into the night — sometimes yelling, sometimes blasting music. The noise is especially hard on her husband, who frequently leaves for his job before 5 a.m.

“Oh my God, they don’t let us sleep,” said Aguirre, whose home sits just east of the 110 Freeway in South Los Angeles. “They do drugs in there. They play the loud music. They don’t care.”

Three years ago, workers with Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program moved dozens of homeless people from Aguirre’s neighborhood into nearby hotels and motels. Sanitation crews cleared the streets and sidewalks of trash.

But more people, and their tents, kept arriving, not just near Aguirre’s home but on many of the east-west streets that pass over the 110 south of downtown: 43rd, 49th, 51st and Vernon Avenue, to name a few.

Unsheltered homelessness — people living on the street or in their vehicles — went up nearly 8% citywide in this year’s homeless count, dealing a setback to Bass, who is running for reelection and has made homelessness a core part of her agenda.

The streets that line the 110 Freeway between 42nd and 58th are a potent symbol of the challenges facing Bass and her program. According to records obtained by The Times, outreach workers carried out Inside Safe operations 25 times on that one-mile stretch during her first three years as mayor, returning again and again to bring people indoors.

Frank Gordon, 51, has been living on Cahuenga Boulevard at the 101 Freeway in Hollywood. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program has moved people indoors from that location several times since 2022.

During one operation, Inside Safe brought 42 people inside. A month later, 54 more people came indoors. On other occasions, progress was measured in single digits: two people during one visit, five on another, eight on the next.

Despite those efforts, many of the overpasses and side streets still have encampments. Things have been especially grim on the 51st Street overpass, where tents, makeshift structures and huge mounds of trash lined the sidewalks. In the street, a refrigerator missing a door was on its back, overflowing with garbage.

Joel Galarza, who lives in a house nearby, said the encampment has brought crime, fires, prostitution, open-air drug use and other problems. In May, a man was found stabbed on the overpass.

Galarza said his family has called the city and the LAPD many times, only to see the situation get worse.

“It feels like there’s no more hope, that your voice doesn’t matter,” he said.

Since taking office, Bass has made the removal of street encampments a top priority, arguing that they are unsafe both for unhoused residents and for the neighbors. She said early on that Angelenos will not view her work as a success until their communities are free of tents.

Inside Safe, her signature homeless program, has moved more than 6,200 people into hotels, motels and other interim housing. But by June 30, 43% of them were back on the street, with some getting kicked out and others walking away.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, left, and residents of Venice thank Mayor Karen Bass in 2023 for overseeing efforts to move more than 100 people into temporary housing from sidewalks in Venice.

Bass, in an interview, said she understands the frustration of people who live near the encampments. She said she hopes to overhaul the city’s approach to the crisis in the coming months by securing greater control over services such as medical care, addiction treatment and case management.

At the same time, she contends that her administration has made major strides, keeping about 80% of the locations visited by Inside Safe free of tents in recent weeks.

“Inside Safe has been a success in terms of getting people off the streets and clearing encampments,” Bass said. “What Inside Safe has not been able to do is reach the scale that is needed.”

Bass said Inside Safe has conducted 137 encampment operations so far, when many more are needed. To expand the program’s reach, the city will need to move away from expensive hotels and motels and toward high-quality homeless shelters, the mayor said.

1

2

1. A man sits with his belongings on Cahuenga Boulevard under the 101 freeway in Hollywood. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times) 2. A torn copy of a notice announcing a cleanup of homeless encampments hangs from a stop sign along Grand Avenue at 51st Street in South Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The repopulation issues have not been limited to the 110 corridor. By December, the end of Bass’ third year, 23 Inside Safe areas across the city — about a fifth of the total at that time — had received at least five visits from the mayor’s outreach team, records show.

Inside Safe went to a handful of streets just east of MacArthur Park 10 times over two years. In Hollywood, around Franklin and Argyle avenues, the program conducted eight operations over 18 months.

