Whether by felling trees or herding sheep, the Basotho have shaped the landscape, with some of the transport blanks filled in by Chinese highways that, regardless of the trade-off involved, make the traveller's journey.

A series of sandy twists and turns, switchbacks and birds for the twitcher's checklist - that's Lesotho's Sani Pass in a nutshell. Bearded vultures with wedge-shaped tails, which the Germans delightfully named lammergeiers, pierce the space between peaks that stand as though they are on guard. The other side of a border post - to which raiding Basotho horse thieves pay little attention - reveals village life on the tundra, surrounded by stone kraals and wrapped in the country's iconic blankets....