Barefoot children plead with their smiles, desperate to hold hands with the mulungu. Women carry bundles of straw on their heads, the delicate balancing act performed with apparent ease.

From the outside Swaziland can sound like a place of lunacy, but on the inside normality is rooted deeply in tradition

Under shaded trees in the village square, we stop to taste traditional maize beer, a morning’s indulgence evident all around us. Occasionally, the reed and mud huts have been upgraded to single concrete blocks, but this village is palpably modest. Perhaps this doesn’t sound like a surprising scene for Africa. However, this is a king’s village.

King Sobhuza II ruled Swaziland for 82 years from these meagre surroundings. That makes him the longest ruling monarch in world history, and he lived here? The drab concrete walls of his decaying palace show no signs of royalty and I’m unsure how he fitted 70 wives and 210 children into such a small space.

My guide from All Out Africa points out the homes of various princes and princesses. I wonder if William and Kate have ever used a squat toilet? Or washed their clothes by hand?

As our cultural tour continues, we get Lucky down a narrow alley. Lucky started the Stick and Mud Art Gallery four years ago using donated materials to teach unemployed adults to paint.

One of his students has her work displayed in the National Museum, and a second plays the bass guitar as Lucky’s band performs a private gig. Lucky displays an indelible cheerfulness as he plays, his extensive smile as enigmatic as the colourful paintings hammered to the mud wall.

“When you first help yourself,” says Lucky “then things will happen for you.”

Sandwiched between the Southern African giants of South Africa and Mozambique, Swaziland rarely gets more than a couple of days on any traveller’s itinerary.

I mean who has ever even heard of Swaziland? It’s a country the size of Wales (miniscule by African standards), ruled by a polygamous king, and features topless dancing women on some of the banknotes.

Want more facts? How’s this one? Swaziland has the highest prevalence of HIV in the world. Or this? The majority of the population live on land “held in trust for the nation by King Mswati III”.

The country is divided into chiefdoms, with people requesting land for subsistence farming from their chief, and 75 per cent of the chiefs have royal blood, probably some of these princes and princesses from Sobhuza II. It sounds unfair but my guide is pragmatic, and like most Swazis, supports the concept. “In Swaziland we have never had wars over land. You can’t take something from me that I don’t own.”

Swaziland’s landscape is bountiful. Hills fold into each other as far as the eye can see, infinite green creases spreading along the horizon. For Africa, this is a fertility that could be fought over. Splitting the country, the Great Lesotho River gives me an alternative view.

As I gallivant down grade four rapids, the white water surges, splurges, somersaults my raft and smashes my shins against the rocks for a few of what is local-ly known as Great Lesotho River tattoos.

Swazi Trails have been finding an alternative use for this landscape for 25 years. They scramble through caves, raft, kayak, abseil, quad bike, and do pretty much anything that pumps adrenalin through the body.

I’m panting from the exertion when my guide skilfully floats up beside me and sings the King’s praises. Like everyone I speak to in Swaziland, he unanimously approves the Kingdom, and the King. His heart is in the right place and he has proved his integrity, although a few whisper that unfortunately King Mswati III isn’t the sharpest tool in the box.

Every year some 80,000 virgins dance bare-breasted for the King at the annual Reed Dance ceremony. I’m imagining the ­European equivalent – greased up firemen stripping for Queen Elizabeth II – but apparently there is no sexual motive in this ceremony.

Instead it celebrates chastity and purity, and King Mswati III must in turn dance for each group of girls as thanks for their participation in the seven-day festival. It’s another example of how from the outside Swaziland can sound like a place of lunacy, but on the inside normality is rooted deeply in tradition.

Clouds swell, linger, and rumble vigorously across the valley. Sharp flashes transform the sky at nightfall, rapid shots of light with a tangible beauty. For three nights this continues, a blistering morning replaced by a sky that renders sun-cream redundant. Each bus journey I take is a six-year-old’s rollercoaster – up, down, around and repeat. Hidden in the crinkled landscape is Hlane National Park, a place with a novel approach to African safari. It has none of the big five, none of the sought-after animals the continent is famous for. My horse walks slowly and the zebras don’t flinch.

I’m five metres away from their black-and-white beauty, admiring the flawless stripes from a position that feels enormously more natural than a noisy safari truck.

Devoid of the big five, the park has no boundaries, for people. Guests can walk, mountain bike and horse ride, off the paths and into the rich green fields where innumerable varieties of antelope graze.

And, as my horse trots along, I realise that the lack of dangerous animals is symbolic of Swaziland. In this small country there are no predators. The King’s rule may not meet universal international approval, but it’s preventing the greedy claws of westernisation ripping through a unique centuries-old culture. Swaziland has retained an aspect of the old tribal Africa that has been slowly eroded almost everywhere else on the continent.

Swaziland’s beauty lies in its determination and ability to be itself. And my enduring memory is how Lucky shook my hand goodbye as I left his shack art gallery.

In that moment, I found it was possible to imagine that all of Africa was once like Swaziland: humble, mythical and able to put a smile on anyone’s face.