By the fourth quarter of 2025, 80% of Inside Safe encampment operations — 36 out of 45 — involved areas that had repopulated, records show. Nine were new to the program.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor against Bass, said Inside Safe is ineffective and too expensive, forcing taxpayers to pay a premium to “shuffle people around rather than get them housed for good.”

“When 40% of the people who participated in the program return to homelessness, and some locations need repeat outreach visits five, 10, even 25 times, it tells us that something is wrong,” she said in a statement.

Bass and her team said many of the most problem-plagued Inside Safe locations are at freeway overpasses, which are attractive to homeless people because they provide shelter from scorching summer sun and the winter’s pouring rain. Freeways and industrial areas are also popular because they provide some degree of privacy, they said.

In some cases, people move to an Inside Safe location hoping to be offered housing, just as previous residents were, Bass said.

In other cases, she said, people have returned to the street because they need intensive care, such as a psychiatric bed. Those beds, which are provided by L.A. County, are not always available, Bass said.

Estela Lopez, head of the Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District, which represents businesses in Skid Row, said repopulation happens for a simple reason: a lack of enforcement. Once an encampment is cleared and people are moved indoors, police should be allowed to enforce city laws and make sure an area stays clear, she said.

A pedestrian walks into the street to get around a homeless encampment on Alameda Street. The Inside Safe program went to that area 12 times over a single year.

Lopez said she regularly receives complaints about a row of encampments on Alameda Street between 4th and 6th streets. Inside Safe visited that two-block stretch 12 times last year, records show.

Last month, the area had about a dozen tents, which forced pedestrians to leave the sidewalk and walk on Alameda, where large trucks travel to and from nearby industrial businesses.

Lopez offered another reason that homeless people keep coming back.

“That’s where the drugs are,” she said. “It’s Skid Row, and Skid Row is where the drugs are, and has the fewest consequences for open-air drug use and sales.”

Bass’ first Inside Safe operation, more than three years ago, hit a stretch of Cahuenga Boulevard under the 101 Freeway in Hollywood, an area represented by Raman.

Inside Safe went to Cahuenga and the 101 six times over 18 months, according to the city’s records. Two blocks south, the program made five separate visits to Franklin and Cahuenga.

Frank Gordon said that he and his girlfriend lived in an RV on Cahuenga next to the 101 during the COVID era, when the streets were lined with encampments. Outreach workers eventually moved them into the Stuart Hotel in Westlake, he said.

From there, the couple relocated to the Highland Gardens, a hotel in Raman’s district converted into homeless housing. Gordon said they left the facility after one of their rooms was destroyed in a fire, going to yet another interim housing site.

Last month, they were back at Cahuenga and the 101. He called it “familiar ground.”

Sanitation crews remove belongings from a homeless encampment during an Inside Safe operation on Laurel Canyon Blvd. in North Hollywood in March.

Kevin Paz, who has been sleeping on the 51st Street overpass in South L.A., said he used to live a few blocks away. He still has friends in the area, including high school classmates.

“It made more sense to stay here than to live anywhere else,” he said.

Seated on the overpass on a swelteringly hot day, the 32-year-old said he picked his particular strip of sidewalk for the shade it gets from the elevated 110 Freeway carpool lane. He said he would accept a motel room if offered one.

“Honestly, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Hey, I wanna go live on that street,’” he said.

Bass’ team has highlighted the scores of locations where encampments have not returned. They pointed to the success of an Inside Safe operation at 6th and Fairfax, where the sidewalk was later narrowed and new landscaping was planted, making it difficult to camp there.

West of downtown, streets and sidewalks also remain clear around Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, where 48 people were brought indoors in April 2025. To keep people from living in their cars at that location, city crews turned a stretch of Washington Boulevard into a no-parking zone, Bass’ team said.

Even some places that had severe repopulation issues are now clear of tents.

In Harbor City, Inside Safe went to the same intersection a dozen times between 2023 and 2025. That location has been free of encampments for 17 months, said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represents the area.

McOsker credited the mayor’s team, as well as his staff, for going to the location over and over to offer interim housing to new arrivals. He also asked a group that delivers glass pipes and clean hypodermic needles to relocate, saying the service was attracting newcomers to an area that had been cleared.

