Cidomo Horse Carts on the Gilis: The Ethics Travellers Should Know

A cidomo is a small horse-drawn cart, descended from older Sasak transport traditions. The name is local Sasak — a contraction of "cikar" (cart), "dokar" (carriage), and "mobil" (vehicle). The animal pulling it is a small Indonesian pony, typically around 12 hands high, considerably smaller than a Western horse but with comparable strength relative to its body weight.

Cidomos are owned by individual drivers (or small family operations), not by hotels or tour companies. The drivers depend on cidomo work for their primary income. There are roughly 100–150 cidomos operating across the three Gilis at any given time, with the largest concentration on Trawangan.

Pricing for tourists is set by an informal cidomo association: roughly IDR 100,000–200,000 for a single point-to-point ride within an island, depending on distance, time of day, and the driver's mood. There is no meter; you negotiate before boarding.

The concerns are real and have been documented over years by veterinarians, animal welfare organisations, and long-term residents. The headline issues:

Heat exposure. Cidomos work in tropical heat, often during the hottest hours of the day. Ponies pulling carts on hot sand expend significant energy in conditions that can exceed 35°C. Adequate shade and rest breaks are not consistently provided.

Harness and equipment fit. Many cidomos use harnesses that are too tight, wrongly positioned, or poorly maintained. Sores on the pony's chest and back are visible on a substantial minority of working cidomos.

Hoof care. Veterinary farriery on the Gilis is limited. Hoof problems — overgrowth, cracking, abscesses — are common and undertreated.

Working hours. Some cidomos work 12+ hour days during peak season with limited rest. Younger ponies are sometimes worked beyond their developmental capacity.

Water and food. Drinking water for cidomo ponies is supplied by drivers. The quality and frequency varies significantly between operators. Feed is generally adequate but limited in variety.

End-of-life. Old or injured ponies that can no longer work are sometimes sold to mainland Lombok for slaughter. There are no organised retirement programs of any scale.

These problems are not universal — there are conscientious cidomo drivers who care for their animals well — but the variability is wide and tourists generally cannot tell from a cursory look whether a particular cidomo is well-kept or poorly kept.

Several organisations have worked directly with cidomo drivers over the past decade.

Gili Eco Trust runs an annual veterinary clinic on Trawangan, providing free check-ups, hoof care, dental care, and harness fitting for cidomo ponies. They also work with drivers on welfare education.

Horses of the Gili Islands is a smaller initiative focused specifically on cidomo welfare, providing supplementary feed and emergency veterinary care.

International animal welfare organisations including the Brooke and SPANA have visited the Gilis intermittently to support local welfare efforts.

The work is difficult because the underlying issue is economic. Drivers depend on cidomo income to support their families. Welfare improvements that reduce working hours or add costs threaten livelihoods. Sustainable improvement requires both welfare advocacy and alternative income development — it cannot be solved by tourist boycotts alone.

The clean argument for not using cidomos is straightforward: working animals in this kind of system are subject to welfare conditions you would not personally accept for an animal you owned, and your tourist dollar is part of the demand sustaining those conditions. Walking, biking, or simply not visiting is the cleaner choice.

This argument has weight. Many long-term Gili residents do not use cidomos and discourage tourists from doing so.

The counterargument is more nuanced. Cidomo driving is the primary income for hundreds of Gili families. Eliminating tourist demand does not improve welfare — it just impoverishes drivers and creates pressure to extract more value from each remaining ride, often by working ponies harder. Sustainable welfare improvement comes from regulation, NGO partnership, and consumer pressure for visible welfare standards — not from boycotts.

Using cidomos selectively (avoiding visibly mistreated animals, paying fair fares without negotiating drivers down to subsistence rates, supporting drivers known to care well for their ponies) is the position taken by some welfare-conscious long-term residents.

Both positions are defensible. Neither is obviously correct.

