society

Sept. 27, 2021

LINEO MABEKEBEKE

3 min read

Hiking body boasts of thrilling adventure park, trails

Hiking body boasts of thrilling adventure park, trails

Hikers climbing trees in the wooded Leloaleng Gardens

Story highlights

    Quthing is Lesotho’s only district with 3 different tribes
    The wooded park offers primal thrill of gentle pursuits

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PEOPLE’s Republic of Quthing, a hiking outfit based in Quthing promises hikers a larger than life experience in what its members claim must have given birth to the very spirit of excitement as they take adventurers through heights, depths, temperatures, distances and sizes, better known as - Your frontiers of adventure.

Their adventure park commonly known to the members of the group as the “Leloaleng Gardens” is situated near Leloaleng Technical School outside the Quthing town.

Quthing is a semi-rural and mildly mountainous district located in the southern part of Lesotho.  

According to the founding Director of the hikers’ body, Peiso Moji, the wooded park offers a primal thrill of gentle pursuits while the serenity of the landscape positively lures one to walk or hike and even challenges every dreamer.

“We are a group as adventurous, stress free and physically fit individuals who come from a district with Lesotho’s richest history in terms of tourism.

“The thin and cool air from the deep rivers works magic. Our activities are brain teasers and require lateral thinking and close teamwork,” he says.

“Quthing is a Bushmen/Khoikhoi/Khoisan’s district name. These are ancient people who inhibited Lesotho and most of Southern Africa in prehistoric times. They were hunters and gatherers holed up in a nomadic lifestyle in the eighteenth century,” Moji says.

He adds that no doubt, stories have been told and books written that Quthing is a scenic environment.

The revered Orange River (Senqu) starts and flows down from Mokhotlong down Qacha’s Nek into Quthing and through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean in Namibia.

According a document compiled by People’s Republic of Quthing, there are historical records of battles that were fought on top of Mount Moorosi, a mountain fortress that belonged to the founder of Baphuthing people, Chief Moorosi who ruled Quthing during the era of King Moshoeshoe I, the founder of the Basotho nation.

“The said battle field is accessible through only one pass and on top of that mountain, are bullet shells and remnants of Moorosi’s village,” Moji further shows.

“History has it that Chief Moorosi was decapitated by British troops and his head was taken to King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape by the then regime.

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“Quthing is the only district in Lesotho whose inhabitants are three different tribes, which speak three different languages, with three different cultural practices. There are the Tembus who use a dialect from the Cape, Phuthi a dialect used by the Baphuthi and the other is a mixture of Swati, Zulu and Southern Sotho dialects. Their language can only be spoken but not written,” Moji further says.

Forthartley, a British field hospital in Pokane, located approximately 15 kilometres out of the Quthing town was used as the British army hospital in 1879 during the skirmish between Chief Moorosi and British Cape government forces.

Some of the tourist attractions found in this district include San rock art or Bushmen paintings, which depict the lifestyle of the Khoisan/Khoikhoi people before the present day Lesotho was born or formed.

Apart from that, the district boasts of the Masitise historical cave, a unique rock formation which possesses an array of exotic instruments and python skin ammunitions dating back to the eighteenth century.

There is also a famous graveyard for cremated French missionaries who lived in the area and a museum built by the Paris Evangelical Mission Society.

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