Free your soul in Lesotho

After recently working with Brian Strauss to build a XC track at the Lesotho Sun in Maseru, I realise how much “natural riding” terrain Lesotho has to offer. He walked around our purposed track and could not believe his eyes! Something that I had taken for granted on every ride. Having a new set of trained trail eyes gazing at my back yard riding terrain has once again awakened my appreciation for the humble Lesotho dirt.

Darol and Christian at the Matebele Cafe. // Photo: Jacques Marais.

Surprisingly, natural track is pretty hard to come by these days, everywhere we ride purpose built track with bridges, wooden berms, concrete steps and rocks that have been shipped across the country to create a rock garden. Don’t get me wrong, I love these purpose built tracks. I just have a great affinity for the natural riding that I have feely available on my doorstep in Lesotho.

Riders Charles Stein and Brian Bontekoning during the Lesotho Sky 2014. // Photo: Cherie Vale.

No signs or popular line choice to follow, no specific way to ride, no Strava segment to beat… It’s just you, your bike, the terrain, your own individual riding style and creativity that puts together the most beautiful sense of flow. If you have ridden the single track in Lesotho, the Wild Coast or in the Scottish Highlands you will understand. It is rugged and real mountain biking that will leave you day dreaming for hours…I liken it to surfing, as I very rarely ride the same piece of trail. It changes all the time, just as every wave you stand up on presents a new canvas, each with its own eccentricities that make each wave and each piece of trail unique.

So these endless foot and cattle paths, carved through the Maluti Mountains by decades of people and their livestock moving from place to place, become a release of creativity and flow as your tyres choose their own unique way of painting with the hips, bumps, rocks and jumps scattered across the Mountain Kingdom.

Darol doing route briefing with ER24. // Photo: Cherie Vale.

The few people that ride the Lesotho Sky every year get to ride the best of it, day after day, for 6 days on the trot. Four years of scouting and grooming. The route for the 2015 Lesotho Sky is going to be the best blank canvas I have ever presented to the lucky few riding the event.

Riding here is infectious. The only problem with coming to ride in Lesotho is that no other riding you do anywhere else will live up to it. Leaving you disappointed, unless of course you training for the next Lesotho Sky (after all, it is infectious).

Sunset hoik. //Photo: Jacques Marais.

That being said, I feel that I have a big role to play here, exposing this place’s unrelenting beauty, amazing people and unbelievable riding canvas to the world. Free your mountain biking soul, I freed mine right here in the #MountainBikeKingdom, Lesotho.