On the wind-scorched plateau the shepherds of Lesotho stand around like alien Star Wars characters, absolutely still as if they’ve been waiting here, swathed in their brown blankets, wearing their green or white gumboots and woolly balaclavas, for ever. One of them raises his arm in a dignified salute, then another.
A friend who used to pony trek here as a child told me about this secret, spectacular mountain kingdom encircled by South Africa. It gained independence from Britain in 1966, but it hasn’t thrived. “We call it the land that time forgot,” he said. “People live in a medieval past. The landscapes and high-altitude flowers and the birds are all breathtaking.” Others told me of dinosaur footprints, of San Bushmen paintings, of the fortress