Lesotho

I think my blog posts have been too serious and heavy lately, so it’s time for something a little lighter. And what could be lighter and more enjoyable than travel adventures in southern Africa?! So here goes…

This past weekend my roommate Kinsley and I took a trip to Lesotho, a small country (about the size of Belgium) that is completely within the borders of South Africa (look at a map). It’s a few hours away from Durban and is known as the “mountain kingdom” or the “kingdom in the sky” because the whole country is in the Drakensburg Mountains. It also has the highest mountain south of Kilimanjaro, has the highest low point of any country in Africa, and has the highest pub in Africa, which we of course visited.

So last Friday morning Kinsley and I headed out from Durban at 6 am for another great adventure. We arrived in the Southern Drakensburg Mountains, still within South Africa, and from there met up with a tour guide who was taking us on a guided tour of Lesotho. Now before you accuse me of living too luxuriously with a personal tour guide and all, let me explain our reasoning. The road into Lesotho is a VERY bumpy dirt road and you are not allowed to drive on it unless you have a four-by-four vehicle, which clearly we do not have. So we decided the best way to get there was through an “adventure” agency that organizes trips into Lesotho. We were joined on our trip by a French girl named Matilda and by our tour guide, Philip, a middle-aged South African who loved pulling over on the side of the road to point out birds and plants, forcing us to look at them through the binoculars.

Now I know that I always say how beautiful the places I visit are and I tend to use words like “breathe-taking” and “stunning,” but for real, this was one of the most awe-inspiringly beautiful places I’ve ever visited. Although it is winter here now so the mountains were not as green and lush as they are in the summer season, they were still amazing. They reminded me of the Rocky Mountains where the sheer magnitude of them leaves you speechless. Again, words fail me to describe the beauty. It was one of those places where you stand on top of a hill and look around and see nothing but beautiful rolling hills.

We stayed overnight at the home of a Lesotho man named Thabiso in a small village. It felt as though the 21st Century, even the 19th and 20th Centuries, had completely bypassed the country, as though it were isolated from the crazy modern world altogether. We had no water and no electricity and the main form of transportation was either your feet or a horse. Not to romanticize poverty in any way, but I loved the simplicity of it all. It really makes me think that perhaps it’s the “under-developed world” that has it all figured out, and not the “developed world.” It makes me wonder what the world would be like if we all lived like Thabiso and his family in their little home on the side of a mountain.

When we arrived at Thabiso’s on Friday, he first introduced us to his family then took us into the village to show us around. We saw a traditional dance performed by some of the local women, watched the sunset behind the mountains, and then returned to Thabiso’s where we gathered around a campfire to fight off the cold night (I’m not just being whiny… it was really cold, as in wearing 8-layers of clothing cold). We were then fed a wonderful traditional Lesotho dinner and had a few beers, before heading to bed (with a hot water bottle which I hugged all night, while still dressed in my 8-layers because it really was a very cold night).

On Saturday we visited a traditional healer who performed a traditional dance for us and then told us about our futures. Now I don’t want to give it all away because I’m afraid it’s like a wish where it doesn’t come true if you tell other people, but let’s just say my future is looking good and I am “surrounded by good luck.” Following our visit with the traditional healer, we went on a two-hour horse ride through the mountains and valleys surrounding the village. I think the horseback ride was my favorite part of the weekend. It was a beautiful sunny, though still chilly, day and it was so incredibly peaceful riding around the mountains on horseback. As Philip our tour guide said, “if the rest of the world goes to hell, I’ll move to Lesotho.” I love how it seems to be a parallel universe, where people live in the houses that their ancestors built hundreds of years ago and all of the villagers know each other. Of course I do not want to make light of the poverty the people of Lesotho experience (according to the UN, about 50% of people in Lesotho live below the poverty line and Lesotho has one of the worst HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world) but the hospitality and happiness of the people we met was truly inspiring.

So after only two days in Lesotho, we all hopped back into the car and headed back along the bumpy road into South Africa. I was very sad to leave Thabiso and his family waving goodbye, knowing that I would probably never see this wonderful man or these stunning mountains again. But I guess that’s the nature of traveling; you get a taste of the world and try to cherish it while you can, knowing it can never be permanent. On the ride back into South Africa as I looked out the window I thought about what the traditional healer had said about me being surrounded by good luck, and I realized how right she is. I am SO fortunate to have these experiences and to get this year to travel and explore and adventure into new places, meeting new people, and learning new things along the way. And now I know where I can go if the rest of the rest of the world goes to hell.