A Peace Offering

Moments of stillness in the Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve

NE Where is a an independent, travel-focussed journal for those who travel, and other curious people. Free newsletters are sent out every two weeks, and if you’d like to support the work I do here then please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($5 a month/$50 a year). Benefits include tailored travel recommendations and full access to NE Where’s archive (which is packed with stories about exceptional women, and other tales about interesting people and places), plus access to the NE Where On The Road WhatsApp group, where I share pics and snippets as I travel.

Sometime on Friday: this was us, exploring the Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve on horseback.

Dear NE-One

I’m sending you here a few little pieces of quiet. The photos were taken over the past handful of days, while Mark and I traversed exquisite grassland on foot and on horseback – and are proof of what can happen when you search for stories often hidden behind hesitation.

Paying subscribers: I’ll be sending two or three short videos – including one of us riding through a herd of eland – on our WhatsApp group tomorrow evening. If you haven’t joined but would like to, please reply to this email and I’ll add you to the group.

Late on Tuesday afternoon an editor sent me the final details I needed to get working on a Drakensberg feature I’d pitched back in September. My deadline, it turned out, is unexpectedly tight and so by lunchtime on Wednesday Mark and I were driving up to KwaZulu-Natal’s Northern Drakensberg – without any plans other than to have dinner with a university friend whose family runs the magnificent Montusi Mountain Lodge.

Fast-forward a few hours and she’d worked magic. Not only had she set up stays for us at Montusi, Greenfire Drakensberg Lodge and The Cavern, and invited us to experience the wild offerings at All Out Adventures – but she’d magically, gently, coaxed me way out of my comfort zone and onto the back of a horse… and the days since have been a happy blur of traversing landscapes so exquisite they hardly seem real.

I’ll tell you more about the Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve in the coming weeks. I need to settle now into an afternoon of feature writing (did I tell you my deadline is tight?) – but first wanted to share with you some of the photographs I snapped mostly from horseback these past few happy days. I hope they bring some stillness to your world.

Until next time

Narina x