Music blared from the speakers. I held on to my seat as the driver sped down steep roads and around sharp bends.

It started to rain.

Then the vehicle’s lights gave up.

The driver turned on the hazards and proceeded to drive on, and the rain came down harder. These conditions did not seem to make him drive any slower, nor any more carefully.

But to my relief he went only as far as a point where he could pull off. After he stopped, he pulled up the seat beside him, getting access to the engine, fiddled around inside there.
All of a sudden there was light!

But not for long. The taxi’s headlights gave in several times in the 30 or so kilometres between Mapholaneng and Mokhotlong and the routine was repeated.

The loud music never stopped, neither did the rain, which fell in icy drops as the taxi ploughed through the muddy streets of Mokhotlong, dropping off one passenger after the other wherever they requested to go; sometimes using full lights, sometimes only using hazard lights.

I was left until last as I had requested the driver to take me to somewhere I could stay. A helpful woman wearing a fashionable brown scarf around her neck, who had occupied the front seat, knocked on door after door of houses in Mokhotlong she thought might take in travellers.

Eventually she gave up and went to her own home, a cement and brick house with an elephant carved on the door. Such “big five” doors are popular in Lesotho.

She assured me there would be better luck at a place she had told the driver about and wished me well. She said she travelled a lot because every month she went to Johannesburg to buy the latest clothes in fashion, which she would then sell in Mokhotlong.

Luck would have it that the next place at which the taxi called was a small bed-and-breakfast.

Two women were in the kitchen washing up after dinner. In the dining room, made up of tables decorated with plastic flowers, two men sat glued to a wildlife documentary film showing on a television set.

“You can have a room for 180 maloti,” one of the women advised me.

The room had a huge double bed and there was just enough room to fit my bicycle inside.

I sank into the bed and quickly disappeared into dreamland, knowing that my destination, St James in Lesotho, was now not far away.

Image: Duncan Guy, CC-BY-SA

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Tell us if you’ve had adventures like this in remote places.