Overview of Past Sani Pass Adventure Bike Trips

Over the past few years I've done the Sani Pass no less than 3 times, these are the details: 1st Sani Trip: We were still relatively newbies at adventure riding and I'd just turned 50 and gotten my bike license for the 1st time. The weapon of choice was a 2014 KTM 1190 Adventure S. I had pimped it out, as I tend to do with all my bikes, but for this trip I had packed a lot of stuff - it took some time to learn that less is more. There were 5 of us doing it and the plan was to go up, have the mandatory Maluti at the top and then head to Sani Stone Lodge for the night and then down the pass the next day. But as we all know things never go to plan, myself and a mate went straight up to the top, without any issues. But 1 of the riders came off right at the start, luckily there were no injuries, but this was to mess with his mojo for the ride up. It took him well over an hour to get up, with him even flipping the GS to face down Sani at one point. He had little to no interest in helping get his bike up and facing the right way and stood there waiting for the other mates to get his bike sorted - this did not go down well. We had our Maluti brew and great lunch, which was meant to be a late breakfast and then made our way to Sani Stone Lodge. I can highly recommend Sani Stone Lodge, great accommodation and really good food - good food seems to be a general theme of mine. As night started to fall, so did a storm move in and the heavens opened. Right there and then we took the decision that we wouldn't be heading down Sani the next day, that was asking for trouble with all the mud, especially based on the problems we had coming up - which is way easier. The next morning we headed along the tar to Afriski for lunch, down Motang pass and onwards to Reitz for the night, before heading home the next day. A highlight video of the trip: https://youtu.be/EdB5fZcWrJY?si=a9PKTQUJZ8s1QhpD Sani Trip 2: Enroute we 1st stopped off in Nottingham Road for lunch and then headed towards Himeville along the infamous Lower Loteni Road, this is an absolute must. For this trip we stayed over at the Himeville Arms, always great staying there, and the next morning headed up Sani, this time I was on my new BMW R1200 GSA Triple Black, the trip down on the big girl was incredible and I was looking forward to heading up Sani on her. Things went fairly well, that is until we got to some of the looser switchbacks, here the GSA started stalling as soon as things got loose. I was new to the GS world and was told to leave the bike in Enduro mode, clearly the wrong advice, as the traction control just kept killing the drive - at this point I was less than impressed with the big bike. I decided to go through the menus and saw that there was an Enduro Pro mode, I switched to this and the bike came alive, from there on it was a pleasure to ride her and the stalling was a thing of the past. As is customary, we stopped at the top for a Maluti and brunch and then headed on to Katse dam for the evening, via Thaba Tseka, it was 16 June and supposed to be the middle of winter, this was not the case as the mercury soared above 30 degrees Celsius, enroute to Katse. Katse Lodge was a great stay, we had a fantastic stay there and the next day it was a long trek towards home, but 1st the challenge was to find fuel - we eventually were able to buy some bottles of fuel at a local hairdresser. Sani to Katse Dam GPX Route File: A highlight video of the trip: https://youtu.be/rqEjh1wTpTM?si=KKOSzICcygN83hUh Sani Trip 3: Finally on this one I'd get to go up and down in the same day. For this trip we based ourselves at the Old Hatchery in Underberg, a great country B & B. We were up bright and early on the Saturday and got to the border post at around 9am, for this trip I was on my KTM 890 Adventure R, definitely the best of the 3 bikes that I've used for a Sani trip. We all meet at the border post, this was a Proudly Meerkat trip that I had joined, from the border we could all take on the challenge at our own pace, a few of us decided to give it horns and I managed to go from border post to border post, with 2 photo stops in under 11 minutes - I had previously done to leisurely rides up, but this time wanted to see what the 890 was made of - what an impressive machine. Going down is definitely a lot more of challenge and a totally different skill set is needed, nevertheless it was a blast and I had finally achieved the goal of going up and back down Sani Pass. From there we headed back towards Underberg and 1st did the dirt loops past Qacha's Nek, a great bit of high speed road, before we settled down to a well deserved lunch at Malachite Manor. Sani Pass is definitely one of the bucket list rides to complete, especially before the entire route is tarred. The 1st time we did it there was no tar and the route up to the SA border post was as remarkable as Sani itself. "One Life, Ride It"