The High Road
This missive comes to you from Africa's highest pub, after a splendid morning and with your correspondent fortified by beer and chips. What else could a girl want?
We entered Lesotho, the Kingdom in the the sky, a couple of hours ago via the Sani Pass which happens to also be Africa's motorable road. We are on The High Road 4x4adventure organised by the marvellous Duncan And Verity the owners of Tour de Force UK. What a blast it's proving to be. The first couple of days were spent in the shadow of the Drakensburg mountains at the atmospheric Cleopatra Farmhouse catching up with old friends, getting acquainted with our vehicles, eating great food and generally fortifying ourselves for the adventure ahead.
We are a very select group of 10 cars. We are in hired Hiluxes for this trip, all full equipped for bush camping. Our first day of driving has been utterly fabulous. It was only 140 kms up here, to Sani Pass, our home for the night, but it was far from an easy drive. Low ratio gear was needed for much of it, especially the last steep, steep climb through endless switchbacks. What great fun we had -rocks, craters, mud slicks, a very short patch of incongruous perfect Tarmac complete with white lines and cats eyes, big drops the lot. A bit of Mongolia and a lot of Bhutan. All that with the most perfect backdrop an azure sky and the gorgeous Drakensburg mountains with their lush velvety folds and rocky outcrops.
Our home for the night is the Sani Lodge, right on the border inside Lesotho and overlooking the pass. We're staying in little rondevals and our wood burner has just been lit to keep us nice and cosy - it's decidedly chilly up here.
Until now, I had never been further south on this continent than Tanzania and Adrian has never been to sub-Sahara Africa so it was about time to rectify that. So far we are loving it. Tomorrow is our first night bush camping and we can't wait.
We entered Lesotho, the Kingdom in the the sky, a couple of hours ago via the Sani Pass which happens to also be Africa's motorable road. We are on The High Road 4x4adventure organised by the marvellous Duncan And Verity the owners of Tour de Force UK. What a blast it's proving to be. The first couple of days were spent in the shadow of the Drakensburg mountains at the atmospheric Cleopatra Farmhouse catching up with old friends, getting acquainted with our vehicles, eating great food and generally fortifying ourselves for the adventure ahead.
We are a very select group of 10 cars. We are in hired Hiluxes for this trip, all full equipped for bush camping. Our first day of driving has been utterly fabulous. It was only 140 kms up here, to Sani Pass, our home for the night, but it was far from an easy drive. Low ratio gear was needed for much of it, especially the last steep, steep climb through endless switchbacks. What great fun we had -rocks, craters, mud slicks, a very short patch of incongruous perfect Tarmac complete with white lines and cats eyes, big drops the lot. A bit of Mongolia and a lot of Bhutan. All that with the most perfect backdrop an azure sky and the gorgeous Drakensburg mountains with their lush velvety folds and rocky outcrops.
Our home for the night is the Sani Lodge, right on the border inside Lesotho and overlooking the pass. We're staying in little rondevals and our wood burner has just been lit to keep us nice and cosy - it's decidedly chilly up here.
Until now, I had never been further south on this continent than Tanzania and Adrian has never been to sub-Sahara Africa so it was about time to rectify that. So far we are loving it. Tomorrow is our first night bush camping and we can't wait.
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