Day 348 / 113
Sleeping location: Fuleng Guesthouse, Quthing, Lesotho
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 114 / 21660 / 6823
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 2500 / 204800 / 86800
Sonic Youth song of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTSUwIZdMk
I was up and out early with a goal in mind - the town of Quthing had hotels, cold beers, hot showers and restaurant food, and it was my goal, a big day but doable on tarmac roads. This being my goal, the above Sonic Youth song was in my head all day, which is no bad thing as it’s brilliant. Once again it was a beautiful calm cool and clear day. Just before I rode out I tried a bit of Joseph's homebrew beer, which he was drinking out of a 2 litre soy mince container at 7.30am. We've all been there. It was tolerable.
I had a nice lil warmup with the remaining 550m of the 600m climb away from the Orange River's and back into the mountains, which was long and occasionally steep but mostly fine. At the top - 2310m - it was a bit nippy and I had to stick a jacket on for the descent that followed. The road then wound its way through the mountains with frequent short and sharp climbs and descents. First there were loads of pink and white flowers, then a bit more scrub and trees, and the whole time it was a big, empty, beautiful landscape. I had my mid morning shop stop for soda and snacks, and outside a man with limited teeth said a load of things I didn't understand then tried to give me a receipt. I politely declined and he seemed ok with this.
It was a good thing I also had an energy drink, and didn’t take on the extra weight of the man’s receipt, because after this were three vicious climbs in short succession, the last one a real long bastard. The wind had picked up during the morning and was now a 30-40kph headwind, which is exactly the kind of pushback you need on relentless 15-20% gradients. I also had some very amusing and persistent sweet zombies, who followed me for about a kilometre without ever getting within 100m of me, constantly shouting “sweets sweets” into the void. The long bastard took me up up the high point of the day, and the end of the high mountains of Lesotho, at 2440m. At this point I’d done 48km and climbed 1600m. This was the end of the really big stuff - I had conquered Lesotho. I had been so scared of it, of the climb and the rough roads and the altitude, and I stood here at the top, admired the view and drank some ginger beer and ate some peanuts and felt really proud of what I’d achieved in the last five and a half days. It was apt that this day turned out to be the biggest one of the trip in terms of climb.
From here - almost 1000m of descent, very fast, very technical and very fun. First an implausible section down a ridgeline with absolutely outrageous views on either side, the ground dropping away hundreds of metres with mountains rising behind, then a short flatter section followed by another even more fast, technical and fun descent* down the side of, then into, a huge canyon with the Quthing river in the bottom and huge red cliffs and rock formations at the top. The Quthing then met my old friend the Orange River and after all the day’s climbing I was back down at the lowly height of 1500m.
In hindsight this was the place where Lesotho re-entered the real world. After this the people were still nice, and the scenery still beautiful to good, but all was normal again. There were a lot more people and they got around in cars and minibuses, not on horseback, and wore normal clothes rather than blankets. There were a lot more houses and they looked like regular houses. It’s hard to put into words, or even pictures, what made it so special up there; obviously it was incredibly beautiful, but that beauty was constant, the land was so wild and pure and mostly untamed, and where it was tamed it was tamed in beautiful ways by beautiful people who welcomed me like an old friend when I turned up in their villages. It honestly felt like some magical kingdom in the sky, like something out of a film, like I was the lead character in that film exploring this land and being constantly amazed**. It completely and utterly stole my heart. The last new country of this trip was my favourite one of all.
The rest of the day was a series of spicy little climbs, mainly running alongside the Orange River again. Some objectionable little shits shouted at me for money from up on a little cliff, then started chucking rocks when I ignored them; I am sure just to get my attention as they were some way behind me, but still. I stopped and shouted some effs and cees at them and they looked a bit sheepish. I had my afternoon rest in Mount Moorosi, where a lady said hello then immediately said that I looked tired, which was absolutely correct. I arrived in Quthing a little before sunset, having timed it perfectly, knackered but happy (made happier by a sign for Ethical Beast Aluminum and Glass shop on the way into town). I booked myself into a quite nice hotel (but in the cheap rooms obviously). The hot shower was delicious***, the beers were more delicious, the food from the hotel restaurant was disappointing and I ended up supplementing it with additional food cooked in my room. Six days that I will cherish forever.
**I think the almost total lack of other tourists helped with this
***Initially I was terrified that the hot water was off, but thankfully they'd just put the piping in the wrong way Round
Comments
Post a Comment