An Inventure in the Great Karoo

17 May 2025

The day starts with walking across the freezing river in the dark with bare feet and a head lamp.

Fuck this shit, I think, as we toil up a nearly vertical mountainside in total darkness. But then I look up and see the first streaks of fuchsia arcing across the sky.

It’s a long way up, and I’m still mad the whole way. But as we finally make it to the very top, we find a 360-degree view. The first phase of sunrise is just ending and the real show is about to begin. We drink coffee with condensed milk. There are just enough wispy clouds in the sky to spread the pink into a bowl around us. We all sit on rocks and drink our coffee in silence, listening to a single, very loud buzzing bee. One person sobs quietly.

The sun takes forever to actually come up. I don’t know what time it is.

The mountains across from the sunrise briefly light up and change from green-gray to orange-red. The outcrops on the side of the mountain create a trio of long shadows. Jackals whine in the distance. Moments later, the light changes and the orange-red glow is gone.

I thought the show was over but then the sun crests and illuminates the tall yellow grass. Julie hands me an envelope, thick and brown, with a poem inside – Lost, by David Wagoner:

Now I am the one stifling sobs.

As the light gets brighter, the green from the grass starts glowing outward from under the yellow. The bees multiply and the buzzing gets louder. I finally feel warm.

I feel really peaceful but I still want to take a fucking picture. But if I were taking photos now, it would be such a distraction for me and everyone else.

This is a journal entry, edited slightly for length and grammar, which I wrote from the top of a mountain in the Karoo on the second day of a five-day Inventure.

An Inventure is like an adventure, but different: a journey that challenges you inwardly as much as (or more than) it challenges you outwardly. I agreed to participate when Julie Robinson, who created the concept, reached out to me over Instagram. I accepted immediately, knowing almost nothing about the experience, for one reason: A big part of the Inventure is depriving yourself completely of all digital devices – no phone, no laptop, no watch, and no camera – for four nights and five days.

On the day Julie messaged me, in March 2025, I was desperate to escape the digital world. I had just returned from a solo road trip that I’d thought would help me disconnect, but instead gave me more time alone with my phone to consume a never-ending supply of disastrous political news and devastating social media. I spent much of the trip crying and felt more depressed than I ever had in my life.

Julie’s message was a life raft; the Inventure was still more than two months away, but I would have left for the Karoo that very day if I could.

The Inventure

I’m torn on how much to disclose about the Inventure. For me, one of the most powerful parts of the experience was not knowing what to expect beforehand.

But it will be hard to write this post without explaining a few things, so here are the basics:

The trip started on a Thursday morning in Graaff-Reinet, a town about eight hours from Joburg in the Great Karoo. There were six participants – three women and three men, all South Africans (except me) around my age, none of whom had met before. One man was returning to Inventure for the second time.

From Graaff-Reinet, we all drove to a farm about 30 minutes from town, where we left our cars and electronic devices.

From there we traveled, by vehicle and on foot, to our remote camp beside the Gats River, where we slept for four nights. The camp was sparse but comfortable, in the most beautiful setting. Each participant had their own dome tent with a cot and sleeping bag. We all shared a composting toilet and a shower, which provided each person a few minutes of deliciously warm water once a day. We ate hearty meals prepared by our camp leader, Dawid De Wet, and his two assistants, Jeffrey Jafta and Luzuko Domingos. There is no alcohol on the trip (and, for those of you who are inevitably wondering, no drugs – it’s not that kind of trip). It’s a lot like summer camp for adults.

There was no cellular connectivity at the camp, but Julie and Dawid carried phones and they had a satellite phone (fortunately never needed) in case of emergency. We also received a phone number in advance that our loved ones could use to reach us in case of emergency. It was warm during the day and cool/cold at night and in the early morning. But I packed layers and the cold never really bothered me – except during those dreaded, early-morning river crossings.

I had envisioned the Inventure would include lots of downtime. I imagined myself sitting alone on a rock, pondering the beautiful view, reading, writing, and solving all of life’s problems. I thought we’d take an occasional walk as a group, chat, do some yoga and breathwork (Julie is a breathwork instructor), and that would be that.

While I did do all of those things (except for solving all of life’s problems), my preconceived vision of the Inventure was wrong. We were busy, mostly with walking but also with a few other surprise activities, and didn’t have much time for reading or sitting alone on rocks. The time passed both quickly and slowly. I was often uncomfortable, both mentally and physically, and had to sit with that discomfort because there was nowhere – and no device – to escape to.

