Take a look at a map of South Africa. There is the middle you’ll see landlocked Lesotho, the mountain kingdom.

Cycling around the country you not only get to see the place, you feel it: every metre up to the top of the Tlaeng Pass, 3251m in bleak, desolate landscape known as the Roof of Africa.

Mountaintops look like huge waves in the sea. Only they’re still, except for the dark shadows that rush across them as you read the clouds, and you wonder: “Will the weather close in on me?”

If it does, there’s not much place to find shelter. In fact there are hardly any trees: just bushes and grass coming out from the rock.

You feel the thinness of the air up at that altitude, causing you to have to take short breaths.
But the Tlaeng Pass is neither the beginning nor the end of my bike ride from Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, to Mokhotlong, the main town in the east.

One of my missions was to take some books from my children’s school, St James, in Johannesburg, to another school called St James near Mokhotlong. On my luggage rack was a pile of National Geographic magazines.

Let’s get back to Maseru to start the journey.

Image: Duncan Guy, CC-BY-SA