Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures ~ No.3

So, going in a logical order, part 3 would be our mission of a train journey from Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.

This took some precise timing, as the 'Ordinary' (cheaper) train only runs once a week, and the 'Express' (more expensive) train also only runs once a week, but luckily everything worked out well so we were in Dar to get the 'Ordinary' train.

Seeing as there were 3 of us, we splashed out and bought a whole first class cabin (4 berth) which we had to do if we wanted to share, as mixed sexes can't share open cabins. This worked out very well for some South African guys we'd met on the ferry coming back from Zanzibar, as there were 5 of them, but the 6 berth cabins had 2 top bunks, so close to the metal ceiling of the train, it was literally like being in an oven. So one of them was very relieved to come and stay in our cabin!

Dar es Salaam ► Mbeya ► Kapiri Mposhi
km	Classes:		"Mukuba" or "Kilimanjaro" Express train 1S, 2S, 2, 3, M or R	Mukuba" or "Kilimanjaro" Ordinary train 1S, 2S, 2, 3, R
0	Dar es Salaam	depart	15:50  Tuesdays	13:50   Fridays
849	Mbeya	arrive depart	13:08   Wednesdays 13:23   Wednesdays	14:10   Saturdays 14:40   Saturdays
969	Tunduma (frontier)	arrive depart	17:02   Wednesdays 17:17   Wednesdays	18:38   Saturdays 18:53   Saturdays
970	Nakonde	arrive depart	16:22   Wednesdays 16:47   Wednesdays	17:58   Saturdays 18:18   Saturdays
1852	Kapiri Mposhi (New)	arrive	09:26   Thursdays	13:37   Sundays

It ended up costing us about 72,000TSH each to book the whole cabin, but seeing as there were 2,200TSH to £1 when we were there, this was about £32 each and so not too bad.

The train left the station only about 3 hours late, which was not too bad. We'd been rightly told that the train cafe starts off serving pretty nice food...but as you get further into the journey, and they run out of everything, you get the choice of rice....or chips...or rice. So we'd brought our own supplies of 'train food' mainly in the form of Baked Beans (Heinz of course!), Mangoes and crisps. The train carriage had a lock on the inside of the door, but not one on the outside, and a big sign saying that Tanzania Railways would not be held responsible if (they mean when) your stuff gets stolen. So this meant that at least one of us had to stay in the compartment at all times, to be on guard.

The landscape was incredibly beautiful, so we sent much of the journey hoping to spot lions and elephants out of the windows. We didn't see any, but we did see some 15ft high termite mounds...apparently Zambia has a termite problem!!

We had bought our Visas in Dar in advance as we were told you couldn't buy them on the train (you could, and for exactly the same price), and by the time we crossed the border, it was around midnight, so whilst cosily tucked up in our very comfy bunks, the customs official came round and stamped us out of Tanzania. We were then stamped into Zambia at a much more reasonable time of about 7am. I've never been through customs in bed before, but it was so smooth and easy! I think more borders should allow it!!

Despite leaving only a few hours late, we arrived into Kapiri Mposhi around 8 hours late, but impressively enough, the matatus were there waiting, ready to take us straight on to the capital, Lusaka, where we found a lovely hostel to spend the night. 

So 56 hours spent on a train...without getting off! Definitely an experience, and one that would be hard to beat! Trans-Siberian next...

Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures ~ No.2

To continue on with my train adventures from my post before, on my Gap Year trip last year, I spent a lot of time travelling my train. The website http://www.seat61.com/ is incredibly helpful, as was my trusty Lonely Planet.

I always feel that train travel is safer than going by road, and also you can get up and wander around, and have a proper bed to sleep in. Even though it sometimes took longer to go by train, I always prefer it to road travel as I hate sitting still in a confined space for that long.

So we started off in Egypt with an overnight train from Cairo to Aswan, and then one back from Luxor to Cairo. The one on the way down had pretty comfy seats, and was full of backpackers, but on the way back up we were in a small compartment with 3 very upright seats and I appeared to be the only women on the train so we always had a crowd hanging around outside. Not a good nights sleep!

