The wind whips up, sending snowflakes in a horizontal stream across the window-pane. “The weather changes at the drop of a hat up here,” says host Jonathan with wry understatement. Obscured is a view that just minutes before revealed a spectacular vision of African beauty that only a mountaintop setting could provide. The sudden snow squall had swallowed unending views of golden green foothills, and beyond into lowlands that kiss Africa ’s eastern seaboard.

Yesterday, the sun had been out, blue sky reigned and the grass had danced gently in the breeze, as though skipping over the eastern highlands of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, before disappearing over the rocky escarpment on its way to South Africa ’s Zulu plains.

No matter: we were being warmed by a crackling log fire, hunkered down comfortably inside the lounge of a little known refuge perched atop one of Southern Africa’s most imposing ranges, the Drakensburg Mountains.

Sani Top Chalet is best known as ‘the highest pub in Africa’, the back-of-loungeroom bar apparently qualifying it as a pub and the height of 2,865 metres (9,400 ft) allowing it to stake its vertiginous claim.

Jonathan runs a second bar back over the border in Himeville but spends at least half his time entertaining guests here. “The view’s much better and because it’s so isolated, there’s not as many drop-ins,” he says.

Again Jonathan assumes the role as master of understatement: there is only one road to Sani Top Chalet and the charming house-like hostel is the only building - bar a small border checkpoint and some local worker accommodation - for miles around. No main street full of tourist trinket shops, no town, nothing; just great expanses of a seemingly deserted, but ruggedly beautiful landscape. The only disruption to its stillness is the occasional passing shepherd and his flock who, as quickly as they appear, disappear over the ridge like an apparition of long gone tradition. 

Most travellers to Sani Top (there are still relatively few and even then, a lot are ‘local’ South African tourists) begin in South Africa, following the dirt road as it winds slowly to a border checkpoint. Passport formalities completed, it’s then a hairpin-after-hairpin 8km crawl up the Sani Pass track; but only if you’ve got a four-wheel drive or high clearance vehicle as they are mandatory for anyone heading up what is the only eastern thoroughfare into landlocked Lesotho .

The first vehicle to conquer the zig-zag road – previously a pack mule trade route between South Africa and Mokhotlong – was driven  by ex-RAF Spitfire pilot and adventurer, Godfrey Edmonds in 1948. The epic feat took three and a half hours using the assistance of a Basuto labour gang, ponies, chain pulleys and a lot of rope.

Today, the trip to the ridge breach is as quick as the drop in temperature, an indication of the rapid rate the track rises rather than the speed of travel as you inch your way along the pot-holed road. In the wet, passage becomes impossible as trickling streams quickly turn to rivers while the extreme cold in winter has seen many a truck slide over the icy edge, as evidenced by a few rusted chassis skeletons in the ravine below.

As you reach the top, Sani Top Chalet sticks out for its ordinariness as much as for its billowing chimney that signals a warm hearth. Before being welcomed by Jonathan, it’s a quick visit to a scruffy hut across the road, which houses Lesotho border officials. Three men huddle around a pot bellied stove, a sparse desk and an ancient short wave radio playing songs of static. They look at you in straight boredom – more than likely you are one of only ten people they will see in a day yet they still give the impression you’re interrupting work of great and timely importance (a fresh hand of cards tellingly on the desk). But a freshly stamped passport reminds you that far from stumbling across a local card den, you’ve actually just crossed a rather precariously placed international border.

From the outside, Sani Top resembles an old miner’s shack – a hodgepodge of stone, weatherboard and wood. Inside has a similar, if not more comforting feel, with basic rooms made cheery by colourful bedding. A dining room greets you with its warmth, supplied heartily by a central stove. Entering the lounge and bar area, you are struck first by the homeliness of it all and then by the view. Huge windows sit aside the fire-place, making the most of the outdoor asset that Sani Top saddles. In clear weather, which if you hang around at least half an hour you will catch given the sudden changeability of the elements here, you will be a witness to possibly the most expansive vista enjoyed by any pub in the world.

With claims on beds staked – from a choice of main chalet accommodation, a cheaper stand-alone dorm or one of several ‘roundels’ (traditional bungalows), it’s back to the bar for an evening session. Jonathan, as good a barman ‘listener’ as any, is also good on the storytelling. In between tales of South African adventure he will invariably persuade you, especially in the colder months, to partake is some ‘hot’ port, a traditional drink in these parts, or so he tells me. The warming drink is similar to mulled wine but, naturally, heavier on the fortification.

Sani Pass is not a destination for the easily bored. Its isolation is its attraction with hours spent musing over weather patterns, studying the many photos on walls, all of which have mind-boggling stories behind them: from the first ascent of Sani Pass by motor car to the building of the chalet to the many occasions that visitors have been marooned for days turning into weeks, snowed in to roof level. Here, like most of Africa , there’s always a story.

Many will just want to pass the time happily reading in front of the fire while in summer (and in winter for the hardy few), there’s endless expanses of undulating ridges to explore, including nearby Mt Thabana-Ntlenyana, the highest peak in Southern Africa at 3,482 metres. For those with time on their hands, you can book horse treks. This is the best way to explore local villages which, virtually cut off from all road traffic, display traditional lifestyles.

But while others explore, I’m content to sink further into my fire-warmed armchair, slowly sipping a third cup of steaming port as Jonathan launches into yet another tale.  Outside, the constantly changing beauty that is the ‘Roof of Africa’ continues to amaze, as does the will of a shepherd as he musters his herd through the gates of a magnificent mountain kingdom.