The Forgotten Highway Route is the Longest and Earliest Heritage Route in South Africa.

This route stretches for 1 000 km, from Tulbagh in the south (in the Western Cape) to Kuruman and Deben (in the Northern Cape).  The route follows the very earliest explorations from the Cape Colony to the interior, from the 1780s to the 1860s.

Many groups and cultures encountered each other for the first time:
• White colonists, farmers and traders
• Explorers
• Missionaries and farmers
• !Xam (San)
• Khoi and Koranna
• Griqua
• BaTswana
• Xhosa
It was a time of new encounters and cultural interactions, which greatly enriched the emerging South African nation.

The Route is managed by the Karoo Development Foundation, a non-profit NGO. The KDF works to support local town and rural development champions, heritage enthusiasts, tourism entrepreneurs and community-based organisations. By means of this network, the communities along the Route are able to appreciate their unique and important history, as melting pots where the South African nation was forged.

Please visit www.karooforgottenhighway.com for more details.

Two guide books have been compiled to assist travellers:

• The Forgotten Highway Guide Book: From Tulbagh to Griquatown
• The Forgotten Highway Stages Guide: A brief travellers guide, describing the Route, section by section.

Our Route motto (“Ancestral Journeys”) invites all South Africans to explore areas which may well have been the home of some of their ancestors. It is also the Ancestral Journey of the arid interior, which is now being discovered as an important stream in the confluence of South African cultures.