Lesotho - Sani Pass
We left our Durban Jungle Cabin and headed west through Kwa-Zulu Natal. This was once all part of the Zulu Empire. When I was here before I visited Rorke’s Drift, made famous in the 60’s movie Zulu with Michael Caine. This was where a few dozen British soldiers bravely fought off the continued onslaught of thousands of Zulu warriors. At least that was the story they wanted to tell. The reality of course was that armed white people killed a few hundred unarmed black people while trying to steal their land! Ha! It’s still an enjoyable movie though even if it does romanticize British Colonialism. Before the Zulus would attack they would all get stoned off their heads. To be honest running into battle with a spear in hand is the last thing I’d like to do after smoking a joint. Anyway back to the trip. Lesotho is a pretty amazing country. A country within a country. It rises straight up from the Drakensberg Mountains and is for the most part on top of those mountains. If you look at a topographical view of Africa you can see flat all around Lesotho and then suddenly Lesotho rises straight up... Not unlike Richard Dreyfus’s mashed potatoes from close encounters. The side we were approaching this mountainous enclave from had only one border point, the Sani Pass. We had met bikers who had told us that this was extremely difficult and not for beginners. Our bikes are heavy and Iva does not have much experience on difficult dirt roads. Not that I am a pro either although I have tackled some pretty hard ones in the past. We debated the day beforehand whether or not we should tackle it or if we should take a much longer circuitous route to the other side of Lesotho. In the end we said ‘fuck it we’ll give it a go’. As we approached the ascent Iva was pretty apprehensive. I was too but pretended I wasn’t. The ascent from the tar road is 14 kilometers, the first half was slightly dodgy but nothing crazy, we managed it easily enough. But after we passed through the South African Border post the difficulties began. Iva dropped her bike a few times. Thereafter we encountered steep steep switchbacks with large rocks and sand patches. 9 kilometers of steep treacherous switchbacks. It was very difficult. Iva said she could not proceed. But it’s easier to go up then come down; a descent on the bike would have been impossible. I told Iva that I would drive her bike too. She had done an amazing job to have gotten as far as she did considering her experience. So she began to walk up the mountain and I began driving her bike 2-3 switchbacks, parking it up then walking back down the mountain to get my bike and repeat the same patch. It was very difficult and took a few hours to complete. The riding was exhausting but also combined with the hiking back down the mountain to get the second bike. At one extremely bad section I bounced from one sand pit to another and the bike spun out of control, I was going at speed and tried to control her but ended up crashing on a rocky section. I busted my right indicator and bashed up my right pannier while also hurting my leg and foot. It was really tough going and exhaustion was taking its toll. I have done bad roads before but never on such a continuously steep incline. This terrible section is in between the two border posts, approximately 9km in total. I eventually pulled Iva’s bike up over the final crest of the Sani Pass and parked it next to the Lesotho Border post… At last… Thanks be to Jeebus! The sun had set and the cold was beginning to set in as I began the hike back down to grab my bike and finally be done with this traumatizing section of road. I got on my bike and started maneuvering along the final few switchbacks. Just as I approached the final straight with about 100 meters left before the top my bike suddenly stopped. It would not move forward but just rev. I tried as best I could but she would not move. Clutch problems.. Unbelievable!! Broken down in between two border posts! As crazy as it sounds the exact same thing happened to me at the beginning of the South America trip, my bike broke down on the long bridge crossing the Rio Uruguay which acts as a border between Argentina and Uruguay. That time I had to physically push my bike into Uruguay. And now again, trapped between countries, what are the chances! Calamity Peadar strikes again! Darkness fell quicker than I had hoped. I took all my luggage and panniers off and threw them in the back of a passing pickup truck that took them to the top. I then walked up to the Lesotho Border post and asked the lads if they could help me push her up this final section of hill. They were reluctant naturally enough, as anyone would be. Asking them to leave their cozy bureaucratic outpost and venture into the dark cold to help an idiot broke down tourist. I gave three of them a tenner each to change their minds and off we went into the night to rescue my bike. She was quiet heavy on the steep hill even when stripped of the entire luggage but after twenty minutes of heaving and panting (mainly myself, what with the altitude) we got her to the Border post where I locked her up for the night. The Sani Pass Lodge was next to the post, which boasts the highest pub in Africa. We went in for a pint and a well deserved hot meal but it was one of those meals where silence prevails as all energy has been drained from you by the earlier ordeals. That night we met a Swiss couple Xenia and Martin on motorbikes who were camping next to us on top on the pass, they are two and a half years into their round the world motorbike trip. Here is their website:
My GoPro camera ran out of battery so I don’t have any videos of the really hard switchbacks near the top but you can see here from these clips how it was beginning to look earlier in the day.
The mechanically minded Swiss helped us the next day adjusting my clutch cable to a point where the bike could move forward again in gear. This would hopefully be good enough until I got a proper mechanic to check her out. We thanked the Swiss for their help as they set off on their journey and planned to meet them again in Zambia or somewhere else along the road. Iva and I needed a day of rest after the long hardship the day beforehand and so we just did some light hiking along the mountainous ridges that looked down on the South African Drakensberg. Stunning. Lesotho is a very beautiful country but freezing cold at this time of year. We only spent three days there before crossing to the border exit on the Western slopes so that we could perhaps find a warmer disposition; the extreme cold was beginning to take a toll on us. Lesotho has a fascinating history. Originally populated by the San people much like most of the rest of Southern Africa Lesotho slowly began to lose land to other tribes quite recently (few hundred years) until most of the San disappeared and today the descendants of those tribes refer to themselves as the Basotho people who unified under one king in the early nineteenth century. The Basotho have their own culture and language and officially became independent from British rule in 1966. The traditional dress in Lesotho usually worn by shepherds is a blanket and a balaclava. (In Ireland if you owned a balaclava and wore a blanket then there is a good chance you resided in a H-Block) I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of the blankets and balaclavas but I will steal one from the Internet here to give you an idea.
