Switching Off in the Drakensberg

Last week, Thorsten and I went on holiday in the Drakensberg.

View of Cathkin Peak, a famous mountain in the central Drakensberg, from the patio of our friend’s holiday house.

“On holiday” — or “on vacation”, as my countrymen say — is such a simple, common phrase among middle-class, English-speaking people. I’ve been thinking a lot about this phrase since we got back to Joburg because going on holiday is not a simple concept for me at all.

I take lots of trips — locally, nationally, and internationally. And although my trips are almost always fun, they are not holidays or vacations in the conventional sense of those words. For the past 16 years, I’ve treated every trip I’ve taken — including the trip I’m writing about at this moment — as a vehicle for content creation. I find it impossible to switch off while traveling. In fact, like most humans alive in 2026, I find it impossible to switch off ever.

Luckily, this trip to the Drakensberg presented an opportunity. A friend offered us her holiday home — a house-share in the Drakensberg, to which she has access for several weeklong periods throughout the year. Seven full days in a mountain house, without wifi, seemed like a good time to try to switch off.

This trio hung around with us all week, along with some badly behaved vervet monkeys and baboons.

When we arrived in the Drakensberg, I posted one last Instagram story of the view from our patio and then deleted Instagram and Facebook off my phone. I committed not to listen to any podcasts — another major source of distraction and addiction for me — for the duration of the week. I had an adult coloring book, an old set of colored pencils, plenty of books, and my camera. These tools, together with hiking, journaling, eating, and hanging out with my boyfriend, were my pastimes for the week.

The Zulu name for Cathkin Peak, Mdedelelo, means “the Bully”, because the mountain dominates the skyline and edges out all of the other mountains. I spent hours staring at Mdedelelo and photographing it at every time of day.

The Bully, undeterred by cloud cover.

Some wispier clouds.

The Bully even manages to block the sunset. Every evening I could see the clouds in the background lighting up, but the clouds in the foreground never turned pink. It was maddening but the views were dramatic nonetheless.

I did catch a couple of nice sunrises.

The Bully glows red with the morning sun.

I hardly thought about social media for the first day or two…I think I was subconsciously decompressing. I opened my phone once or twice a day, to Google something or to check my email (switching off completely was too big a leap), and noticed my thumb swiping of its own accord to where the Instagram icon should be. I was relieved each time when the icon wasn’t there.

I didn’t have to worry about recording video clips for Instagram stories or checking for likes or comments on my hiking photos. I shot pictures with my camera, but those were for later.

Then, suddenly, I heard it: the sound of silence, and even a hint of clarity, in my brain. It was wonderful.

One morning I went for a walk by myself and quietly took photos of plants.

In addition to the social media detox, staying in one place for a full week felt totally different from my normal “holidays”, which usually involve two, three, or even four stops over a week. (I’m a travel blogger, y’all, and I like to maximize the content creation opportunities.) I normally feel exhausted after those high-energy trips, but this time I actually felt relaxed when we got home. Going forward, I want to do at least one weeklong, single-destination trip each year.

For what feels like forever, I’ve been living in a state of perpetual anxiety over both my own life and the state of the world. I’m distracted, I’m irritable, and I struggle to get anything done. I feel like I’m not making any progress in life. I know that a lot of these problems are caused, or at least exacerbated, by my phone, which I recently read someone (can’t remember who) describe as “the glowing rectangle of existential dread”.

I know that using my phone less, and switching off more, will help me to be a happier, more productive human being. But we all know it’s hard to change. Phones — and especially social media — are as addictive as nicotine.

I’m committed to trying though. Now that we’re back, I’ve decided to:

1) Limit my social media usage to one hour a day on weekdays: 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. Flexibility is allowed on weekends.

2) Limit my podcast consumption to evenings and weekends only (even while driving).

3) Be at my desk, ready to work, at 8:30 each morning. (This should be much easier while following points 1 and 2.)

Wish me luck! Also, I’m still going to publish a blog post about the hikes we did in the Drakensberg because they were amazing.

Thanks for our friend Sally for lending us this incredible view and enabling me to (at least partially) switch off.