Beautiful, culturally rich, safe, affordable and easily accessible from Durban and Johannesburg, mountainous Lesotho is a vastly underrated travel destination.

This is essentially an alpine country, where villagers on horseback in multicolored balaclavas and blankets greet you round precipitous bends. The hiking and trekking – often on a famed Basotho pony – is world class and the infrastructure of the three stunning national parks continues to improve. An astonishingly beautiful country, this ‘Mountain Kingdom’ needs to be seen to be believed.