Lesotho

The Basotho nation was forged in the early nineteenth century by King Moshoeshoe I, who gathered refugees fleeing the wars of the Zulu expansion onto the flat-topped mountain stronghold of Thaba Bosiu and welded them into a people. Facing pressure from Boer settlers moving into the fertile lowlands, he asked for British protection, and in 1868 the territory became the protectorate of Basutoland — which is why it never became part of South Africa.

Basutoland was administered separately through the apartheid decades and became independent as the Kingdom of Lesotho in 1966, a constitutional monarchy. Its politics have been chronically unstable, with coups, a 1998 South African and regional military intervention to restore order after disputed elections, army mutinies, and fragile, frequently collapsing coalition governments.

The king, currently Letsie III, is a ceremonial "living symbol of national unity." The modern economy rests on selling water and hydroelectricity to South Africa through the Lesotho Highlands Water Project's giant dams; on diamonds from the world's highest mines; on garment factories exporting to the United States; on wool and mohair; and on remittances from Basotho who work, in dwindling numbers, in South Africa's mines.

Basotho culture is strongly identified with the mountains and with a few vivid symbols: the Basotho blanket, a heavy patterned wool blanket worn as a garment, with specific designs for a chief, a newlywed, or a new mother; the mokorotlo, the conical woven straw hat that also appears on the national flag; and the hardy Basotho pony, on which much of highland life still moves.

Society is largely Christian, layered over traditional belief, with a strong system of chieftaincy and communal land held in trust by the king through local chiefs. Initiation schools, the lesiba mouth-blown string instrument, choral singing, and famo accordion music are living traditions.

Hospitality in the villages is warm, and pony-trekking visitors are often hosted overnight in Basotho households. Cattle are wealth, status, and ritual sacrifice, and the seasonal movement of animals to high pastures shapes the herding year.

Most Basotho live in the lowland strip along the western border, in and around Maseru — a small, low-rise capital on the Caledon River facing South Africa — and in scattered highland villages of stone-and-thatch rondavels reached by dirt track or on horseback. The eastern two-thirds of the country is high, cold, and thinly peopled.

Lesotho is one of the poorer countries in the region, and its economy is tightly bound to South Africa's through the customs union, the currency peg, and the labour migration that has sustained families for generations but is now shrinking. The garment sector is the largest formal employer, mostly of women. Lesotho also has one of the world's highest HIV prevalence rates, though treatment has expanded widely.

Daily life follows the farming and herding seasons — eroding maize and sorghum plots in the lowlands, sheep and goats and the move to summer cattle posts in the highlands — the church, and, for many households, a wage or a pension sent home from across the border.

Basotho cooking is Southern African and maize-based. Papa (also pap), a stiff maize porridge, is the staple, eaten with moroho (cooked wild or cultivated greens), beans, or a stew of beef, mutton, or chicken. Likhobe (samp and beans) and motoho, a soured sorghum porridge often taken for breakfast, are traditional.

Mutton and beef feature at ceremonies, often slaughtered on site, and sesotho bread baked in a pot over coals, pumpkin, and wild vegetables round out rural meals. Roadside grills and shebeens serve braai meat, pap, and relish, the shared regional fare.

Home-brewed sorghum beer (joala) is drunk at gatherings and rituals; commercial lager and, in winter, strong sweet tea are the everyday drinks.

Lesotho's appeal is high, wild scenery and a way of life still lived on horseback. The Sani Pass, a steep, rough 4x4 track climbing from South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal to nearly 2,900 metres, delivers you to the "highest pub in Africa" just over the border and is one of the great mountain drives.

Pony trekking is the classic way in: multi-day guided rides from Malealea or Semonkong lodges through villages, over passes, and to viewpoints and rock-art sites, staying in Basotho homes along the way. Maletsunyane Falls near Semonkong drops nearly 200 metres in a single plunge and has the world's longest commercially run single-drop abseil.

Sehlabathebe National Park, in the remote southeast, protects highland moorland, rock pools, San paintings, and strange sandstone formations, and forms part of the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site straddling the border. Thaba Bosiu, the mountain where the nation was founded, the Katse and Mohale dams with their visitor centres, and the mission town and dinosaur footprints of Morija fill out a short but memorable circuit.