A new Grit is always different.
Not “new” like a fresh logo and a shiny route file, new like uncharted. New, like your mind running scenarios at 2 a.m., bargaining with reality.
This one matters even more because it’s the start of a rhythm: one year Xhariep, one year Tankwa. That alternating heartbeat makes it feel like a proper tradition being born, and this ride is the inauguration. The first stamp in the passport.
I rode the inaugural Noord-Wes Grit, and if all goes well, I’ll line up for this one too. There’s something about being there at the beginning. The first edition still has mystery in it. The race hasn’t been “figured out” by stories, shortcuts, and predictable suffering. It’s still wild enough to mess with your head.
And you start wondering: How tough will it be?
I can answer that for you right now:
It will be moer tough.
Because it’s a Grit.
Grit isn’t polite. It doesn’t entertain you. It doesn’t offer you a neat narrative arc where you suffer a bit, learn a lesson, and roll in smiling. Grit is the kind of hard that makes you chew life down until it feels like your teeth might crack. It’s the kind of hard that takes your ego, folds it into a small square, and puts it in your back pocket so you can carry it home quietly.
A Grit doesn’t just test your legs. It tests your commitment, your ability to keep moving when your mind starts suggesting “good reasons” to stop. Your willingness to be uncomfortable for long enough that comfort becomes irrelevant.
But that’s the strange thing: it rewards you in a way most MTB races can’t.
Not with fireworks. Not with hype.
With something more brutal, and more valuable:
A clean, unarguable truth about yourself.
When you finish a Grit, you don’t feel like a hero.
You feel like someone who has been through something.
In the past, I’ve been stone last in the full Munga and in the Tankwa Grit. So I know what I’m talking about when I write this. It’s special.
And in a world full of easy exits and soft distractions, that kind of reward is rare.
You start at Xhariep Dam, and right away, the name feels like it belongs to the land. Xhariep comes from Khoisan usage for the “groot rivier” (the Orange River — not as a boundary line on a map, but as something alive, ancient, and bigger than your plans).
From there, you shoot through to Colesberg, then push on to Vanderkloof, through Philoppolis, Springfontein and finally loop back to Xhariep, a 429 km, 50-hour arc that makes you feel like you’re riding across an entire mood, not just a landscape.
The edge of the Great Karoo
Colesberg and Vanderkloof sit in the Groot Karoo,the kind of place that doesn’t try to impress you. It simply exists: vast, open, harsh, honest. Low koppies, distant blue-grey ridges, endless gravel, scrub that looks half-dead until you realise it’s just adapted, like people who’ve lived through a lot and learned not to complain. Lots of sheep, and some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
The light is different out there. It doesn’t just fall on things, it reveals them. The land becomes a mirror. The quieter it gets outside, the louder you hear yourself inside.
And then there’s the Trans-Xhariep / southern Free State edge, where the Karoo starts to blend into something softer, grass, shrubs, karoobossies, hardy little succulents, life that survives without needing anyone’s approval. It’s not lush. It’s not empty. It’s simply real.
Vanderkloof — the second guardian
Vanderkloof is more than a checkpoint on a route. It’s another reminder that South Africa has always built monuments to hope in dry places. The dam wall rises high, and when you’re tired, sunburnt, and salt-dried, you suddenly understand why water here feels almost sacred.
Day 2 — the reverse echo of the Full Munga
Somewhere along that 429km line, you ride a section of the Full Munga Day 2 route in reverse.
And that’s where you stop at Wolwekuil Farm, this is also where one of the famous Anglo Boer Battles took place late in 1901.
Wolwekuil isn’t just a water point. It’s a personality. A moment. A little pocket of humanity in the middle of a landscape that doesn’t care how strong you think you are.
It also has a nasty little climb to get to the oasis, the kind of surprise that made 90% of the field swear at our beloved leader, Jack Black. Because when you’re tired, thirsty, and hungry, you still have to climb a small koppie that feels like a 7–10% gradient.
I kid you not. I wanted to buy boxing gloves.
It’s also the place where Boetie Hugo spent more than six hours last year during the Full Munga, not because he couldn’t ride, but because it was too lekker to leave: good food, a blow-up swimming pool, and the kind of people who treat tired riders like family.
In December, this was also the stretch where we got hit by temperatures in the 40s,that heavy, shimmering heat, right before the thunderstorms rolled in. The Karoo does that: it punishes you with sun, then rewards you with drama. Brutal… and beautiful.
The feeling
Trans Xhariep is not “just another ultra.”
It’s a proper Munga.
Barren landscapes that make your chest go tight for no logical reason. Sunsets so ridiculously perfect they pull you back to being a teenager again, back to that Standard 7 feeling when seeing that matric girl: the ache of something beautiful and unreachable, and the strange hope that comes with it.
You’re exhausted. Your hands buzz from gravel. Your mind tries to negotiate exits.
But the river stays silent. The dam stays massive. The horizon stays wide.
And somewhere in that wide, empty space, you realise:
This isn’t only about distance.
It’s about being stripped down until what’s left is true.
Because the Karoo doesn’t motivate you.
It doesn’t flatter you.
It doesn’t negotiate.
It simply asks:
Who are you, when no one is watching, and the road is still 200 km long?