An alarm clock beeps at 5.30 am. Outside, it’s still drizzling.
At breakfast there’s no end to the food. First we get Maltabella porridge. Then Thembeka brings us each a plate with scrambled egg, cheese, sliced tomato, fresh bread and hamburger patties.
Thembeka lives with her grandmother about a kilometre away.
“I love my job, except in winter, when I have to get up at 4 am,” she says with a laugh.
What devotion – in winter temperatures here drop to -7ºC.
Wearing raincoats, ponchos and black plastic bags, we stand on the porch and listen to our guides Robert Mnika and Tshepo Lesholu.
We set off downhill, towards a clump of wattle trees. Robert doesn’t follow a path; he just leads us through the veld. 
We skip over a river and clamber up a stony hill. From the top, we look out over the valley.
“The residents speak of the Jordan; if you cross this river, you have to confess your sins,” Robert says. The region is considered holy ground, because it initially belonged to the nearby Catholic Mariazell mission station. 
Meanwhile, the weather starts to clear. Around us, the Dragon starts showing its rough grey back. Way out to the right the peaks of the Twins and Three Sisters rise up out of the white mist.
We pass a field of white and pink cosmos flowers and stop under a clump of wattles for water. A path of red clay twists through the trees. The residents use oxen to tow large supplies of firewood from the bush. These paths, along with overgrazing, leave ugly reddish-brown scars all over the green landscape. 
Robert warns us that a stiff hill lies ahead. About three-quarters up, Michael calls a halt and we rest against our packs for a while. Behind us, higher up the hill, two herdsmen and their dog watch us. Below us, the shadows of the clouds drift over the valley.
“When the hadedas call, it usually means there’s a storm on the way,” Robert says and points to the white cumulus clouds on the horizon.
 It would prove that the hadedas were not warning of a storm this time; we would not get rain again.
 We’re grateful when we finally spot the Makuhlong chalet. Our hostess, Kholu Tshekiso, is standing in the door waiting for us. As we plod in, she brings coffee, tea and cooldrinks to the stoep.
 We wiggle our toes in the sun and eat delicious vetkoek. It’s 2pm and the whole afternoon is leisure time.
Later, in the evening, the headman’s brother arrives in a double-cab bakkie. He’s one of the Mehloding trail’s trustees and comes to check if everything is in order.We nod, between mouthfuls of braaivleis.
It’s barely 8pm when the first guys decide to go to bed. It’s dead quiet outside. The moonlight reflects off the corrugated iron roofs down in the valley, where only a single light shines.

Early in the morning we are outside on the stoep, rubbing our cold hands together. Today is the stiffest hike of the trail – 20 km to the next chalet.
We head off. Two women chatting over a fence turn around and greet us with a friendly “dumelang”. Children in blue uniforms walk to school and a few geese waddle down the clay trail.
The path swings to the right and we emerge next to a stream. “This isn’t a stream; it’s a river!” Barnie exclaims. “I won’t be able to leap over this! Short legs, you see.”
Dawie jumps over, followed by me and Tshepo. Robert carries Barnie across. The rest jump over.
A giant hill towers above us. We gingerly climb over the rocks and red soil, on the heels of a herd of cattle that have just been dipped. Most farmers let their cattle, sheep and goats graze high up on the flanks of the mountain, but instead of bringing them back to the farm every night, a herdsman looks after the flock.
As we crest the hill, the village disappears and we’re surrounded by green mountains. Way above us, the peaks of the Twins and Three Sisters get closer and closer. Here in the desolate hills herdsmen build stone enclosures where they live alone with their flocks for months.
Ahead of me, Barnie and Robert walk through the veld like two schoolboys on their way to a secret hideout.
The Mehloding Trail has no neatly marked paths. You hike along cattle paths or through the long grass. Robert and Tshepo know exactly where they’re going. Both of them grew up in the area and have hiked the trail for years. 
The path we’re walking now twists over the mountains into Lesotho. A woman and two men approach, with a suitcase each on their heads. They’ve been visiting family in Lesotho and have been walking since 4am. It’s now 11am.
We swing to the right among the indigenous oldwood trees, passing right under the Twins. Shiny streams run down their flanks like tears. The day before yesterday this peak was only a tiny, distant landmark…
“Careful now!” Robert warns us later in the afternoon as we edge along a steep slope on a rocky cliff. We stop under an overhanging rock with a few rock paintings.

