Lost in Lesotho

This one was never going to be easy to write, but I have to document the journey, failure and all. 

Cycle touring is an endurance sport, and like all endurance sports, success and failure rely less on physical ability and more on mental stamina, toughness, and fortitude, and on some insignificant pass halfway between Katse and Ha Lejone, these failed me.

I gave up. Lesotho beat me. The landscape wore me down, and with my sprit brittle and drawn, I broke. Like a piece of rusted metal.

Perhaps the most painful thing about it all was that I've always prided myself on mental fortitude. I've never been the biggest, certainly never the strongest, and far from the fastest, but I've always been able to keep going, no matter what. 

This wasn't a case of injury either. Instead, it was the cumulative effect of built-up burdens, frustration, and fatigue slowly overwhelming my defences and tearing down my walls. 

I'd snapped a pannier bolt on the back roads from Malealea to Roma. While the tarred roads in Lesotho are in great condition, the secondary roads are packed with stones, ruts, ravines, and grades that are alternatively gruelling and dangerous. I'd snapped a bolt, but I'd replaced it. No worries, right? However, nowhere in Lesotho could I get the steel I needed. I'd replaced high-tensile steel with softer stuff that couldn't hold the weight of my panniers and gear. On the gravel from Thaba-Tseka to Katse, the bolts had bent again, so that by the time I reached the tarred road, I couldn't keep the pannier rack off the back tire on even the slightest of inclines. Not only did it buzz and rumble with any bump, but the constant friction robbed me of power with every stroke of the pedals.

That was bad enough, but I'd also lost a slimed tire, so I was running with tubes on the gravel road. For the uninitiated, that means punctures, and in this case, I had a lot of them. In one day, I had to fix five flats. FIVE. That left me with one patch and not a bike shop within 200 kilometers if I needed any more. Somewhere along the line, in my mounting frustration, I clipped the brake, offsetting it, so that it rubbed and squeaked with every rotation. 

Imagine a high-pitched squeak every second for about seven or eight hours. If you've ever driven a crap car, you know what I'm talking about. That's what I was dealing with on the bike. In addition, the brake rubbed, stealing even more power from my pedals as I fought both hills and my own equipment. 

It wasn't just equipment though. The people were fraying my nerves to no end. In every small town and village, I had children, calling from mountaintops and roadsides, "Sweets! Give me sweets!" They didn't speak any other English, so if I answered at all, they'd just shout again, "Sweets! Give me sweets!!!" The adults weren't any better, though I didn't hear "Give me my money!" as often as I heard children screaming for sweets. 

In all of my travels through West Africa, I heard similar cries, but there's just something so much more jarring about hearing these demands in your own language. Long story short: if you give anything to the children and adults who regularly beg white people for money or food solely because they're white, I will break off your arm and beat you with it.

In the end, I just couldn't take it anymore. Physically, I was fine. I'd conquered the highest of the mountains in the central region of Lesotho. It was all (mostly) downhill from there. But mentally, I was broken, and all it took was one hard pass to push me to the limit. "The next truck that goes by," I'd say, "the next truck that goes by." Then a truck would come rumbling up the tar, and I'd let it pass. 

This happened four, five, six times more. I knew my bike was pretty kaput, that I'd never make it to a bike shop with the state the bike was in, but I just couldn't give up.

Then, in my stubborn madness, I was reminded of an old joke. 

A great flood hits a small town, and as the water is rising, a man's neighbor drives by: "Get in the truck, let's get out of here!" The man declines, saying, "No, no. God will provide salvation." The water continues to rise, and pretty soon, he's stuck on the upper floor of his house. A man in a canoe rows by: "Get in the canoe, let's get out of here!" But again, the man declines, saying, "No, no. God will provide." The water continues to rise, and soon the man is stuck on his roof with the water inching ever higher. The Coast Guard swoops in with a helicopter: "Grab the ladder, we're here to save you!" But the man waves them off, shouting above the roar, "NO, NO! GOD WILL PROVIDE!!!" Shortly thereafter, the waters rush over the top of his house, sweeping the man away and drowning him. At the gates of heaven, he meets God, and he asks, "God, why didn't you save me? Why did you let me drown?" To which God replies, "I sent a truck, a canoe, and a helicopter! How much more salvation did you need?!"

I looked back and saw a cargo truck rumbling up the pass, and I waved it down. The driver stopped. He didn't speak much English, but he was on his way to Maseru, and he could take me to Leribe, where I had a place to stay for the night. He tossed my bike in the back, and we rumbled up and over the pass and through some of the most beautiful scenery I'd seen in Lesotho. 

