KwaZulu-Natal is a staircase of water running from the mountains to the Indian Ocean

When people think of KwaZulu-Natal they tend to think of Durban, a beach or a safari. Those are real parts of it, but the province covers 94,361 square kilometres, roughly the size of Portugal, and had 12.8 million inhabitants in the 2022 census: it is the second most populous in South Africa. None of those postcards explains a territory this large.

What explains it is its shape. Put the places in order of altitude and you see they are not separate attractions but steps on a single sloping plane. This article goes down that staircase, from the rock wall to the water's edge.

01 A basalt wall facing the Indian Ocean

The province's western edge is the Drakensberg, an escarpment more than a thousand kilometres long that separates South Africa from Lesotho. Here it is capped by a thick layer of basalt, lava that poured out about 180 million years ago. In Zulu it is called uKhahlamba, which translates as «barrier of up-pointed spears», and one look is enough to understand the name.

The highest point in KwaZulu-Natal is around 3,450 metres; the highest peak of the whole range, Thabana Ntlenyana, at 3,482, is already on the Lesotho side. Getting up there does not require climbing: Sani Pass rises about 1,330 metres in just nine kilometres, from 1,544 metres at its base to 2,876 at the top, with gradients of up to one in three and a gravel surface. That is why it is almost always done in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Down that wall falls the Tugela River, which rises on the Mont-aux-Sources plateau and plunges over the Amphitheatre in five tiers. It is credited with a total drop of 948 metres, although a Czech measurement in 2016 put it at 983, and the longest tier is 411. Whether it is the tallest waterfall in the world depends on how you measure: Angel Falls, in Venezuela, has the longest single drop, about 807 metres, but the Tugela adds up to more if you count every step. It is also seasonal: in September it barely trickles, and in high summer it comes down hard.

02 A staircase that runs down the rivers

The steps of KwaZulu-Natal are not separate: water joins them. The uMkhomazi rises near Thabana Ntlenyana and reaches the Indian Ocean. The uMngeni also starts in the Drakensberg and reaches the sea at Durban. And the Tugela, the province's largest river, crosses it from west to east.

The climate follows the same gradient. On the coast it is subtropical and humid: Durban receives about 1,009 millimetres of rain a year, with highs of 28 degrees and lows of 21 in summer, and 23 and 11 in winter. Inland it cools progressively, and on top of the Drakensberg there can be heavy snow in winter. A single day can call for a coat and a swimsuit, but not at the same hour or in the same place.

03 The paintings on the wall

The wall does not only divide: it was also a refuge. Beneath the basalt lies sandstone, the so-called Clarens sandstone, and wind and water have opened caves and shelters in it. On those walls the San, the hunter-gatherer people who lived in the range long before provincial maps existed, painted for millennia.

Between Royal Natal and Bushman's Nek, some 20,000 paintings are cited across about 500 shelters, the largest group of this kind of art south of the Sahara; the figures vary somewhat by source. The Maloti-Drakensberg park, shared with Lesotho, has been a World Heritage Site since 2000, and 2,943 square kilometres of it, 36 per cent, lie in KwaZulu-Natal.

04 The hills in the middle

Coming down from the wall, the terrain softens into the Midlands plateau: moist grasslands, rolling hills and small woods clinging to the hollows. The provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, sits on this step. Here the landscape stops being vertical and becomes habitable.

The most curious feature of this area is a human one. In 1985 a group of local artists, potters and weavers decided to join forces and create a route of open studios, and they opened six. Today the Midlands Meander runs for about 80 kilometres and includes nearly 200 stops among studios, flower farms, herb gardens, country hotels and craft shops. It is the kind of route that only works in a landscape that invites you to go slowly, with misty mornings and gentle hills.

05 A north of hills and rhinos

Farther north and closer to the sea, the terrain turns to savanna. Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park covers 960 square kilometres of rolling relief: the Hluhluwe part, in the north, is more rugged, with forests and grassland, and the iMfolozi part, in the south, is open savanna beside two rivers. It was proclaimed on 30 April 1895 and is regarded as the oldest reserve in Africa.

Its best-known story is that of the white rhinoceros. In the late nineteenth century between 20 and 100 individuals of the southern subspecies remained; by the 1950s there were about 400. From then on warden Ian Player drove Operation Rhino, which relocated hundreds of animals to restock their historic range. Today the park is estimated to hold about 1,600, and poaching remains the main threat. Even so, the park has all of the big five and around 340 bird species.

06 Two hundred and eighty kilometres of coast

The last step is the water's edge. iSimangaliso Park, whose name in Zulu means something like «wonder», covers about 3,280 square kilometres and 280 of coastline, some 235 kilometres north of Durban. It was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in December 1999, and what is remarkable is that coral reefs at Sodwana, dune forests, savannas and wetlands all coexist in one park.

Lake St Lucia is the heart of the park, and around it live some 800 hippopotamuses and about 1,200 crocodiles. Leatherback and loggerhead turtles nest on its beaches. And in 2013 the lions came back, after 44 years away.

07 The sea has its season too

The coast also has an event of its own: the sardine run. Between May and July, shoals of sardines more than seven kilometres long, 1.5 wide and 30 metres deep move along the KwaZulu-Natal shoreline when the water falls below 21 degrees. Behind them come dolphins, as many as 18,000 in a single episode, sharks, gannets and Bryde's whales. Some researchers believe its biomass may rival that of East Africa's great wildebeest migration.

The most honest thing to say about this phenomenon is that it remains poorly understood. It seems to be a reproductive migration of a genetically distinct sardine subpopulation, but there are years in which none is detected. It is proof that the bottom step, like the others, depends on something nobody controls.

08 Who lives on each step

The names on the map already announce the mixture: uKhahlamba, iSimangaliso, uMngeni, Hluhluwe, alongside Pietermaritzburg, Howick or Cape Vidal. Zulu is the language of 80 per cent of the population, and it is the only province where Zulu speakers are a majority; English is the second, at 14.4 per cent, one of the highest proportions in the country. The median age is 28.

And there is a third layer, that of the community of Indian origin, which makes up 9.3 per cent of the population and is the largest in South Africa. Its most recognisable trace is at the table. In Durban, in the 1940s, bunny chow was born: a loaf of white bread hollowed out and filled with curry, eaten with the fingers and ordered as a quarter, a half or a whole loaf. The bread acts as the plate, and the sauce that soaks into the walls of crumb is precisely what you are after.

09 How it is covered

The most logical way to understand the province is to follow the water: start at the top and go down. A route like that crosses the escarpment, the hills of the Midlands, the savannas of the north and, finally, the coast, and makes it clear that it is not a matter of choosing between mountain, safari or beach. They are the same sloping plane seen from different heights.

It pays to leave time for each step, because straight-line distances deceive and the terrain forces detours. And it pays to bear the season in mind: snow and cold are up high in winter, and that is when, down below, the sardines arrive.

What remains is a simple idea. KwaZulu-Natal is not a destination of one thing but a territory that changes almost every time you climb or descend, and it is best explained when seen from the highest point down towards the sea.