OK, lemme come right out and say it: I don’t know the ‘Berg. And THAT’S a terrible admission indeed - but I once went to Injasuthi and I spent a night in a backpacker’s at Sani Top: do they count?

No, actually, they don’t, and reading David Bristow’s ‘Best Walks of the Drakensberg’ (Random House Struik) made me realise how much they don’t.

Walking - I’ll say it again - is the best way to get to know a place, and if you’re going to walk in the Berg, this book is probably the place to start. It begins with a quotation from a mountaineer called Frank Smythe (“Go out alone on the hills and listen. You will hear much… Alone amidst nature, a man leanrs to be one with all and all with one.”)… and it gets better from there.

Amongst other things, the ‘Berg contains a vast collection of irreplaceable rock art, and the first chapter I read was the one on this subject. It set the tone for the rest - here is a writer who cares passionately about his work and, more, about the area he’s writing about.

After the introductory pages, the book reveals the ‘Berg area by area, with, of course, plenty of information about each walk and trail. But here I have a criticism - I get the feeling that you’re kind of expected to know the names of the places you’re going to be walking into. But maybe this is more a fault of the descriptions - or, more likely, my reading of them.

Still, I think when I do finally pack my tent and beetle up to the ‘Berg, I’ll be packing ‘Best Walks,’ too,

This is a revision of a book first published in 1988. Buy it here.