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

Harry, Kieran and Luke Damant go to Lesotho 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 with a guide, Kay, 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
• Country: Lesotho
• People: Kay, Kieran, Luke Damant
• Tips: Do hard things on purpose, Travel with a local guide, Judge a place for yourself