Where the road meets the sky

Fun fact: You don't need a 4x4 to explore Lesotho - not even in winter. Stick to the tar roads and you can see all the country's highlights in a week. Here's what you need to know.

- EVAN NAUDÉ

The icy air catches me off-guard. I T climb out of the warm Mahindra to take a photo of the dirt road snaking down the mountain to Matatiele and even though there isn't a single flake of snow, puddle of ice or cloud in the sky, it's so cold my ears and fingers immediately go numb.

I get behind the wheel again and drive further up the mountain to Qacha's Nek border post. At one stage, the hill is so steep all I can see is blue sky in front of the car's bonnet.

"It feels like we're driving in the air!" says my fiancée Sam.

Well, Lesotho is known as the Kingdom in the Sky...

There was a time when you needed a 4x4 to properly explore Lesotho, but it now has a great road network that will take you to all the highlights in a "normal" SUV like the XUV300 we're driving. Starting at Qacha's Nek, you can see a 192 m-high waterfall, Katse Dam, dinosaur tracks, a national park, a ski resort and a string of mountain passes - all within a week. And if your timing is right, you can even build a snowman!

Along the Senqu

The road from Matatiele in the Eastern Cape to the Qacha's Nek border post is gravel, but from there it's tar all the way on the A4 and A5, until you reach Semonkong. You can't help but admire the engineers who built these roads the tar slings back and forth along the contours of the mountains, down into valleys and up again.

You might not need a 4x4 but be prepared to travel much slower in Lesotho than in South Africa: Straight roads and level surfaces are rare. You also have to keep an eye out for donkeys, goats and chickens, all of which pay no mind to traffic. And you have to be alert for "Lesotho handbrakes": rocks in the road that were wedged behind the wheels of vehicles struggling up the passes and left behind when the vehicles drove off. As a rule of thumb, you should double your average travelling time per distance.