Five Roads to the Forgotten Mountains

Every journey to Few & Far Luvhondo is part of the story

However you get to us, the last thirty minutes are the same. You reach our gate in the Limpopo lowveld. You step out of whatever brought you here and climb into an open 4x4. The road from the gate to the lodge is steep, covered in shale, winding through bushveld so thick with ancient baobabs that some of them have been standing here for a thousand years. The world you left behind gets quieter with every turn. The mountain decides when you have arrived.

By the time you reach the lodge the Venda drumming team welcomes you with a rhythm that gets into your bones. Before you have stepped off the vehicle, the journey you took to get here already feels like it belongs to a different day. A different life, almost. Someone puts a cold marula welcome drink in your hand. Your cliff suite is waiting. The valley is spread out below you. A four course dinner under the stars is a few hours away. You have arrived.

I love that moment. I have watched it happen hundreds of times now. The shoulders drop. The breathing changes. Something lets go. It happens to everyone, regardless of how they got to the gate. The mountain does that part. All we have to do is get you here. And there are five very different ways to do it.

The Train Through Baobab Country

If I could choose one way for you to arrive at Few & Far Luvhondo, it would be this. The Rovos Rail, the Pride of Africa, stops at our property once a week on its journey between Victoria Falls and Pretoria. You board at the Falls, spend three in wood-panelled carriages with white tablecloths and crystal glasses and formal dinners while Southern Africa rolls past your window. The train passes through baobab country on its way South. You stop and experience a game drive in Hwange National Park, you explore the Matopas National Park. You eat, you sleep, you read, you watch the landscape change from highveld to lowveld to Limpopo bushveld.

‍
Then the train stops, and you step off into the Soutpansberg. No airport. No taxi rank. Just the bush and a team waiting to drive you back to the lodge. The transition from the golden age of rail travel to a 4x4 on a shale track with baobabs pressing in on both sides is one of the most extraordinary contrasts in luxury travel. I have seen guests step off that train and stand completely still for a full minute, just breathing. The silence after days of train rhythm is almost physical. It lands on you.

‍

Wheels Down on Our Airstrip

We have our own private airstrip near Waterpoort, at the foot of the mountain. If you are flying in by private aircraft or charter, this is the fastest way to reach us and probably the most dramatic. You come in low over the Limpopo bushveld, the Soutpansberg Mountains rising ahead of you, and touch down on a strip surrounded by nothing except thorn trees and big sky. There is no terminal. No queue. No baggage carousel. Your guide meets you on the tarmac. You are in the 4x4 within minutes, heading through our valley and the distance between your previous life and your Few & Far Luvhondo life collapses to almost nothing.

‍
For guests coming from Johannesburg or Cape Town, this is the option that turns a full day of travel into a morning. You wake up in the city, you land at our strip before lunch, and by early afternoon you are in your plunge pool watching the valley change colour. It is as close to teleporting into the wild as anything I know.

‍

Through Polokwane

‍
Polokwane is the closest commercial airport, about ninety minutes by road. There are three daily flights from Johannesburg and it is the route most of our international guests take. Your guide meets you at Polokwane and the drive north becomes part of the decompression. You leave the city behind quickly. The road narrows. The landscape opens up. Baobabs start appearing, first one or two, then dozens, standing in the fields like ancient sentries. By the time you reach our gate, the drive has done half the work of slowing you down.

‍
I always tell guests who fly into Polokwane to resist the urge to sleep in the car. Watch the landscape. Watch the transition from town to farmland to bushveld. That drive is the Soutpansberg introducing itself to you, slowly, before the mountain does the rest.

‍

The Long Drive North

‍
Four and a half hours from Johannesburg or Pretoria. I know that sounds like a lot. I thought so too, the first time Jacob and I drove up to see the land that would become Few & Far Luvhondo. You head north on the N1, through Polokwane, and the country changes around you in a way that flying never lets you see. The highveld flattens out. The Tropic of Capricorn comes and goes, the vegetation shifts. Mopane woodland gives way to mixed bushveld and suddenly the baobabs are everywhere, vast and ancient and impossible to ignore. You cross into a landscape that most South Africans have never visited. It feels remote. It feels like you are heading somewhere that has been quietly waiting for you.

‍
Families who self-drive often tell me the journey was one of the highlights. The kids watched the landscape change. Everybody got hungry at the same time and stopped at a farm stall. Someone spotted the first baobab and shouted. By the time they reached the gate, the holiday had already started.

‍
Coming From  Kruger National Park

‍
Few & Far Luvhondo is about three and a half hours from Hoedspruit, which makes Few & Far Luvhondo a natural addition to a Kruger itinerary. Many of our guests spend a few days in the Greater Kruger reserves and then drive north to us. I love this combination because the contrast tells a story. The Kruger is big game, big herds, big lodges. Few & Far Luvhondo is mountains, baobabs, endemic birds, leopard tracks in the sand, six cliff suites, and a foraging walk that becomes a seven course dinner. Guests arrive from the Kruger expecting more of the same and within an hour they realise they have landed somewhere that operates by completely different rules.

‍
The drive between Hoedspruit and Few & Far Luvhondo takes you through some of the most beautiful and least visited country in Limpopo. It is not a famous route. There are no billboards. The road winds through small towns and farmland and mopane forest and eventually the Soutpansberg appears on the horizon, dark and layered and looking like the edge of the known world. Which, in a way, it is.

‍
The Part That Is Always the Same

‍
Five routes. Five completely different journeys. The Rovos Rail guest has spent three nights in formal attire.  The family who drove up from Johannesburg had a car full of snacks and a teenager who spotted the first baobab. The couple who landed on our airstrip twenty minutes ago. The travellers who came across from the Kruger looking for something they could not quite name. The woman who flew into Polokwane and watched the baobabs appear one by one through the car window.

‍
They all end up in the same place. The 4x4. The shale road. The baobabs closing in. The drums upon arrival.

‍
When Jacob and I first drove up that road, I turned to him and said, this is it. I did not mean the land, although the land took my breath away. I meant the feeling. The feeling that you are arriving somewhere that the rest of the world has not found yet. Every guest who makes it up that road, however they get to the gate, has that same moment. I see it in their faces when they step off the 4x4 and the drums stop and the silence of the Soutpansberg takes over. They look out at the valley and the mountains and the sky and something in them says: this is it.
That is what we built this place for. Getting here is the first adventure. Everything that follows is why you will come back.

‍

Few and Far Luvhondo. Six cliff suites in the Soutpansberg Mountains. Arrive by Rovos Rail from Victoria Falls, fly into our private airstrip, drive from Johannesburg, connect through Polokwane, or add us to your Kruger itinerary. However you get here, the mountain is waiting. To start planning your journey, visit fewandfarluvhondo.com or contact us at info@fewandfarcollection.com.

‍

‍

‍