Circling Lesotho
BY THE TIME I got to the small Free State town of Excelsior I’d already clocked up over 1 200km in the new Isuzu MU-X. Starting in the Cape, I’d taken a roundabout Garden Route trip, overnighting in De Vlugt on Prince Alfred’s Pass and then swung north-east through the drought-stricken regions of the Eastern Cape Karoo and the Free State, exploring some taxing dirt tracks between Reddersburg and Thaba Nchu along the way.
It was the ideal shakedown cruise for the clockwise route around Lesotho I’d planned with my old travelling companion, Lionel Williams, from Johannesburg, who was propping up the bar counter at our Excelsior guest house (Moja’s) when I got there.
Our plan was to leave Lionel’s car at the guest house and head off together in the Isuzu MU-X on a two-night, three-day jaunt around Lesotho. Entering at the Ficksburg Bridge Border Post, we would track northeast to Butha-Buthe and follow the Mokhotlong Road to Sani Mountain Lodge where we’d overnight. From there we’d head down Sani Pass and skirt Lesotho’s eastern border, turning west from Mount Fletcher up Naude’s Nek and then from Rhodes, up to Tiffendell and down to our second overnight spot, Bidstone Cottages, in the Wartrail Valley. Our last day would close the circle as we’d traverse Lundean’s Nek and head north again past Tele Bridge, Zastron and Hobhouse to Excelsior. A 1 126km round trip of which about 25 percent was to be on dirt tracks.
The transition from South Africa to Lesotho is stark. Once through the brief border formalities – just a
