Sumba on Horseback: Swimming With the Sandalwood Ponies and the Island They Come From
Updated: 1 day ago
By Olalekan Apanisile · September 2026
The tide has pulled back far enough. Your horseman checks the water, nods, and you ride the pony down the wet sand into the Indian Ocean at Nihiwatu Beach. There is no saddle. The water reaches the animal's neck, and for a few strides it is swimming, and so are you. Thirty minutes later you are back on the sand, salt drying on both of you, the cliffs above catching the first light.
Trip Snapshot
Region: Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
Ideal Duration: 7+ days
Best Season: Year-round; the dry months from April to October give the most reliable riding and sea conditions
Starting Point: Bali (Denpasar), with a connecting flight to Tambolaka, Sumba
The Sandalwood Ponies
The horses are small and tougher than they look, rarely much above thirteen hands. They are Sumba ponies, also called Sandalwood horses, named for the fragrant timber the island shipped to China, Java and Europe for centuries. Generations of local stock crossed with Arab and other imported blood produced an animal built for heat, thin feed and long distances, with a forward temperament that shows the moment you ask for pace.
On Sumba the horse is not recreation. It carries bride wealth between clans, stands at funerals, signals rank, and rides in Pasola, the ritual spear contest fought on the western beaches each year after the nyale sea worms appear. At Nihi, the Sandalwood Stables keeps a working string of these ponies, looked after by Sumbanese grooms who ride them daily. The rides are led by people who read both the horse and the ground in front of it, which is what makes walking a guest bareback into the surf a judged decision rather than a stunt.
Riding the Ricefields
The river and ricefield trail is the ride that leaves the coast behind. Within an hour the scrub gives way to terraced paddies that step down the hillsides in long curved bands, each level held by a low earth wall and flooded to its own depth, so the whole slope reads as a run of mirrors catching the sky.
You ride the walls themselves in single file, the ponies picking their footing along paths barely wider than a hoof, water standing on both sides. Egrets lift off ahead of you. Clumps of coconut palm mark the field corners and the occasional farmhouse. In the wet months the terraces are loud green and ankle-deep; later they turn gold, then to cut stubble and dark earth. Farmers still work the plots by hand and with buffalo, the way the channels and walls suggest they always have. The pace is necessarily slow. This is the part of Sumba you cannot reach in a vehicle, because there is no road through it, only the paths between the fields.
Marapu Villages and the Sumba Foundation
One full day comes out of the saddle for the island's culture and its community work. Sumba's hilltop villages are built around megalithic stone tombs, some cut and hauled into place by hand within living memory, and the Marapu religion still orders much of daily life, organised around ancestors and a mother-father pairing of moon and sun, with obligations that shape building, marriage and burial.
You watch ikat being made on backstrap looms, where the pattern is dyed into the yarn before any weaving begins, so a single cloth can take months and carries meaning a buyer is expected to read. The same day takes in the Sumba Foundation, whose wells, clinics and schools serve the surrounding district and which has cut malaria incidence across Sumba by 71 percent and malaria cases by 93 percent since its Malaria Control Program began in 2004, funded in large part through the resort. It is the context the rides otherwise move past, and it changes how the next morning in the saddle feels.
Where You Stay
Nihi Sumba sits on a bluff above Nihiwatu Beach, on the island's quiet southwest coast. Claude and Petra Graves arrived in 1988 looking for a surf break and built something small, living for years much as the villages around them did; the resort that grew from it kept the old name, which refers to a mortar-shaped rock standing in the tide.
Villas are timber, thatch and stone, largely open to the air, set along the cliff and stepped down toward the sand so that neighbours stay out of sight and earshot. Phone signal is weak by design and there is little to watch indoors. You wake to the sound of the break, and at first light to hooves on the beach below as the grooms exercise the string. What the place gives you is a long stretch of private shore, warm wind and quiet. What it withholds is the sealed, interchangeable comfort of a city hotel, and it withholds it on purpose.
How the Journey Unfolds
The week runs on the tide and the light rather than a fixed schedule. Rides fall at the cooler ends of the day: a dawn walk along the waterline, a ride at dusk, the ocean swim timed to whichever low tide the sea allows. The middle of each day opens out. One afternoon goes to the Nihioka spa down the coast, where treatments draw on Sumbanese technique and a buffalo-horn massage. One full day leaves the horses for the island's culture and the Foundation's work.
Around all of this there is the beach, the surf break and time to do nothing. The riding accumulates: by midweek you know your pony's mouth and stride, the grooms have read your seat, and the gallop at the end of the bush trail is a fixed part of your day. The trip closes with a final ride at dawn or dusk. It's the right way to leave a place measured in tides.
The Occasionist Lens
Nihi Sumba appears on most lists as a surf-and-spa resort at the far end of a long journey. This trip treats it as a base for something more particular. The horses are the reason to come, and they set the terms. You should be genuinely secure at walk, trot and canter, comfortable on a fresh pony that wants to move, before the ocean swim and the open gallops make sense; the beach walks aside, this is not a trip for someone learning to ride. Guests who clear that bar get a reading of Sumba from the saddle that no vehicle tour reaches: villages entered at a walking pace, tombs and looms met at eye level.
It suits people who have done the polished beach week and found it thin, and who want a working animal, a living religion and a functioning aid foundation inside the same seven days. It is a poor fit for non-riders, or for travellers who mainly want a pool and a view.
Planning This Journey
Nihi runs the rides year-round, but the dry season from April to October is the most dependable window for weather, footing and sea state; the wet months green the interior but leave the trails heavy. Pasola falls in February or March, tied to the lunar calendar and the arrival of the nyale sea worms, and is worth planning around if the dates align, though it is a genuinely rough ritual and not staged for visitors.
Getting there means a flight into Bali, then one of the daily services to Tambolaka on Sumba, then about ninety minutes by road to the southwest coast; most travellers give themselves at least a night in Bali at each end. Weight limits apply and matter here: the ocean swim is capped near eighty-five kilograms, the faster trail rides lower. Trail rides take riders from age six, and the group stays small, at sixteen guests or fewer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need riding experience?
For the sunrise and sunset beach walks, no. For the ocean swim and the bush-to-beach ride with its gallop, yes: you should be secure at walk, trot and canter and able to manage a forward pony in open country. The grooms assess your riding early in the week and match the horse and pace to it.
What is swimming with the horses actually like?
It is a bareback session of about 30 minutes, led one rider at a time, timed to when the tide has drawn back at Nihiwatu Beach. The pony wades out until it is briefly swimming while you hold the mane. The weight limit is about eighty-five kilograms, and it does not run in rough seas.
How do I get to Sumba?
Fly to Bali (Denpasar), then take a daily flight to Tambolaka on Sumba, about an hour in the air, then roughly ninety minutes by vehicle to the southwest coast. Most travellers overnight in Bali on the way in or out.
When should I go?
The dry season, April to October, gives the steadiest weather, ground and sea conditions. February and March bring the Pasola festival and greener country, along with rain that makes the inland trails harder going.
What is there to do besides ride?
Beyond the rides, the week includes a spa afternoon at Nihioka, a day with the Sumba Foundation, an ikat weaving demonstration and optional horse yoga, alongside the beach and the surf break. Riding is the spine of the trip, not all of it.
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