The second day of our amazing adventure through Lesotho with Kingsley Holgate started off with me unzipping my tent and running as fast as I could away from the rest of the tents because I had a gigantic pee! (This is what we got up to on the first day).
These type of things are unavoidable when camping, however, once I’d wiped the sleep from my eyes and looked up, I was staring down over the canyon we’d slept above the night before and I was in complete awe at how beautiful it was.
First things first! COFFEE!!!
I grabbed my adventure cup and off I went to pour myself a cup of black gold from the massive pot that Bruce and Joseph had been preparing for us on the fire before everyone woke up.
Bruce is Kingsley’s right hand man and a jack of MANY trades! He helps out with pretty much everything from being the official photographer while they are on humanitarian missions, to the resident cook too.
Joseph is another amazing human being, who’s been working for Kingsley for years now. Oh boy, this guy is FIT!! Part of the constant “on the go” lives that these gents live is that they need to keep fit and Joseph’s training of choice is running.
I mention his love for running because once we’d all finished eating an amazing breakfast cooked over the fire by Joseph and Bruce, Joseph put on his running shoes and off he went on a training run UP the tarred road of the new Sani Pass, the road we were about to head out on, and only meet up with him again 3 hours later.
On our way out of the Sani Stone Lodge, the media guys all agreed there was a really great area to get a shot of the convoy coming over a hill and through a small water crossing, so we all stopped and set it up.
From there, we made our way onto the tarred portion of Sani and off we went to explore the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho.
We weren’t on the road for long when we came across a few elderly herdsmen from a nearby village who needed glasses, so the Right for Sight crew stopped the convoy to help these elderly villagers out with new reading glasses that changed their lives in a matter of minutes. Read the full story about “Right to Sight” here.
With these Basotho men and women now able to see, the convoy left again up to the top of the tarred section of the Sani Pass, taking us passed Thabana Ntlenyana, the highest peak of Lesotho, which stands at 3,482 meters above sea level! NO CELL PHONE SIGNAL OUT HERE!
On the way up, one of the Series 1 Land Rovers broke down, so we stopped and waited for them at the top with an EPIC view over Mountain upon mountain behind a large valley below us. It was here that we got to interact with some Basotho herdsmen and their dogs and I captured some amazing Facets too of both them as well as Kingsley Holgate writing one of his famous “Bush Notes”.
Watch my full “Adventure with Kingsley Holgate” Facet Board to share some of the amazing moments I had while travelling through Lesotho!
The rest of the day was spent driving through to our next camping spot for the night, which turned into a wild campsite right in the heart of Lesotho. It was incredible to watch as villagers appeared out of nowhere on the mountain ridges above our camp, with a few of them even coming into the camp to come play music for us on a guitar made out of an old plastic bottle, wood and string.
It was a long day of driving, through some of Lesotho’s amazing dirt roads, but everyone was pretty spent at the end of it, so after dinner and a few stories by the fire, I made my way into my SUPER comfy K-Way Tent and I was in dreamland within minutes.
Awesome Mike!