As we rose into the sky, the soft morning light grew brighter, and the early colours melted away. There’s not a hut, house, or road to be seen below us from one horizon to the other. Instead, an intricate patchwork of scrub, bushes, trees and waterholes, interlinked by game trails and animal highways. The closer we got to our destination, the drier the earth beneath us grew. Bright blues and greens give way to muted yellows, beiges and browns, and the closer we get to our destination, the drier the earth beneath us grows. Botswana is one of the flattest countries in the world but suddenly, ahead of us, rising dramatically 400m out of the arid landscape, are four lonely chunks of quartzite, streaked with mauve, turquoise and lavender – the Tsodilo Hills. We flew around them, seeing the brilliant streaks of mauve, turquoise and lavender in the rocks, before landing nearby.

The largest rock is known as the Male, the next size down is the Female, then the Child, a fourth rock is referred to in different myths, as either an earlier wife, another child or occasionally as a grandchild. Spread over roughly 8km, these hills are the spiritual home of the Basarwa (sometimes called San or Bushmen) and Bantu people. The hills are woven with spiritual meaning and symbolism, and show signs of early life from as far back as 100,000 years. The best rock art sites are on the north end of the Female, and we spent some hours here, with a local guide, observing, learning and experiencing this fascinating place.

The little visited Tsodilo Hills, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rise from the Kalaharisands, near where it meets the Okavango wetlands. With ancient sand dunes to the east, and a dry fossil lake bed to the west, the Tsodilo Hills are the spiritual home of the Basarwa (San) and Bantu peoples. This is a mystical place, a place of peace, refuge and spiritual fulfilment for countless peoples, past and the present, and one that has been drawing people here for thousands and thousands of years. Spread out over 10km², archaeologists have found evidence of early human life here, dating as far back as 100,000 years.

The name Tsodilo means ‘damp earth’ in !Kung, the language of one of the local tribes. According to !Kung legend, long ago, when the rocks were still soft and the animals could talk, the hills were a family, consisting of husband, wife and two children. Conflicts between husband and wife, saw the wife leave her husband and move away with the children. The younger child later returned to the father, but the older child remained near the mother – today the ‘family’ are found in the current hill configuration - male, female and child (though some versions of the legend have the tiny fourth hill as the husband’s first wife, one he’d left for a younger woman, and who now prowls quietly in the background).

Tsodilo Hills is home to one of Africa’s most impressive collections of ancient rock art, with over 4,500 paintings, at approximately 500 different sites, and occurring on all four of the hills. Nobody knows the exact age of the paintings; the majority are thought to be between 10,000 and 20,000 years old, whilst others are only a century old. The artworks are unique in comparison to other San (Bushman) art, both in technique and subject matter. The majority of southern African San artworks were painted by brush, and so are known for their fine detail, but here the art is predominantly finger painted, with paint made from haematite, charcoal and calcrete, mixed with animal fat, blood, marrow, egg white, sap and even urine.

To date the majority of, and best preserved, rock art has been found on the female hill. There are numerous walking trails to take here, and with our local guide Shakes pointing out various paintings, we first take the Rhino Trail and then the Lion Trail, wandering around the base of the hill, under the tall spreading manketti trees, with their hand-shaped leaves and smooth bark. In the Rhino Cave, named for the notable white rhino painted on the wall, we stop for a while. Next to the rhino is a painting of a red giraffe, and around the giraffe and rhino are various geometric shapes, all painted in red. Across from the paintings are a number of depressions and grooves, that archaeologists believe where ground into the rock using hammer stones during the Later Stone Age. As we continue to explore, paintings of rhino, zebra, gemsbok, stick-figure people and more, parade before our eyes. Image after image, some big, some small, some clear and others just a faint outlines or shadow.

The humans portrayed are, unusually for San paintings, depicted with no weapons, clothes or adornments, and several were likely connected to fertility rites, given the prominently featured appendages on some of the male subjects! The wildlife featured is a curious mix; with giraffe, eland, rhino and elephant being the most common species, but also cattle, whales and even penguins (the latter hinting at a connection between the local tribes and the peoples at the far away coast). Some of the representations of animals painted embodied ritualistic powers, like that of the snake, painted because of its importance in rain-making rituals.

Local people still live in the area, and the hills remain a sacred place for the San, who call them the “Mountains of the Gods” and the “Rock that Whispers”, and believe them to be inhabited by the spirits of the ancestors. People continue to visit Tsodilo to collect water to use in religious ceremonies, and local hunters still perform rituals in sacred sites on the hills. Only a handful of tourists ever reach this amazing place, see the incredibly well-preserved works of art, and experience the timeless cultural heritage and natural beauty.

Sarah Kingdom

Travel writer, mountain guide, yoga teacher, trail runner and mother, Sarah Kingdom was born and brought up in Sydney, Australia. Coming to Africa at 21 she fell in love with the continent and stayed. Sarah guides on Kilimanjaro several times a year, and has lost count of how many times she has stood on the roof of Africa. She has climbed and guided around the world and now spends most of her time visiting remote places in Africa. When she is not traveling she runs a cattle ranch in Zambia with her husband.