The ‘Luti’ is a person from up. The Basotho are the people from down. Hence the Maluti Mountains are full of ‘Baluti’, Mountain People – I would rightly or wrongly presume. These are the kind of discussions that you have time for when riding up (Holimo) from down (Tlase). And when there is such a substantial difference between down there and up here I can understand why the concept is so important.

Climbing away from the great Makhaleng River, forded at Ha Joelle near the confluence of the Ribaneng River, the great towering pyramid of Lekhatje, appears as though directly imported from Egypt. We have already crossed twenty brown lines on my 1:50.000 ordinance survey map. That is five hundred meters by the time we reach Ha Monaheng, the little village perched on the edge of this strangely shaped mountain. This is the gateway to the Thaba Putsoa range, a vast chunk of the highland mass of this very mountainous Kingdom of Lesotho. We are ‘holimo’ and there is more to come. Lesotho has the highest ‘low point’ in the world and the highest peak in Southern Africa; Thabana Ntlenyana at 3481m.  (to be continued……)