If you decide not to use cidomos, the practical alternatives on the Gilis are:

Walking. Trawangan can be circumnavigated in around 2 hours; Air in 90 minutes; Meno in 60 minutes. Walking the main strips on each island is genuinely fast. The only situation where walking is impractical is hauling heavy luggage from the harbour to a hotel on the far side of an island.

Bicycle rental. Pedal bikes are available across all three islands for around IDR 50,000–75,000 per day. The roads are flat. Cycling is the standard local transport.

Electric scooters. Trawangan has electric scooter rentals (around IDR 200,000 per day). They are faster and easier than bicycles for hauling small luggage, and they do not contribute to the cidomo ethics debate. Air and Meno have more limited electric scooter options.

Hand-pulled luggage carts. At the harbours of all three Gilis, hand-pulled cart porters offer to haul luggage to your hotel for IDR 20,000–50,000. This is a clean alternative to cidomos for the airport-to-hotel leg.

For most stays, a combination of walking, biking, and one or two hand-cart rides covers all practical transport needs without any cidomo use.

If you decide to use cidomos, look for visible welfare indicators: a pony of healthy weight, clean and properly fitted harness, no visible sores, alert and responsive demeanour. Pay the asked fare without aggressive haggling. Tip generously if the driver and pony seem well cared for.

If you decide not to use cidomos, communicate that politely when approached. Most drivers accept refusal without pressure. Don't lecture drivers — they have heard every welfare argument and the conversation rarely changes minds.

Donate to Gili Eco Trust or Horses of the Gili Islands if you want to support concrete welfare improvements. Even small donations fund veterinary visits.

Photograph cidomos respectfully if at all. Drivers can be sensitive about photos that are then used for negative social media posts.

Cidomo operations on the Gilis are regulated by a combination of village-level associations and Lombok's regional tourism authority. The framework includes basic rules about working hours, maximum loads, and minimum care standards, but enforcement is inconsistent and largely depends on community pressure rather than formal inspections.

Several attempts have been made over the years to professionalise cidomo operations through standardised harness designs, mandatory veterinary check-ups, and rotation systems that limit any individual pony's working hours. Some of these have stuck. The Gili Eco Trust annual veterinary clinic is the most consistent welfare intervention. A formal cidomo association on Trawangan publishes price guidelines and welfare standards, though compliance varies.

The longer-term trajectory is uncertain. Some welfare advocates argue for phasing out cidomos entirely in favour of expanded electric scooter and bike infrastructure. Cidomo drivers and their families resist this on economic grounds. The compromise position — keeping cidomos but with stronger welfare enforcement and transition support for drivers willing to switch occupations — has gained ground but moves slowly.

Tourists asking about welfare standards when they engage with cidomo drivers create real pressure. When enough visitors care visibly, drivers and the broader community respond.

Cidomos predate Gili tourism by generations. The horse-drawn cart tradition on Lombok has Sasak roots and was a normal part of village transportation across the island long before tourists arrived. The cidomo on the Gilis is an evolved version of a regional cultural form, not an artificial creation invented to entertain visitors.

This matters because welfare conversations sometimes implicitly frame cidomos as a tourism-created problem. The reality is more complicated: cidomos exist because they were already here, tourism transformed the economic model around them, and the welfare conversation is partly about how that economic transformation should affect a pre-existing cultural practice.

This doesn't change the welfare analysis. Documented animal welfare problems are documented animal welfare problems regardless of cultural origin. But it should inform the tone of conversation. Demanding that locals abandon a generations-old cultural practice because tourists feel uncomfortable is a different argument than demanding humane treatment of working animals. Both are legitimate but they should not be conflated.

The cidomo question is a microcosm of every ethical question in tourism: a practice that has economic, cultural, and welfare dimensions, with no clean answer that satisfies all three. The worst response is to ignore the issue. The next-worst response is to perform outrage without engaging the underlying economics.

Engage. Decide for yourself. Support the welfare organisations. Walk or bike when you can. Treat the drivers as people with families to feed, not as villains. The Gilis will benefit from thoughtful visitors more than from absent ones.