People who don’t know Tuli – the large triangular region where South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe meet – probably don’t give it much thought.  But they are doing themselves an injustice.

I lived in Tuli, on and off, for about two years.  The Shashe River valley is where naturalist Gareth Patterson settled with the Born Free lions that were raised by George and Joy Adamson in Kenya. He wanted to re-introduce them to the wild in Botswana and wrote several books about his adventures. It was a harsh existence – he lived in a stinkingly hot and primitive camp under a single large tree.  He had a rusty bush-buggy that only ran downhill, his only water came from a 40-gallon drum, his only light was paraffin lamps and candles. The heat in summer would fry an egg on your forehead.  It was bliss.  There is something absolutely unforgettable about living so close to the edge of survival, where the unexpected is daily fare. I was visiting Gareth one searing December. We were sitting on bricks around his early-morning campfire, enjoying the sunrise, drinking lumpy instant coffee with powdered milk, when a large lioness streaked out of the bush. She came up to Gareth and nuzzled him while I watched over the rim of my coffee cup. I could have put out my hand and touched her. For several minutes the two of them went through a tumultuous greeting, then she disappeared back into the bush from where she had come. Gareth turned to me.  “How could you sit there so calmly?” he asked.   “Weren’t you scared?” I shrugged.  “She came to say hello,” I said.  “It was sweet.” “But that has never happened before!” he said, voice rising, and it was only then that I realised that if I had moved or made a sound, I might have ended up as lion-breakfast.  But how was I supposed to know? – I thought this was part of a regular routine. It took a long time for both of us to calm down after that. At Gareth’s camp, I got the best and the worst of Tuli. In winter the nights and mornings are nose-nippingly cold and desiccatingly dry. Spring rains make the Limpopo and Shashe impassable (there are no bridges so when the river is high you cannot cross) but then the veld is carpeted with tiny bright yellow flowers and the springbok pronk through the long grass. The mopane trees are full of the large juicy mopane worms that are so delicious when lightly fried. Summer is so hot that you can move only in the early mornings and late afternoons. The ground sizzles and shimmers with heat. There is a strange wild haunting beauty about this landscape. It is hard to believe that anything could want to live here, but they do – and in quantity. The ground and rocks are red and gold – especially in the golden hours of dusk and early morning.  This is the landscape of baobabs, silhouetted against the harsh light, and unexpected riverine forests that grow quite unconcernedly in dry riverbeds, appearing to cope quite happily with the annual floods. This is also the venue for the Tour de Tuli – a fund-raising cycle tour through the three countries that meet at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers. It is an outflow of the popular Tour de Kruger that started in 2005. The five-day mountain-bike trail starts in Botswana and follows ancient elephant trails through the Tuli Reserves, ending in the Mapungubwe National Park in Limpopo. Some 450 cyclists come from all over the world to cycle these sere landscapes. The funds raised go towards hosting rural children in wilderness workshops, to educate them about the importance of wilderness and conservation.  The governments of the three countries have pulled out all the stops to help, creating a ‘free-pass’ zone between their countries specially for the event. This creates a feeling of otherworldliness, as if boundaries don’t matter and only nature is important. This is confirmed by the way the animals ignore you as you cycle past, the children come out of their villages to greet you with song, the border guards wave you through the dry river beds with a smile, the view from the high rock at Mapungubwe shows a plain of baobabs marching north as far as the eye can see.  It is utterly timeless. In August, the mornings are cool and the days still don’t reach the sizzle and shimmer of high summer. The tour goes past Fort Tuli – the little fort built by Cecil John Rhodes as the launch-point of the Jameson Raid (the failed invasion that started the Second Anglo-Boer War). The golden sandstone, ribbed with basalt, is honeycombed with caves, rock paintings, evidence of ancient settlements, dinosaur fossils. Mapungubwe, where the tour ends, is the site of a hilltop civilisation that has been sacred for centuries. Cycling is probably the best way to see the splendours of the Tuli region.  Even if you don’t think you could handle a five-day cycle trail, the lodges in the Tuli region offer shorter cycling safaris as the best way to see game. But if you do think you like the idea of a trail through this ancient and atmospheric wilderness, you can contact Heather Wilson at heatherw@wilderness.co.za and sign up for Tour de Tuli.