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!!