It felt like a punishment. To see the blue waters around the Katse lake from the top of the pass, to sweep down into a valley brimming with sunshine, to climb again and touch the edge of the world. There was snow in the pass, melting and refreezing in the shadows of the cliffs. The road climbed and climbed and climbed, and suddenly, there was nothing. The road from Ha Lejone to Leribe meets the edge of the Central Mountains, and one sees nothing but sky as it drops off precipitously into the plains below. There are no foothills, no gradual descents. Instead, there's a sign: Dangerous Curves. Engage Lowest Gear. You crest the pass, and the whole world opens out before you: green land folded back on itself hundreds of times, trailing craggy fingers down into russet valleys. It's a sheer drop, probably six to eight hundred meters. The road, pinned to the side of the mountain as it hairpins back and forth down a path blasted out of solid rock, is like a thin ribbon of modernity consumed by the raw power of nature's ancient stone. 

I should have been on my bike. This was my reward for days of climbing, for all the hardship in the mountains, and all that both bike and rider had endured. 

But I was stuck in the cab of a truck, the bike broken, the mind burdened by doubt. 

I eventually fixed the bike enough to get it to Ficksburg, in South Africa, and from there on to Bethlehem, where a professional was able to find me real bolts and to fix the brake and the infuriating squeak in my front wheel. 

For a time, I thought about hitching my way back up to Ha Lejone, to save my pride and deny that Lesotho had truly beaten me, but I recognized it for a fool's errand. It wouldn't erase the failure, nor the feeling of doubt created by a challenge I hadn't met. 

Instead, I've decided to move on, knowing my limits and how to better account for them in the future. I could blame the equipment, the conditions, the fact that I was out of money and wouldn't be able to find much shelter along the route, but in the end, I know that I came up hard against a wall, and I failed to climb it.

It doesn't mean that all future walls will stifle me. I may meet greater challenges down the road and overcome them through sheer grit and determination. For now though, I've found a limit. 

We all fail occasionally, and in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor failure. No one but me will understand nor care overmuch about a bit of mental weakness in the mountains of Lesotho. I don't know if it's humility or braggadocio that I'm able to write this now, that I failed but managed to overcome a failure and move on. 

Some would say there's no shame in getting knocked down if you get back up again. Sometimes I struggle with that, and the fear of failure keeps me from trying my hand. 

In my life, I've undertaken very few challenges that I didn't think I could overcome. That includes this trip, actually. It's pride, it's egoism, it's the pure poisonous confidence of youth that believes it has little left to learn, and as long as one keeps setting winnable goals, one needs never remember defeat. 

Getting knocked on your ass is important, and it was past time I remembered that. 

I only hope that with this failure that failing comes a little easier.  

Lesotho Breaks, Lesotho Mends

I knew Lesotho would be hard. At 1600 meters, the country’s lowlands are still higher than almost any other place I’ve ever experienced, and at nearly 3000 meters, the mountains of the Central Region around Thaba-Tseka, have tested my lungs, my legs, and my tolerance for the cold. 

Maybe visiting this mountain kingdom in the dead of winter was a poor decision.

I’m not going to deny that this has been the most challenging leg of the journey so far. At 2800 meters, the air is always cold. At night, temperatures plummet, dashing any idea I had of camping my way through the country. Even indoors, without electric heating, the cold gnaws away at my bones, confining me to an early bedtime beneath layers and layers of blankets. It spills its way into everything, and at times I feel as if I shall never be warm again. On the bike, the sun keeps the cold at bay, but too much time dawdling in the shadows of a mountain quickly reminds one that the cold is real and that the ride must be completed before the night falls. Without the heat of an African sun, the wind bites, and the threat of rain or even snow can quickly ruin the prospects of a day’s ride.

I became painfully aware of this on the road to Thaba-Tseka, on a fifty kilometer stretch of gravel known as ‘The Pass of the Jackals.’ The day may have started out warm enough in the valley surrounding the town of Marakabeis, but it soon grew chill, as clouds blanketed the sky and hid even the dimmest rays of sunlight.

Five kilometers uphill, then ten, then fifteen; finally after twenty kilometers, you think it’s impossible to climb anymore, there’s nothing left but sky. You’re up on top the roof of Africa, above 2800 meters, but then you round the mountain, and there, in the distance, you can just make out that white bush taxi, the one that passed you over half an hour ago, a mere speck, climbing still and disappearing into the fog of a cloud. The weather here is dangerous. In these mountains, it can change in an instant, and the warm air that hung over the valley has risen, condensed, and now patters at your helmet, your jacket, your panniers, and the stones that make up a heavily pitted road.

