---
type: Video
title: "48 hours in Lesotho - the World's Strangest Country 🇱🇸"
description: A mountain kingdom inside South Africa that was never colonised — donkey racing the whole valley turns out for, a pub crawl on donkeyback, and the world's highest commercial abseil at 204 metres.
tags: [lesotho, semonkong, donkeys, abseiling, waterfall, history, moshoeshoe, adventure]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQU0lNJ3B7k
video_id: hQU0lNJ3B7k
upload_date: 2025-12-12
duration: 2108
---

# 48 hours in Lesotho - the World's Strangest Country 🇱🇸

Harry, [Kieran](/people/kieran.md) and [Luke Damant](/people/luke-damant.md) go
to [Lesotho](/countries/lesotho.md) with an explicit purpose: his comments had
accused him of only ever showing the bad parts of Africa, so this is the answer.

They spend the 48 hours at [Semonkong](/places/semonkong.md) with a guide,
[Kay](/people/kay.md), who supplies almost everything the pages know. Two of the
three days are donkeys — racing them against local riders, then riding them
between village pubs. The third is a **204-metre abseil down a waterfall**, the
highest commercial single drop in the world.

He comes out calling it his favourite country in Africa.

*Obs: the video credits the lodge, the guide and a drone-footage company, and
carries eSIM and card sponsors. Only the travel content is recorded on these
pages.*

## Key moments

- [00:00] The premise: Africa's reputation in travel vlogs, the internet's taste
  for disaster stories, and a mountain kingdom nobody has heard of.
- [01:05] What makes it strange — small, and completely surrounded by another
  country. An enclave.
- [01:39] Through immigration at an airport being rebuilt, named after the man who
  founded the nation.
- [02:13] One of the least visited countries in Africa, one of the highest in the
  world, and never really colonised.
- [02:13] The comments that prompted the trip, answered directly.
- [02:48] Why they took a guide: mountainous, remote, and you need a 4x4.
- [03:24] Learning the greeting.
- [04:26] Kay is thirty with a daughter, and points out he is some way ahead of
  the three of them.
- [05:01] What is hardest about living here: surviving day to day — food, and
  money to send children to school.
- [05:37] Farming is for the household, not for sale. Small fields, stored for
  winter.
- [06:08] Mountains as far as he can see, and his refusal to call it Switzerland
  because it deserves to be its own thing.
- [06:39] Cold and wet even in summer. The country's lowest point is around 1,600
  m.
- [07:11] Bride price — about 15 cows once, largely gone now with inflation, and
  based on family and education rather than looks.
- [07:44] Semonkong Lodge: a fireplace, bunk beds, and not much else.
- [09:56] Walking between villages, past shops in the middle of nowhere. Barren
  and green at once.
- [10:26] **Donkeys are the transport** — slower than horses but stronger,
  sure-footed, and the best thing for carrying loads up a mountain.
- [11:36] Betting on the donkey race is pure guesswork; even the guide has no
  idea who's good.
- [12:10] Harry names his donkey Tesco and says on camera he will not hit it,
  even if it costs him.
- [12:45] The race. He falls off, remounts, and a local boy takes it at the end.
- [14:24] The whole valley is watching from the hills.
- [14:24] **This is a real local event**, raced in winters, not laid on for
  tourists. The losers' heat follows.
- [15:34] Training for the abseil, on a 25-metre practice drop.
- [16:08] The real one: **the world's highest single-drop commercial abseil, 204
  m** — eight times the practice height.
- [16:39] His advice mid-drop: don't look down. And the guide's: screaming is part
  of it.
- [17:11] Three qualifying descents. Each harder, and the confidence goes up
  anyway.
- [17:45] **The history.** Moshoeshoe in the 1800s, amid famine, war and Zulu
  attack, unifying tribes, families and clans on the argument that strength is in
  unity — where colonisers everywhere else worked by dividing and conquering.
- [18:15] That unity plus the mountains made the country a fortress nobody could
  take, and produced the Basotho identity: its own language, customs, dress and
  hats.
- [18:49] His surprise that nobody knows about it and that not even South Africans
  come.
- [19:19] Luke doesn't qualify — he caught his hands in the equipment.
- [19:50] The flag, explained: blue for rain, white for peace, green for
  prosperity. The current king is related to Moshoeshoe and isn't popular.
- [20:27] **The donkey pub crawl** — a real tradition, because donkeys and horses
  are the only transport and people want to stay warm.
- [21:27] The rule: cans while riding, not bottles.
- [23:11] Maluti, the local beer, at the first stop.
- [23:46] Almost entirely men. Women, he's told, normally drink at weekends.
- [24:18] His verdict on the country: no complaints, nobody harsh to them, one of
  his favourites in Africa — and he thinks it would have been fine without a
  guide too.
- [24:55] Free horse parking at the market, which he compares to English parking
  charges.
- [26:10] Respect for how tough the life is — no paved roads, hard weather.
- [26:43] The night before, spent thinking about worst-case scenarios.
- [27:20] The site. He says out loud, repeatedly, that he doesn't want to do it.
- [28:27] A hike in and a hike back out, and a guide who goes down first **with no
  safety rope** to set the lines.
- [29:37] Three lines and a much bigger operation than the practice day.
- [30:10] **The speech**: face your fears, get outside your comfort zone, that's
  where you feel most alive and where magic happens — recorded, half-joking, as
  last words.
- [31:18] Rock-paper-scissors for the crypto and the YouTube channel.
- [31:51] Going down in pairs, above a rainbow.
- [32:24] Halfway, and his arms are aching.
- [33:05] Into the water — slippery, cold, and directly inside the waterfall.
- [33:39] Down, and then the separate problem of getting out of a waterfall
  running hard after recent rain.
- [34:17] His verdict: one of the best experiences of his life, and the sketchiest.
- [34:51] Lesotho as his favourite country in Africa, 10 out of 10.

## Extracted pages

- Place: [Semonkong](/places/semonkong.md)
- Country: [Lesotho](/countries/lesotho.md)
- People: [Kay](/people/kay.md), [Kieran](/people/kieran.md),
  [Luke Damant](/people/luke-damant.md)
- Tips: [Do hard things on purpose](/tips/do-hard-things-on-purpose.md),
  [Travel with a local guide](/tips/travel-with-a-local-guide.md),
  [Judge a place for yourself](/tips/judge-a-place-for-yourself.md)