The next train we caught was in Tanzania. We were in Kampala, Uganda and wanted to get to Moshi, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Everyone we spoke to suggested getting a 24 hour bus, which went back through Kenya, but #1. I didn't want to spend 24 hours on a bus, and #2. I didn't want to pay another $25 for a Kenyan visa when we'd just come from there.

So instead, I decided that we should sail across Lake Victoria, to Mwanza, then catch the train from Mwanza to Dodoma, and then the bus from there to Moshi. We went to the port in Kampala to try and see about getting a boat across to Mwanza, but were told that since the ferries had sunk in 2007, there was no passenger ferry, and the only way to get across was to hang around and wait for a cargo ship. Seeing as there was a couple who had been waiting for 4 days already, I decided to go for Plan B, which was to get a bus to just across the border, in Tanzania, and then catch a more reliable passenger ferry from there.

I had met some missionaries when rafting down the Nile in Uganda who said we couldn't possibly go to Mwanza, as it was a dirty town, full of drugs, sex and prostitutes. We then stayed with this English man on Banda Island in Lake Victoria, who said we simply must go to Mwanza, as it was full of drugs, sex and prostitutes.....

The bus to take us to the ferry port ran once a day, at 11am, and took 7 hours. Seeing as the ferry left at 9pm, I thought 3 hours was a very reasonable leeway. But I forgot, we were on African time. So at 4pm, after about 4 hours of me shouting at the bus driver, telling him we had ferry tickets and would be really angry if we missed it...the bus finally left. I'm sure the bus driver was trying his hardest to get us there on time, or maybe he just normally drove at the speed, but funnily enough, we didn't make it, and crossed the border into Tanzania at 8.30pm.

By this point, I think the bus driver felt pretty bad, and so arranged for a taxi, paid for by the bus company, to take us, and a Tanzanian guy and try and race to the ferry port before the boat left. Sadly, we didn't make it, but luckily the Tanzanian guy knew that the boat left Bukoba at 9pm, and then docked not far down the coast in Kemondo bay port, to load up with cargo, mainly bananas it seemed. We negotiated with the taxi driver to pay him a little bit extra, and then raced to the cargo port where thankfully the ferry was waiting.

Unfortunately, by this point, all of the cabins and first class seats had sold out, and so we had to travel in 2nd Class seating, where as everyone else had been on the boat for a couple of hours, and so was asleep, there were no seats left, so I spent the night in the luggage rack, watching rats and cockroaches run across the pipes worryingly close to my head.

The MV Bukoba, a previous ferry, sank in 1996, killing about 800 people, which showed the level of overcrowding, as the capacity was 430. As we were right in the belly of the boat it was so creaking and loud, and when I got woken up in the middle of the night, by the boat juddering to a halt, and went up on deck to go to the toilet and saw a little old lady standing on the railings wearing a white frilly nightie. Obviously I wasn't on the Titanic, but it was a proper deja vu moment, and I was absolutely convinced that the boat was going to sink, just probably not by hitting an iceberg!

We docked at 6am, and spent the day in the Swimming Pool at a local hotel, waiting until the 6pm train and the entire day passed without seeing any sex, or prostitutes, or being offered drugs. Maybe we went to the wrong Mwanza?

(note the shape of the pool?)

The train came spot on time, and we paid about TSH 5200 (£25)  for a 2 berth very comfy compartment, made up with freshly starched Linen. The only downside was the toilet, which was a worrying large hole in the ground that I was worried I might fall through and it was a little distracting watching the tracks whizz past whilst trying to squat!!

Although we left spot on time, we still managed to arrive late into Dodoma, which although this is technically the capital of Tanzania, it is tiny and only has a few paved roads. The next morning we got on a bus which we thought would take us to Moshi in about 5 hours...except the road was closed as it had turned into a swamp thanks to all the recent rain, and so we took a detour almost via Dar Es Salaam which took 10 hours instead!! But at least we made it to Moshi!!

Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures

I love trains. I don't know why or where this love came from but I just love travelling by train. I'm not a train spotter or anything like that, I just would always prefer to travel by train where possible and would choose a train journey over a bus or car journey anyday.

When I was travelling, one of my identities was that I was the youngest ever female train driver for British Rail. This was a really good alias, until I spoke to an Aussie train geek who then asked me loads of technical questions to which I had absolutely no answer.

I rarely got the train when I was younger as my dad loves driving so much, and then squashing myself into the tiny 2 carriage Cardiff - Portsmouth Harbour train to get to and from uni was a nightmare...but train travel overseas, has been an entirely different and much more enjoyable experience.

I suppose actually, my first overseas train experience didn't start well. I was supposed to be catching the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa in Kenya, as the roads are far too dangerous to travel on at night. After waiting in the train station in Nairobi for about 4 hours, we were told that there was a blockage on the line, and so we needed to get a bus to where the train was waiting, and we could get on it there. So at 11pm, which is definitely-not-a-safe-time-to-be-on-the-road-o'clock, we sent off on a 4 hour very crowded bus journey along a bumpy road to get to where the train was.

Except it wasn't. We arrived into pitch blackness in seemingly the middle of the African Bush, and were dumped in a small station office next to the train track. With no water or food and no information, people were getting very angry! Luckily, the train turned up about about 5am, and we managed to stumble along the track and find our very comfortable carriage, which we shared with 2 other girls. It turned out that the train had actually managed to make it into the station in Nairobi, after we had left, so then had sat around for a bit, and then come on its way to find us. Then, about an hour into its journey to meet us, the driver got a call from someone saying a group of school kids who had missed the train initially had arrived at the station and would he go back and get them. So he did.....which is why we ended up getting on our train in the middle of nowhere at about 5am...only 10 hours later than our original 7pm departure time.

I wonder what would happen if a train was 10 hours late in the UK?

In Thailand, my summer after the first year of uni, we spent one night in Bangkok, and it was so hot, that at 5am we headed off the the train station to get out of the city and go somewhere cooler! We ended up getting on a train to Pattaya with the intention of then getting the train straight to Ko Samet. As soon as we pulled out of Bangkok, we then had the panic that all of the train station signs were written entirely in Thai script, so we had absolutely no idea when we were getting off or how we would know when to get off! Luckily a man saw our panic and when we got to a stop we'd say 'Pattaya?' and he'd say 'No!' and then eventually 'Yes!' and so we made it!!

Excuses & Other Random Stories

I've never actually phoned in sick to work. Well apart from when I nearly broke my ankle in a trampolining competition and was on crutches, but I've never skived off. I just don't think I could phone and make a reason without laughing or just sounding really fake. Even if I was genuinely ill.

However, I think I'm quite good at coming up with good excuses for other people to use when phoning in sick, or giving excuses not to meet someone or do something. My current favourite was a friend was hated her current job and had got an interview to be an accounts manager for Tetley Tea. She was planning on saying that she had a migraine (boring) or her washing machine had leaked (too common) but I said she would say that she had got her hand stuck in a tea pot and it was her housemates favourite antique teapot so she couldn't just smash it to get it off so had to go to hospital to get it removed. So unbelievable that it instantly becomes believable as they would think 'how could she ever make that up?'. Sadly she went for the migraine option, but I bet they knew she didn't really have one and was just skiving.

When I was travelling last year, I did get a little fed up of constantly going through the 'Hi, my names Amy, I'm from Bristol' spiel every time I met someone new, which was pretty often and towards the end of my trip I started to make up some new identities. These are a few of my favourite new jobs....

1. I am a carrier bag tester. Well someone has to text their durability and it is very important to know how many pairs of shoes you can fit in one bag. My role included strict adventures such as travelling along a high street with a list of things to add to my carrier bag.
2. I am the youngest ever female train driver for British Rail. This one was actually believed by quite a few people as I do get quite excited about trains...until I met an Aussie Train Geek and he caught me out by asking loads of technical questions about them...which I couldn't answer.
3. I am a Button designer. I wish....