Off the grid in the Little Karoo

David Crookes

Every big city needs a country retreat, a place of fresh air and pleasures authentic and Wi-Fi-free. East of Cape Town, the Little Karoo is a 290km strip of semi-desert that trims the edge of the vast wilderness of the Great Karoo. Wedged between the Swartberg mountain range to the north and the Langeberg range to the south, the Klein Karoo is home to dust-bowl towns, sheep farms, river-threaded valleys, dramatic mountain passes and mile upon mile of empty veld.

There is treasure here, if you know where to look. Imagine the Australian outback at a two-hour clip from London, combined with the artistic bohemia of New York’s Hudson Valley – but with cheetahs and lions thrown in – and you have something of the strange and fascinating charm of the place. It’s a particular, out-of-time, off-map allure that has worked its magic on creative city dwellers who have trickled here, seeking beauty and space and peace, to set up home in the Little Karoo’s Dutch gabled houses, converting farmsteads into galleries and design studios, establishing imaginative restaurants, and, best of all for visitors, creating gem-like guesthouses and rentable homes that are a lesson in effortless style and soul-powering substance in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Route 62 unspools across the heart of the Little Karoo, rising and falling through hills and valleys like a cardiogram, the land growing wilder by the mile. This road and the secrets it unfolds remain hidden from the tourist hordes that race up and down the coastal Garden Route. From Cape Town, it quickly casts off from civilisation, passing under an archway blasted through rock and out into the treeless plains.

The Swartberg Pass

David Crookes