William Moorcroft (explorer)

His family had sufficient means to secure an apprenticeship with a surgeon in Liverpool but during this time an unknown disease decimated cattle herds in Lancashire and young William was recruited to treat stricken animals.

His proficiency so impressed the county landowners they offered to underwrite his education if he would abandon surgery to attend a veterinarian college in Lyon, France.

Despite travelling to Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, and to Benares, then still part of Maratha territory, Moorcorft failed to acquire the ideal breeding horses that he sought.

[1] Moorcroft and Captain William Hearsey disguised themselves as gosain pilgrims, and travelled through Garhwal, carrying a stock of merchandise for trading with the Tibetans.

Moorcroft reached the main upper branch of the Indus near its source, and on 5 August arrived at Lake Manasarovar, which they explored extensively.

Returning via the Sutlej valley, he was detained for some time by the Gorkhas in Nepal, but eventually reached Calcutta in November,[2] only to be chastised severely by the EIC for his failure to find horses—they were not interested in shawl wool or Tibetan lakes.

But when he broached the idea of a new horse buying expedition to Bukhara in 1816, a searing reply from the EIC Board of Managers warned Moorcroft to keep "steady" at his stud duties and not "waste his time" on "wild and romantick (sic) excursions to the banks of the Amoo (Oxus) and the plains of Chinese Tartary."

What Moorcroft coveted most were the Turkoman horses, with their pale golden coats, narrow chests, long necks and sturdy legs.

Moorcroft persisted in his quest and his seven-year campaign was finally rewarded in May 1819 when Charles Metcalfe, head of the EIC's Political and Secret Department, granted him leave to proceed.

[1] Leaving the main caravan at the border of the Punjab on the Sutlej River, Moorcroft travelled separately to Lahore to obtain permission from Maharaja Ranjit Singh to traverse his territory.

From there the caravan trekked up the Beas River, crossed the 13,300-foot (4,100 m) Rohtang Pass and descended into the Lahul valley and the city of Leh, capital of the Buddhist kingdom of Ladakh.

[1] While exploring Ladakh he had a chance encounter with another European, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös a penniless Hungarian philologist from Transylvania.

[5] In 1841, Moorcroft's papers were obtained by the Asiatic Society, and published under the editorship of H. H. Wilson as Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hinduslan and the Punjab, in Ladakh and Kashnair, in Peshawur, Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara, from 1819 to 1825.