A day in Lesotho

Few people outside of South Africa know about that mysterious place and I was certainly no exception until recently. The country has intrigued me ever since, during a visit to South Africa’s Fitzburg last year, I spotted the wall of mountains that close the country up. 

Some fun facts (geek moment): 

-Lesotho got its independence from England in 1966 but is still a constitutional monarchy

-A big part of its economy depends on remittance from workers gone to South Africa

-It is the largest exporter of clothes to the US from sub-Saharan Africa

-It has plenty of water and diamonds (240,000 carats in 2014)

The first thing that got my curiosity going is when I found out that Basotho people (the people of Lesotho) are horse people. In fact, I saw some Basotho guys train a horse in a similar way than what we have been learning from our horsemanship course in the US. When I mentioned this at the Monty Roberts Learning Centre they said that good horse people often arrive at the same conclusion. So yes, Basotho are good horse people. So much so, in fact, that they are known to skilfully steal horses (and cattle) from South African farmers who live close to the border. I heard farmers say they couldn't believe how quickly these guys catch horses and run off with them. As you can imagine, this particular skill doesn’t make them terribly popular.

(okay, okay he's on a donkey but it's for illustrative purposes)

But things are changing. Once we’d made it up Sani Pass we were astounded to see that from the Lesotho side of the border the road is a brand new tarred one. It is so impeccable you aren’t sure you should drive on it. It has been built in the past few months by Chinese companies and you can still see a few Chinese contractors supervising the construction on the side of the road. This road is likely to change the whole area - we could already see a lot of new houses being built in the area. Very different to the traditional mud and brick houses herders traditionally live in. 

construction workers finishing up the new road

the road is also very useful for the herders

traditional houses

We drove around for a while admiring everything around us and trying to spot herders - not an easy feat given how well they blend in with their environment. The terrain is tough with very steep hills and I was tired just looking at them run up and down after their animals. 

Unfortunately we didn't have time to go much further into the more populated area of the country but it is definitely a place I would like to come back to, especially now that I know that they organise horse safaris through the country!