In constant motion...

I’m writing by candlelight. Actually, the generator in my home for the night is still on for another hour, so I could turn on the light bulb over my head, but this place looks much cooler in the dim light. I’m in a Sotho rondavel, and circular hut built of red stone and plaster, roofed with a cone of tightly woven grass. The floor is perhaps 9 feet across and though it holds 2 beds I appear to have the entire place to myself (more privacy than I’ve had in weeks).

Tonight’s home is part of the Malealea lodge, a lovely complex deep in the wilds of southwestern Lesotho. Though we’re many miles from the nearest electrical lines (hence the evening generator), this place is calm, clean, spirited and ultimately very relaxing. The journey to get here, however…

Getting to Malealea is surely the most intense bit of traveling I’ve ever done.

After posting this morning from Maseru, Lesotho’s small but incredibly frenzied capital, I set out for the bus station. Some friendly ladies at the cavernous, almost totally unused Lesotho Tourist Centre pointed my in the right direction, after about 30 minutes of staggering like a mule under my new backpack and the weight of locals’ stares, I was there.

The Maseru bus station mirrors the city around it – bustling, intimidating as hell to any foreigner, and chaotic in a way that must be witnessed to be understood. There are no bus timetables in Lesotho – the buses arrive when they’re bloody well ready and leave when they’re full. Dozens of truly decrepit buses and passenger vans floated about without any visible order, some with no destination markings, while thousands of people milled about in the otherworldly heat with far more purpose and direction than I.

Steeling myself, I headed to the nearby supermarket to claim water to prepare my parched body for a ride sure to be sweltering. Sadly, a polite employee, wary of shoplifters, informed me at the door that I’d have to leave my bag, laden with passport and other indispensables, outside the front door in the throng. Though he insisted on deferentially calling me “Boss”, the shiny pump-action shotgun he was brandishing did not leave me feeling in charge. Since neither of the two options which led to water (losing my worldly belongings or dodging 12-gauge pellets) seemed appealing, I continued my journey, thirst unslaked.

Feeling very white, I wandered into the maelstrom seeking a bus or minibus labeled Malealea, a village 80 kilometres from Maseru, for which the lodge is named. Sensing my goal from my skin colour, a succession of people (speaking mostly South Sotho) pointed me in many different directions, none of which reveal buses labeled Malealea. After a short while, two gentlemen who spoke a bit of English argued with each other for a moment and then decisively suggested a bus with an unfamiliar name. Buoyed by their confidence, I boarded the crowded conveyance, which was as luxurious as a schoolbus from hell and already twice as packed. Feeling hideously out of place but seeing no alternative, I clambered towards and emptyish seat in the back, trying and failing to avoid bopping people with my immense backpack, which I refused to store up on the roof rack with all the other baggage. I squeezed tightly against the window, amid thundering Sotho tunes coming from two ancient but powerful speakers mounted on the ceiling. Then I watched with equal fascination and horror as a long procession of grandmothers, businessmen, farmers, and mothers with infants secured to their stomachs with only ingeniously tied blankets, filed onto the bus. Most of them wanted to share my seat. The eventual victor was a somewhat businesslike man, who spoke a handful of English words and said he was going to Malealea himself. Though he never shared his name, this boosted my confidence in the endeavour.

After perhaps an hour of merciless heat and zero ventilation the bus, finally full in a way I’d never imagined possible, departed along a dust road. Lesotho paved its first road for the King of England’s visit in 1947, and has done little to expand the network since then, at least outside Maseru. The road, one of the main arteries, was not so much potholed as simply broken, which ensured an exciting ride for the hundred or so passengers. Drawing through farming settlements too small and scattered to call villages, the bus careened at speeds for which neither it nor the road were designed. Thunder and lightning roiled in thick clouds that retreated with the horizon, and the vicious sunlight was only occasionally punctuated by welcome bursts of light rain through the open window. In the four hours it took me to travel 80 km, the bus stopped at every tiny community on the way. At each stop a small army of people emerged from nearby homes to sell fruit juice and water (neither of which I trusted to drink) through the bus windows to the passengers.

After hours of interminable stops and white-knuckle sprints, my (by now) suspiciously helpful travel companion pointed out the minute hamlet of Malealea (virtually every place name in Lesotho starts with “M” – very disorienting). We both disembarked with difficulty, and a hand-painted sign said “Malealea Lodge – 7 km” along a narrow but very scenic dirt road up a dry hill. By then, I’d been crammed into very public transit for nearly 24 hours, and I was not inclined to wait for the Lodge bus the Nameless One insisted was coming. I thanked him for his help and set off up the road, in spite of his entreaties to stay put (in very hot, unfamiliar, and for all I knew, dangerous territory). He waited at the crossroads. Instincts are funny things, and mine told me to get walking.

About 2 kilometres up the road, past clutches of tiny huts and gauntlets of children smilingly demanding “Sweets! Sweets!”, an engraved metal sign marked the entrance to a short mountain pass. It read “Wayfarer - pause and look upon a gateway of Paradise.” Just beyond was a valley so vast I couldn’t guess at its size or shape. Dozens of arid mountain peaks, ringed with rock strata visible from many tens of kilometers away, encircled the scattered rondavels, tiny cornfields, and dry grazing patches below. A handful of impressive rivers and modest streams cut jagged gullies hundreds of metres deep into the yellow-white sand of the valley floor, sectioning the land into tribal holdings.

I clambered up the nearest hill to get a worthy picture. While I perched on my rock, the Nameless One ran (nobody willingly runs in 40-degree heat) through the pass and down the road I had been following. Presumably in pursuit of me, he scanned the hillsides until he saw me and called me down to the road. Though I was grotesquely aware that I’d be truly hoped in the event of a mugging, I found consolation in my greater size and the abundance of good bashin’ rocks at the roadside. A kilometer further on, I drew little comfort from his continued anonymity, to say nothing of his unsettling habit of climbing small hills to yell things he wouldn’t translate to people I couldn’t see, all the while pointing insistently at me.

When he paused to step into a roadside house, insisting without explanation that I stay put, I took my leave, walking briskly down the winding road. After maybe 2 kilometres of pleasant breezes and bemused locals unused to pedestrian white folks, I saw no sign of the shifty dude, and breathed easy. Moments later, a bright SUV pulled up alongside. The passengers, Donna, Lee and Michael, South Africans on vacation, graciously offered me a lift. No longer fearing ambush, but quite content with my 5 klick hike, I clambered in.

I arrived at Malealea Lodge intact, unmugged, and not at all dead, a full day after leaving Cape Town, a thousand flying-crow kilometers away. I ate a straightforward but delicious (and bloody expensive) meal and retired exhausted to my darkening room to write. I’m going quite blind scribbling by candlelight, so I’m calling it a night. Tomorrow: crazed horses and unforgiving Lesotho terrain – a winning combination!

One more thing: the helpful lady at the lodge’s South African booking office told me it would cost 400 rand – just short of a hundred dollars – to get from the Lesotho-South African border to the lodge.

I did it for three bucks.