CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
On the way it passes Maloti-Drakensberg Park, Sehlabathebe National Park and back through Maloti-Drakensberg Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from South Africa into Lesotho - carry ID and check the toll rules.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 79 km this is Sani Pass, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
The Zulu name uKhahlamba means barrier of spears, and the first sight of the Drakensberg escarpment from the plain makes it clear why. For about two hundred kilometers along the border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho, a wall of basalt cliffs rises to more than three thousand meters, broken by jagged buttresses, towers and deep gorges. The park protects much of it, and UNESCO gave it dual listing for both nature and culture in 2000, reflecting the richness of the wildlife and the astonishing rock art.
Read the complete uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park is where the day begins. Next is Maloti-Drakensberg Park.
The Drakensberg is South Africa's great wall, a basalt escarpment that rises along the border with Lesotho for hundreds of kilometres and reaches over three thousand metres. The Zulus called it uKhahlamba, the barrier of spears, and the Afrikaners called it the Dragon Mountain. The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park on the South African side and Sehlabathebe National Park in Lesotho together form the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, a World Heritage site recognised both for its landscape and for its remarkable collection of San rock paintings, some made by hunter-gatherers over several thousand years.
Read the complete Maloti-Drakensberg Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maloti-Drakensberg Park comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sehlabathebe National Park.
Sehlabathebe is the kind of place that makes you feel you have gone off the edge of the map. It sits in the south-east of Lesotho at around 2,400 metres, on a plateau of sandstone and basalt that rolls up to the Drakensberg escarpment, and it was the country's first national park, set up in 1969. It adjoins the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park in South Africa, and together they form the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier World Heritage Site, a high, wild mountain landscape with grassy uplands, rock pools and sandstone arches carved by wind and water.
Read the complete Sehlabathebe National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 280 km into the recorded legs you reach Sehlabathebe National Park. Next is back through Maloti-Drakensberg Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Maloti-Drakensberg Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Maloti-Drakensberg Park, late in the day. Next is uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park. That is the ride.
uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park → Maloti-Drakensberg Park is 217 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Maloti-Drakensberg Park → Sehlabathebe National Park is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sehlabathebe National Park → back through Maloti-Drakensberg Park is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Maloti-Drakensberg Park → uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park is 217 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.