In Baldwin Hills, Inside Safe workers went to Jim Gilliam Park 14 times over three years. Last week, encampments no longer occupied the grassy area around the tennis courts on La Brea Avenue or the sidewalks along the nearby Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex.

Johnnie Raines III, who serves on the local neighborhood council, knows some of the people Inside Safe brought indoors. He said the program has been “life-changing” for them.

Still, Raines, 79, has no illusions about the challenges the city faces.

“If you house these three people that are in this space today, three more will show up,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that you were not successful in housing the first three people. That just means that three more people come.”

Elmer Roldan, who lives in South Los Angeles, points out the spot where an encampment burned on Grand Avenue near 54th Street.

In the neighborhoods that abut the 110 in South L.A., some residents have lost patience.

Elmer Roldan, who lives on 55th Street, said some of his homeless neighbors have been causing fires — sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. Earlier this year, he called 911 after seeing a man set fire to vines hanging from the freeway’s sound wall.

Roldan, who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in June, said he sees plenty of people living in their vehicles, but fewer tents. Still, he said, it’s been demoralizing to have so many come back.

“I certainly don’t want it to get worse,” he said.

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

I HAVE never really been one for camping.

The thought of huddling around a dimming campfire with a cold drizzle hanging in the air would normally fill me with dread.

But that’s before I discovered TentBox.

After a weekend away in Dorset, this little gadget changed my mind on camping entirely . . .  and I had the time of my life.

Unlike other tents, TentBox – which attaches to the roof of your car, positioning you high above the ground — adds a certain sophistication to the outdoorsy experience.

We didn’t have to carefully peg it down, nor spend the best part of our evening inflating a mattress.

Bank on it

Full list of bank holidays around the UK in 2027 – including four-day weekends

REST & RELAX

First look at £24million UK holiday resort with swimming pools, saunas & bars

And instead of wasting hours faffing with poles, this shortened our camping set-up time to less than ten minutes.

Although, a word of warning, if you’re not very tall (like me), be prepared for it to take a little longer as you struggle to reach the roof of your car.

Luckily, you don’t need to be a camping pro either.

The hardest part of the set-up is firmly securing the box to your car roof — you will need roof bars for that and can check your car’s compatibility easily online (there are certain weight limits on smaller cars).

Once that is out of the way, all you need to do is unzip the sides, pull down the ladder, and pop the tent up.

Simple, right? Once you have clambered inside, you will find a comfy foam mattress, enough space for two to four people (depending on the TentBox model) and even skylights, so on a clear night you can stargaze in your PJs.

The highlight for me, however, was being able to avoid invading creepy crawlies thanks to our rooftop perch.

With the TentBox fitted, we made our way to Sweet Hill Farm, which cost us just £13pp per night — much less than a Dorset hotel room — and it came with much better views, too.

At the very tip of the Isle of Portland peninsula, Sweet Hill Farm is strictly a no-frills spot, made up of just four fields with basic compost toilets, cold water taps and hot showers that cost £1 for three minutes of water.

But for non-campers like me, you can still get a flavour of luxury.

A short walk away from the pitches is a wellness area, home to an icy cold plunge bath and a converted horsebox sauna, which costs £15 for an hour and a half session. Well worth it.

There is an on-site cafe, too, surrounded by picnic tables. It’s great for when you are too lazy to spark up the campfire or need your morning coffee and bacon sarnie.

If you are up to campfire cooking, Kitchenbox does excellent camping sets that come with a stove, saucepan, chopping board, dishes, cutlery and a windbreak.

Scrambled egg and ham baguettes became our easy go-to.

When the weather took an unfortunate turn, we were packed up and heading towards a sunnier patch in minutes.

Chesil Beach, which connects Portland to the mainland, is a great spot for views — and it stretches for 18 miles.

While it is stoney and not the ideal sunbathing spot, the sights of the Jurassic Coast on a bright day are incredible and sweep across the white cliffs to the steep hills of Portland.

