In the high desert of northern Durango, between mountain ranges and dry basins, the town of Inde lies along the old silver road that ran from Mexico City to Santa Fe in New Mexico. The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior Land, was in use from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, carrying silver, mercury, supplies, settlers and missionaries over 2,500 kilometres, and the Mexican sections were inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2010. Inde was a stopping point on that road, with a church, a plaza and the haciendas that supplied the mining camps.
The town today is small, quiet and low-built, with adobe walls and a plain church, and it has fewer than seven hundred people. The old haciendas of the area, including the former hacienda of the Limpia Concepcion, tell the story of the great estates, with their chapels, granaries and walls, built to produce food and animals for the mines and to protect themselves from raids by the Indigenous peoples who resisted the Spanish. Now, many are in ruins, with beautiful adobe and stone arches slowly returning to earth.
The land is the Chihuahuan Desert, a country of mesquite, yucca, agave and creosote bush, with mountains on the horizon and a vast sky overhead, and it is silent except for the wind. In spring after a wet winter, the desert flowers, and in the evening, the light turns the hills purple and gold. Summers are very hot, with powerful thunderstorms in July and August, and winters can be cold, with frost at night. The best seasons are spring and autumn.
Riding here is about distance. The paved roads are long and straight, with little traffic, a decent surface and few services, and the dangers are cattle on the road, potholes, and fatigue. Carry water, food and a spare can of fuel, because villages are small and petrol stations are far apart. Santa Maria del Oro, about fifteen kilometres away, has several thousand people and the most reliable services in the immediate area, but the larger towns are further away. Avoid riding at night, and tell someone your route. If you are lucky, you may find a family selling cheese or burritos at a roadside stall.