Leaving my phone behind was the easiest part of the Inventure, as it turned out. The hardest parts were:

1. Not knowing what time it was and not knowing what was coming next;
2. Being asked to do things I didn’t want to do, then doing them anyway;
3. Feeling awkward in this extremely intimate environment with a group of strangers;
4. Coming upon strange, beautiful places and things – like a huge, crashing waterfall in the middle of the desert, or a leopard tortoise the size of watermelon, or a clump of red-and-yellow clover growing in the perfectly round indentation of a rock – without taking photos; and
5. Getting bucked off a horse. This deserves a post of its own, which I’ll probably never write, but it was an experience I’m still mentally grappling with. I’m fine physically, minus a couple of bruises, and I even got back on the horse (literally and figuratively) after falling off. The incident made me grateful for my strong bones and muscles.

I was about to write out a corresponding list of the five best things about the Inventure. Actually though, the best things are much the same as the worst things. Does that make any sense?

18 May 2025

After swimming in the river and feeling nice and clean and warm from the sun, we took blankets and pillows to the sandy riverbank for a special breathwork exercise. I felt like I was breathing wrong and for the longest time I felt vaguely impatient for the exercise to end. But Julie kept talking and telling us we were meant to be here, and the earth knows why we’re here, and all the people who’ve been here before know why we’re here. And eventually I was crying and thinking of every person I’ve ever known and loved in the world and saying their names to myself and thinking I want to transfer this thing I’m feeling to every single one of them. I cried and cried and kept trying to breathe.

Eventually I had to pee so badly so I took the mask off my eyes and got up but I staggered and kept seeing stars. It was still late afternoon but I had been sure it was night. I felt reborn.

19 May 2025

I barely slept last night due to the crazy Karoo wind battering my tent, which sounded like a goblin trying to suck my soul out into the night. But I was weirdly still kind of excited to wake up for the next phase of the journey. We had one more coffee around the fire in the dark. Then we took our daypacks and hiked out into the Karoo. We crossed six rivers and didn’t even bother to take off our shoes and socks – it was easier just to walk and be wet.

I picked up a few red and black Karoo rocks for Thorsten along the way, and yelled “Fuck this shit!” a few more times, just for fun. At one point we stopped to admire the view and one of the horses was standing on the mountainside, staring at us across the valley we had just walked through. It felt like he was bidding us farewell.

Eventually we reached a little settlement, Riverdene Farm. We sat on the stoep of the farmhouse, took off our wet shoes and socks, then took the best showers of our lives. We had coffee and a proper eggs-and-bacon breakfast while sitting at a table, on chairs with cushions. I also peed in a toilet that flushed and looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in five days. Then we got into two cars and rode back to where we started at Bloemhof Farm.

It felt very weird getting into Greylene and driving away. I had been really stressed out about turning my phone back on but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The notifications didn’t pour in the way I thought they would – they are kind of just there, and I feel like I can ignore them for now. I do feel confused though – like I’ve forgotten how to be in the world.

Since I got back last week, a couple of people have asked if I feel like I changed during the Inventure. And while I’m not sure (yet) if I’ve changed, I’ve definitely grown. I feel mentally, physically, and emotionally stronger. I feel more excited about both my photography and my writing than I felt before the experience. I’m also super keen to take time away from my devices – including my camera, which was the hardest to give up – in the future. The Inventure exceeded my expectations and I’m very glad I did it.

The cost for this experience might seem steep, at least by South African standards – it’s similar in cost to a luxury safari or beach trip. (See all the details and costs for a five-day Inventure.) But after participating myself, I can totally understand the expense. Julie, who is an organizational psychologist, puts so much time and care into each participant’s experience, including in-depth, one-on-one sessions before and after the Inventure and very thoughtful, personalized gifts.

It’s hard to put a price on the opportunity to reconnect with oneself in this unique and beautiful way. An Inventure is its own kind of luxury. (FYI, Julie also offers breathwork sessions and other smaller Inventures here in Joburg, which I’m looking forward to trying out.)

It’s crazy that spending time away from civilization and the miracles of modern technology, pushing ourselves to surmount obstacles that humanity has spent centuries trying to eliminate, has become a privilege worth paying for. I hope this post reaches at least one person who is up for the challenge.

This experience was complimentary. Opinions expressed are mine.