Head to nearby Cove House Inn for hearty grub. This 18th-century pub sits right on Chesil Beach’s esplanade and has been on my radar for a while, after it made the Big 7 Travel list of the 25 best spots for a seaside pint last year.

For classic seaside fun, Weymouth is less than a 20-minute ride down the coast from here.

Then you can make your way over to Durdle Door, or Boscombe and then Bournemouth, if you fancy.

Thanks to sweltering heat, the stretching golden sands of Bournemouth Beach were calling.

By this point, we had saved so much cash by ditching expensive beachside hotel rooms that we were able to treat ourselves to an Aperol Spritz and a cold beer on Bournemouth Pier.

It was an ideal way to toast to an adventure-filled weekend. Perhaps one of many camping adventures to come . . . 

Private militias, skinheads, neo-Nazis, homophobes, gun zealots, xenophobes, jingoists, anti-Semites and the whole sorry lot who advocate violence against minorities–which party will they vote for in this year’s national elections? In spite of sanctimonious and pious distancing from these groups, Republican candidates will reap their overwhelming support.

A powerful magnetism has existed between extremist right-wing groups in America and the Republican Party for more than six decades, since the days of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. During the Great Depression, fringe leaders included William Dudley Pelley and his brigades of anti-Semitic Silver Shirts, radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin and his Christian Front, Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee, Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund. In the early 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy initiated witch-hunting that revived the dormant bigotries of the 1930s and sustained the GOP majorities in Congress. In the 1960s, the John Birch Society, protagonists of the antifluoridation hysteria and other extreme right-wing groups stepped forward to buttress Barry Goldwater’s candidacy. Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children (from homosexuals) and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority followed on their heels in the 1970s.

Now, a host of other organizations led by the Christian Coalition have replaced communists with homosexuals as the leading enemy of “all we hold dear” and as a potent fund-raising tool.

The naked hatreds of the past have become more sophisticated in the last three decades, but they are still alive behind the rhetoric of religious leaders, conservative think tanks and radio commentators.

The Republican Party has been the target of insurgency by such groups and, in times of political difficulty, has even courted them. Their increasing influence over the years has discouraged and driven out many in the GOP with more moderate stances. Some, including me, never took too seriously the party’s complicity in the ascent of the extremists. Over the years, the Republican Party has fostered such groups, often covertly, sometimes even publicly denouncing them in a mutually understood act of pragmatic politics.

This dynamic has spawned the continuing battle in the GOP between the forces of intolerance, isolationism and extremism and the “moderate” defenders of inclusivity. Pat Buchanan and Bob Dole are now re-creating this decades-old pantomime.

This battle was brought into the living rooms of America with the TV coverage of the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. It was there that Buchanan, as spokesman for the extremists, urged delegates to choose sides in a “cultural” and “religious war” to change the very definition of America. His speech, while met by an enthusiastic throng at the convention, triggered concern in much of the viewing audience. The GOP’s long flirtation with its radical-right fringe, an open secret in the sanctums of Republican decision makers, became the subject of debate across the nation.

Two years later, a somewhat softened rhetoric was successful in sweeping the GOP into power by emphasizing Americans’ deep disaffection with the status quo. Interpreting the 1994 election results as a mandate, both the GOP right and the lunatic fringe now demand more influence in the party and the leadership seems happy to oblige.

This struggle for power has helped polarize American politics, exacerbating religious antipathies, stigmatizing minorities and heightening mistrust between citizen and government. The present danger of extremism to American democracy proves that the United States is not immune to the life-and-death evil of bigotry and intolerance that has afflicted other nations.

The Republican Party’s much touted “big tent” has provided a haven for bigotry for more than six decades; the party has never dared break the ties between itself and the intolerant right. As the extremists become stronger, the moderates become weaker. It is too late.

Recently, Buchanan lashed out at the GOP’s “lords and barons” and called on his followers to hoist their “pitchforks” to oust them from the party. For those of us who are neither lords and barons nor pitchfork brandishers, but who want a country better for all of us tomorrow than it is today, the “big tent” is one that we’ve been forced to abandon by those who fill it now.

