Having convinced Hayley, Ian and Daan (all friends from work) to join me on the road trip, we set off on Thursday and after spending the night with one of my ODI friends, Hesse, crossed into Lesotho on Friday morning!
After having driven for no more than thirty minutes in Lesotho and obeying all the rules in the world, we got caught up in our first road block. The police had slowed traffic down at a place where the road was bending and masses of cars were waiting on both sides of the road for no apparent reason at all. Once the officer had indicated that we could go through, we slowly (thank-god) drove on when a cow stumbled out through the cars waiting on the other side of the road and ran straight into us! Ian had his window open and one of the horns came right through it – thank god no one got hurt! The cow stumbled, looked confused and seemed to have a concussion before it somehow made its way onto the other side of the road.
We drove on in shock – annoyed that out of all things a police block put us in a situation like this and not wanting to think about the damage this had done to the car… After all we had some 100km on gravel roads ahead of us – had we know what kind of roads, we would have probably turned around straight away. To cut a long story short, after bribing a cop, fixing our front light with a hair elastic and three hours on rollercoaster road we arrived in the metropolis of Semonkong. In other countries it might have only been a village, but in Lesotho more than fifty houses within one kilometre of each other definitely qualifies as a major settlement!
Frustratingly after all this effort it took us to get there, the last hundred metres turned out to be impossible to drive in the poor little Tazz and we had to get a 4x4 from the lodge to come and get us. Even the 4x4 struggled getting up and down the rocky roads that were clearly not designed for cars but some NASA moon expedition vehicle …
After a beautiful little walk along a river, we resorted to our rooms and started our Braai in an old wheelbarrow! Overlooking the mountains of Lesotho and watching the sun set, while warming our hands on the fire was great, but truly fantastic was the view of the sky once the sun had set. I have been to many remote places so far, but the amount of stars over Lesotho has left me speechless. Even without contact lenses (i.e. almost blind) I could hardly see anything but stars – it was so beautiful!
The next morning we woke up early for our epic adventure: A horse trek through the highlands of Lesotho with an overnight stay in a remote hut! My horse did not have a name and as one of the other ones was called Francis, I decided to name mine Bacon, which turned out to be very suitable as it was the greediest horse in the world! Bacon could not walk past any grass bushels, but in his honour I have to say that he was the best out of all the horses and carried me through the highlands without much trouble at all!
And because Bacon was so amazing, I could actually soak up the beautiful scenery and really take my mind of things rather than having to concentrate on the ride itself. The mountains of Lesotho are breathtaking and it is incredible just how remote they are. As far as the eye can reach, there is nothing but mountains and valleys, little streams and rocky slopes. But just when you start to think that you are at a place that no human has ever set food on, you turn around to see a little boy sitting in the grass looking after a herd of sheep. Or a woman coming down a hill holding one child by the hand, another one on her back, carrying some detergents while balancing a washing basket on her head! And you can’t help but wonder where she came from and what made her chose this totally remote and isolated life in the silent mountains … the only sound that you can hear is the ringing of cowbells, which from a distance sound like someone is singing and having a party. But when you come closer, it is again just a little boy sitting on a rock looking after his cattle…
There are rarely more than two or three huts together at one point and the distance that separates them is sheer endless. All the Basotho people live on top of the mountains: The valleys get so cold at night that the rivers freeze and given that there is no electricity or other means of heating apart from fires, people move to higher areas, which are slightly warmer. But this also means that women spend hours every day going down to the river (and we are talking going down a 2000m high mountain) to fetch water for cooking and washing … just imagine carrying ten litres of water up a mountain once leave alone doing it on a daily basis! Life in the mountains must be tough, but when we had finally reached the hut where we were going to spend the night, we also realised the beauty of it: It was so incredibly peaceful being on top of this mountain surrounded by absolutely nothing but even more mountains, grazing animals and a few huts scattered across the area!
We had brought a very nutritious meal consisting of everything you can buy in a tin and spend about an hour trying to warm it up on a gas cooker that was the only luxury we were given! But after such a long ride, it is amazing how good tuna and pasta can taste and we were all happy sipping wine out of our tin cups and trying to find the sky among an ocean of stars!
Unfortunately our peace did not last too long as both Hayley and Ian had caught a stomach bug and were up all night emptying their stomachs … needless to say that they weren’t exactly looking forward to the six hour ride back to the camp the next morning! Luckily my stomach seems to be rather more robust and I didn’t get ill, but getting back into the saddle was just as painful for me as my back was killing me!
Still, the ride back was lovely, but arriving at the camp was even more so. We all just collapsed on the grass and were amazed that we had survived this trip! Looking back, the ride was quite dangerous, especially if you keep in mind that none of us had any experience horse riding whatsoever. Going up these mountains by horse just seemed surreal and falling down the slopes like a danger we had forgotten to worry about – thank god!
The evening came and by eight o’clock we were all desperate to crash into our beds. Luckily the electricity cut out and there weren’t many more options apart from sleeping … so we didn’t even feel bad about crawling into our beds before 9pm! I don’t think I have been this exhausted in a long time, but I don’t think I have ever seen anything as breathtaking and overwhelming before. Out of all the trips in all the countries I have visited, the horse trek through the Lesotho Mountains is definitely one of - if not the best one I have ever done!
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