The view is stunning. Somehow, the road manages to chart a course over the very tops of the mountains, at times staring down into immense chasms on either side: wide, fertile valleys reached only by foot or by horse. A herd boys moves with his cattle, goats, and sheep, a solitary figure in gum boots, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a woolen balaclava covering everything but his eyes, walking stick in hand, a mangy, but powerful, dog never far away. We see one another across kilometers of open space, both thinking the other is equally crazy: him for standing out in a field with virtually nothing to keep him safe and warm but a blanket from Pep, the South African equivalent of a shitty Wal-Mart, me for cycling through such terrible weather in a search for, what, a sense of adventure? A mark of pride that only I can carry with me, that only I may truly know?

I’ve had several people ask me what prompted this journey, and, especially here, they wonder, “Why Lesotho? Why Lesotho in winter?” The only answer I can come up with is pure, unadulterated masochism. It is a personal journey, one that I knew would challenge me, and one that I wanted to experience, to test myself and take a measure of my own character.

I anticipated a physical challenge, especially from the mountains. I’m from Indiana, a part of the United States that, when asked for a description, I will openly reply, “It’s about as flat as the table we’re sitting at.” I never even had stairs in my house, and when I ran cross country in high school, the only incline training we could get consisted of a set of bleachers overlooking the football field.

Here, in Lesotho, the altitude alone is enough to make you question the sanity of such an expedition, one undertaken with virtually no training other than zipping through London traffic on my way to work or school. Here, in Lesotho, your lungs simply never feel like they can get enough oxygen. Climbing these mountains, your body aches for a full breath of air, and every gasp feels like you’re drowning, clawing for an invisible lifeline you’ve always taken for granted.

Such is the environment I’ve entered into, but these are challenges that get easier with time. I’ve reached the highest mountains in Lesotho, and I’ve felt myself growing stronger with every passing day.

What I couldn’t have anticipated were the mental challenges that would await me, as the rugged landscape has tested, to the breaking point, both bike and rider. An early attempt to leave the pavement and take to the gravel roads from Mohale’s Hoek to Malealea proved more difficult than I could have imagined. In Lesotho, there is only one tarred road. Everything else is paved with, well…nothing. Cow shit, maybe, and rocks. The heavy summer rains carve ruts into the road that lead off the sides of mountains. Stones jut from all angles, some lodged in the earth, some free to slip and fly, forcing the rider to chart a haphazard course or risk damage to gears, spokes, wheels, and brakes.

I fear that the road has not at all been kind to the bike, and after a day and a half of riding on these back roads, forced to push the bike up hills too rocky and rugged to stay in the saddle, a bolt that held my pannier rack sheared off at the base, the result of a particularly brutal downhill jolt and a particularly large rock thrown up by the front wheel. A hitch and a trip to the hardware store fixed that problem, but only a few days later, I realized that the valve stem on my front tire had snapped, ruining the tube and leaving me with no backups until I reach South Africa. I’ve had to ride gingerly, regardless, as the pannier rack, bent from the incident with the broken bolt, touches the back wheel at even the slightest bump, and the risk of another broken bolt has been almost too much to bear. This frustration only compounds the mental exhaustion of long days in the saddle, and added to the physical toll of bad roads, high altitude, and inclement weather, these last few days of riding have been unbelievably difficult on both mind and body.

What Lesotho has broken, however, Lesotho will mend. The bike and I are currently taking some time apart. I’ve been fortunate enough to hook up with a Peace Corps Volunteer who teaches at a trade school, and her fellow teachers have been so good as to give the bike the care it needs. I, meanwhile, am taking the week off to experience Basotho culture in the remote highlands of the Central Range.

Some time apart has already done us some good, as, like a lover after a particularly petty argument, I realize that I miss the company my bike. I miss the freedom of the road and the thrill of feeling as if you’re on top of the world. We’ve come through some pretty tough challenges already and seen some pretty amazing things together, and I want to keep on going. Lesotho can bend, but it can’t break, and it may turn out that the country acts as a crucible, forging a stronger bond between us. Maybe it sounds silly to speak of an inanimate object in such a way, but I’ve found the longer that I’m on the bike, the more it becomes an extension of myself, just as a backpack, a water bottle, or a warm jacket becomes indispensable, and thus, invaluable on a long trip. Every item I carry with me carries with it the scars of experience, and thus become symbolic of everything I've overcome. The road may be hard, but it rewards those who suffer its challenges.