June 13 (UPI) — One person is dead and 22 others injured when a large tent collapsed at an outdoor church service Friday evening in Virginia.

The accident happened at East Lake Community Church in Moneta, Va., in the western part of the state. Moneta is about 25 miles from Roanoke.

“Prior to the collapse, a severe storm cell moved through the area, bringing heavy rain, lightning, and strong winds,” Bedford County said in a press release. “The weather conditions caused the tent structure to fail.”

Of the injured, 11 were taken to hospitals.

The tent had passed an inspection conducted by the Bedford County Division of Building Inspections on June 9, the county said.

The church was celebrating its 20-year anniversary.

Pastor Troy Keaton said in a statement that he had just walked to the stage to release congregants to their cars when a burst of wind lifted the tent.

“Sadly one of our dear brothers suffered a fatal injury,” Keaton said. “Our hearts are broken for his precious family.”

The man’s identity hasn’t been released.

“We would appreciate your prayers and your patience as we navigate this situation,” the church said. “We are trusting in the Lord for his care, strength and help.”

Rawalpindi, Pakistan – On a cold January morning, Anum Shakoor gallops across a field, wrapped in a black shawl that billows behind her as she charges forward, a 1.8-metre (6ft) lance gripped tightly in her hand.

The 30-year-old has already claimed her first peg. The second lies close ahead.

Her horse tears across the dry earth, kicking up a cloud of dust that hangs in the air as she charges forward. A few metres out, Shakoor lowers the lance, steadying her aim and bracing for impact.

She misses by 2.5cm (1 inch).

A collective gasp ripples through the crowded bleachers. Many onlookers shake their heads. Some look away.

Shakoor exhales and slows her horse to a walk. Around her are the desolate, windswept fields on the outskirts of Rawalpindi in northern Punjab province.

And there are men, most of them wearing turbans. Men with “dhol” (drums) hanging from their necks. And men whose fathers had ridden before them and their fathers before their fathers. The men who take pride in the ancient sport, some of whom perhaps are not ready to accept that women are now participating in an overwhelmingly male “neza baazi”, or tent pegging, a high-stakes sport in which horse riders gallop across a field to pierce a buried wooden target.

The field is lined with thousands of male spectators, gathered to watch the teams of riders charging one after the other at a small wooden peg buried in the ground, trying to pierce it cleanly and carry it forward on their lance.

The event is known as a “mela” in Punjabi, a carnival-like competition typically held on the outskirts of the garrison city.

The beat of drums intertwined with the sharp bursts of the shehnai (oboe), traditionally played in weddings, pierces the cold winter air. Salespeople call out to the crowds from bustling stalls selling cardamom tea and varieties of fried fritters.

Before the competition starts, riders mount their adorned horses, some of which are dressed in embroidered velvet gowns. Others have braided manes or brass bells ringing softly at their necks.

One of the 74 teams competing in this year’s mela is Shakoor’s Bint-e-Zahra Club, Pakistan’s first female-only tent-pegging club. It has three other riders: Eshal Ibrahim and Noor un Nisa Malik, both 16, and Sehrish Awan, a 32-year-old mother of two competing for the first time in a mela.

Shakoor says the club was formed in 2025 after she reached a “frustrating realisation” that female riders practised and played only in mixed clubs. “We wanted to give women riders a stage for training so they can form a community,” she says.

The women are an unusual sight at a competition that has almost entirely male riding teams, mainly male fans and even male musicians.

So when Bint-e-Zahra’s members prepare to make their run, the audience is in for a rare sight. Photographers, vloggers and locals rush to film them, surrounding them from all sides.

Ibrahim is accompanied by her mother, who trails closely behind her, keeping a careful eye on her teenage daughter.

“I cannot even take pictures of her in the crowd,” says Fatima Adeel, who accompanies Ibrahim to every mela. “I am in charge of her. I cannot leave a teenage girl alone in a sea of men.”

Shakoor agrees.

“Any woman who wants to come in this sport should be encouraged so she can gain the respect she deserves in the sport,” she says. “Our society cannot bear a woman’s lead in any field.”