The oldwoods throw long shadows over the green slopes. It is clear that not many people come here.
“The area between Kokstad and the Drakensberg was considered a no-man’s land by the British government,” Robert told us earlier. “The British didn’t recognise the settlements here.”
This area was granted to the Griquas in 1862. Not far from here, the Griquas trekked over the Drakensberg from Philippolis (at Ongeluksnek). They established Griqualand East, with Kokstad as the capital.
On the other side of the hill I fall in behind Michael. His slow pace suits me. As I lift my tired head, I see the green wall and thatched roof of our chalet. On the stoep a woman waves to us with both hands.
Nomsa Situ-Sekhutlong greets us with a warm handshake and a big smile. She knows all about making tired hikers feel at home. 
Our rooms are spick-and-span – just what you want after a long day’s walk: a warm bed and someone who spoils you a bit. You wash your hair under a hot shower and crawl in between clean sheets. You don’t have to brave a cold shower or a long drop.
At dusk, the over-70s enjoy a glass of whisky on the stoep.
“I walk with no problems on the level sections, but those uphills kill me,” Barnie says. “My 77-year-old heart can’t work that hard any more.”
On the horizon the sun shines dark pink from under a bank of clouds. The rays of sunlight probe between the peaks like searchlights. “A view like this is worth a 20 km hike,” someone chirps.
As we sit down to dinner, Barnie says: “Imagine if we had to cook our own food after a day like today!”
The dinner table looks like a Christmas feast: bowls of pumpkin, potato salad, beetroot, beans, vegetable curry, rice, noodle salad, spinach and fragrant chicken. It’s so tasty we go back for seconds.

Robert and I sit on the stoep of our hut in the late-afternoon sun. The Madlangala chalet is at the foot of the mountain, just above the village Makomoreng. We can hear a sheep bleating.
This part of the Drakensberg is communal land and the farmers don’t use the best farming techniques. The landscape is dotted with red-brown scars from years of overgrazing.
“There’s a lot of stock theft and nowadays people don’t keep many cattle any more,” Robert says. “The good thing is that this gives the veld a chance to recover.”
“Some of the Basotho traditions are too expensive to uphold nowadays,” Robert says. “A proper lobola is about 10 cattle. That’s more than R40 000! People don’t have the money or the cattle. That’s why it’s good that tourists visit the area.”
Inside the chalet, our hostess, Sindi Mandubu, stands in front of the stove. It feels like a Sunday afternoon at your gran’s.

When I get up at 5.30am, an oil lamp is burning in the kitchen. “We would have liked to continue,” Gary and Isaac say despondently at breakfast. Our companions from Port Elizabeth are going home today.
They did well. The eldest, Barnie, hiked second from the front for most of the way.
“An 80-year-old man has hiked this trail,” Robert said earlier. “He walked bent over and sideways like a crab, but he finished without complaining.”
This is the wonderful thing about this trail. Because it’s so well organised and well equipped, just about anyone can hike it.
We wave goodbye as they drive off in their bakkie. Then we turn around and climb the hill. We stop in a kloof, where we can hear water rushing down the rock. Trees grow in clumps in ravines. Hundreds of proteas grow further down the valley. These trees are protected, and the headman can fine anyone picking blooms.
I hold my breath to hear the sounds of the mountain.
In the kloofs, narrow streams run down the mountainside and plants grow dense and green. Bright wild flowers bloom in the long grass.
Much too quickly, we arrive at the gravel road to Qacha’s Nek. The Drakensberg is now no longer a no-man’s land, but a heartland.