‘No concept of a player’

Several kilometres away, Ayesha Khan, 22, gallops on Sawa, the horse she has ridden since she was eight, for a practice run with her club.

She was 17 when her father encouraged her to try out for the women’s national team. A year later, she was the only woman selected for Pakistan’s under-21 mixed gender team and was sent to South Africa for a tournament to compete against a team that had four girls and one boy.

“I was hit with the realisation of how tent pegging is conditioned to appear masculine in Pakistan. But my father and brothers taught me riding when I was five. I used to be the only child riding a horse between adults,” Khan says, describing herself as “addicted” to riding.

Khan joined the women’s team in 2022 and quickly worked her way up to becoming its captain. That same year, she took the women’s team to Jordan, where it competed against 13 countries.

“We came third,” Khan recalls proudly. “Yet that was the only trip that the Pakistani women’s team competed in internationally. Before that trip, never. After that, never again.”

In 2024, the International Tent Pegging Federation organised an open international competition in Jordan. Pakistan sent a men-only team although the event was open to women. It was simply assumed that only men would want to go.

“In Pakistan, we don’t have the concept of a player,” Khan tells Al Jazeera. “We have the concept of male and female. Unless there is a women-only event, our federation exclusively sends male teams.”

But Khan persisted. At 20, she became the first Pakistani woman to compete against and beat 70 male riders at a mela. Today, she captains Pakistan’s only all-women tent pegging team.

How women entered the sport

The event near Rawalpindi that Shakoor attended was organised by Samiullah Barsa, a 27-year-old United States national of Pakistani origin, as part of his wedding celebrations.

“No wedding is complete without neza baazi,” says Barsa, who is dressed in a blazing red waistcoat and cowboy boots.

His family emigrated in the 1980s from the Punjab city of Gujrat to the US state of Ohio, where they own a stable and host annual melas. Last year, their mela drew more than 2,000 visitors, Barsa says.

Barsa recalls the first time he saw women compete in tent pegging. In 2015, he attended a mela at Kot Fateh Khan in Attock district, an hour from the capital, Islamabad, and the hometown of Malik Ata, fondly remembered as “Baba-e neza baazi” (the father of tent pegging).

Ata was a politician who came from an influential feudal family in Kot Fateh Khan. He was also a legendary equestrian who organised grand melas and invited hundreds of teams from across Pakistan to compete in various equestrian sports, including neza baazi.

At the first such grand mela, Ata invited the Australian women’s tent-pegging team, setting the stage for Pakistani women to embrace the sport.

In 2021, the Equestrian Federation of Pakistan, established by Ata, sponsored six girls to train under a South African coach. Khan was among those who made the journey to South Africa. She credits Ata for laying the roots of female participation in Pakistani tent pegging.

Barsa says Ata’s contribution to the sport cannot be denied and it was time for women to have their own teams.

“Everywhere along the world, women and men have separate competition. For instance, in football or in cricket, have you ever seen women competing against men?” he asks. “When female teams lose against male teams, they lose hope and don’t come forward.”

But has it been easy for women to pursue the sport?

Not really, both Khan and Shakoor say.

‘I never gave up’

Shakoor says there is tremendous social pressure on girls and women to conform to roles defined by the patriarchy.

“My mother has told me multiple times that I have to get married. But since I am part of such a manly sport, she worries how will I get good proposals. My sister did so too, but I never gave up,” she says.

“My brother stood up for me and told my mother that I am excelling in my passion. He asked her to let me live my life.”

Khan is relatively young, so marriage is not a concern for now. But she has heard relatives whisper to her mother: “It is probably just a phase. She should focus on her studies.”

Before going to a mela, Khan tries to find out details about the organisers. With the events often spanning two or three days, she also asks whether there are separate enclosures for women. Most riding fields have none or few restrooms or spaces for prayers for women.

In Pakistan, tent pegging is mainly played in northern Punjab, where villages and spacious fields stretch along the Ravi River, allowing the horses to freely run.

Khan says many girls have reached out to her wanting to pursue tent pegging. But most of them don’t have family support. And then there are financial and structural obstacles, which compound women’s lack of access to the sport.

“Not everyone has the privilege of owning a horse, especially women, who are already restricted by society,” Ibrahim says.

Even if you are able to own one, there is a significant cost attached to their upkeep. A horse’s monthly feed averages 30,000 to 35,000 Pakistani rupees ($107 to $125), which is nearly the monthly minimum wage in Punjab. Caretaker fees and rental charges more than double that amount.

“It’s a class thing. Everything related to horses is,” Khan says. A sporting horse costs about $1,500 in Pakistan.

Shakoor agrees. She says she was able to buy a horse after saving from her monthly salary as a manager for a global microfinance network. “You can’t put a price on passion,” she says, using a Punjabi saying.

She says she puts her horse before everything, even her own meals or health. “If I am sick, I do not care about my medicine,” she says. “But I lose sleep if my horse is sick.”

But the high cost of the sport also means many opportunities are lost. Shakoor says she has missed several tent-pegging events because she could not afford to haul her horse across cities for multiple days of competitions.

“Had I had any financial support through sponsorship, I would not have missed those events,” she says.

For Barsa’s event alone, Shakoor’s team spent more than 100,000 rupees ($358), which included the cost of transporting five horses, their feed and lodging.

Similarly, at the national tent pegging trials, every rider must bring their own horse, a rule that shuts out anyone who cannot afford transport, let alone own a horse.

Awan, the 32-year-old mother of two children, used to ride horses as a hobby and began visiting melas to observe how tent pegging was played. Intrigued by the sport, she reached out to Shakoor on Instagram, asking to become a member of Bint-e-Zahra.

In recent years, videos featuring female riders have gained millions of views on Instagram and TikTok, sometimes surpassing their male counterparts. Khan and Zoya Mir, the vice captain of the national tent pegging team, run joint TikTok and Instagram accounts, Equestrians In Green, where they post about their sporting victories.

Some videos show the women playing neza baazi in slow motion, picking up a peg mid-gallop or emerging from clouds of dust dressed in their club’s gear, often set to trendy music and paired with captions that challenge the stereotypical association of horse riding with men. Some of these videos have millions of views.

But the social media visibility also comes at a cost.

Khan recalls a viral video of women riders wearing turbans at a mela, causing a backlash from veteran male riders who claimed “women were polluting the sport.”

The turban, traditionally worn by men as a mark of their social position as well as a defining part of a horse rider’s identity, takes on an added significance in neza baazi. For some, women wearing it is seen as a challenge to a space long associated with male authority.

But the riders at the Rawalpindi mela push ahead despite the vitriol. They wear their turbans with pride – Awan tying hers over a red niqab that covers half of her face while Shakoor has hers pulled low, the way her mentor taught her.

Shakoor pulls up a photo from her Instagram account, which has more than 8,000 followers. Two riders wearing turbans pluck a peg side by side. The dip of their lances, the slight sway of their bodies, the moment of lift are all nearly identical.

“This is a picture of me with my mentor Chaudry Nazakat Hussain, my true inspiration,” she says. “He encouraged me to create Bint-e-Zahra.”

Last year, a mela held in Jathli in Rawalpindi’s Tehsil Gujjar Khan had 50 participating teams with nearly 200 riders – all male except Shakoor, Ibrahim and Malik. Representing the Bint-e-Zahra Club, Shakoor fought her way into the last seven in the team captains’ round, which is a recent addition in melas in which the captain of each club runs for a position.

Shakoor, the only woman among the final seven qualifying riders, did not secure a position but considers being included a feat nonetheless. “In the captains’ round, horses are assigned to riders randomly. This minimises odds of performing better. A sportsman is known for their skill, not their horse,” she says.

Of all the lessons the sport has taught her, Shakoor says the most valuable has been courage.

“This is a sport of the brave. If you don’t have the heart for it, it’s not for you,” she says. “Passion and dedication have no gender. … We don’t want to prove we are better than men. We only want equal respect.”