Another day, another lovely train journey. It started off, of course, with apprehension. The Tazara train is one that runs twice a week from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia, via Mbeya in South West Tanzania, which is where we wanted to go. When I was seven our family had moved to Mbeya, a lovely place in the hills. We left when I was ten.
I hoped I had booked. It can only be done a month in advance, and that had been just before we left home. There was one travel agent offering to do it, but I didn't trust them at all. So the only other way was to phone which I did. There was no email and no way of getting confirmation that the booking had been made. So on Saturday afternoon as soon as we arrived in Dar we went off in a taxi to the station - quite a long way, quite pricey - only to find the station closed for the weekend. Peter went back on Monday, at seven in the morning to avoid the traffic. The good news was that yes, we had a booking for a compartment to ourselves. The bad news was that they didn't accept dollars. I had thought since they quoted in both shillings and dollars that they would accept either. Not. So Peter and the taxi driver went out to the airport to change the money, and the deal was made. By now we had made friends with Omani, the taxi driver, who was a good driver and who had a reliable car, so he at least has done well out of the whole thing. Those tickets were, in effect, quite expensive by now. (We'll be writing to the wonderful Man in Seat 61 website letting other people know about the booking and paying.)
Other apprehensions were just the normal travelling ones. Will we get to the station on time, given Dar traffic? Will we negotiate the station successfully? Will we be able to manage all our luggage? Will someone hijack our compartment? Will the beds/bedding be OK? Will we able to buy water if and when our supply runs out?
The answers were yes, yes, yes, no, yes and yes. We travelled on the
Eid at the end of Ramadan so the traffic was non-existent. We got to the
station early and sat in a pleasant first class waiting room. (We had
got first class tickets, four of them for two of us in order to have a 4
berth compartment to ourselves. The alternative was to sleep in
separate - male or female - compartments, or to sit up all night. People
who weren't in 4 berth compartments had a much more crowded wait. It
reminded me of Kings Cross Station with people waiting for it to be time
to board.) A porter took charge of our luggage, very efficiently and
found the right compartment when it was boarding time. Actually,
somebody
had put their stuff on one of the seats, but Peter put
it out in the corridor and locked the door until the train started. It
started on time, around four o clock.
It was great. We had a fan, sheets, blankets, pillows, a big window and another one opposite in the corridor. We also had piped music which would have got tiring but we worked out how to switch it off. Phew! We bought water, from a fridge - good for keeping my insulin cold; we put them in the same bag. And we bought a few bottles of beer. The only downside were the toilets. They were clean enough and had plenty of water, if no soap. But they were squat toilets which we both found quite difficult in a joggling, sometimes lurching train. Luckily there were some handrails.
We could have drunk the beer at the bar, where there were a number of little tables where a number of people, mostly men, were drinking beer and sounding loud and happy even quite early in the journey. So we took our beer back to the compartment and had a bottle with a picnic supper, and then another bottle as the sun began to set.
The scenery changed slowly from Dar outskirts (some shanty towns, some richer parts and some places that looked more middling income) to green hills to woodland and grassland.
Later, it was delightful lying out on our bunks watching the sun slowly setting through the passing trees.
We did try to take a picture of the new Eid crescent moon but it was hopeless, given the movement of the train. The moon came out looking very odd.
We slept well, first in a very hot carriage, glad of the fan, then cooler and cooler, until by morning I was reaching for an extra blanket and Peter had got into his sleeping bag. We had climbed quite a few thousand feet during the night. Mbeya is at an altitude of 1,700m (5,600ft in old money).
We stopped for a while at various small places and were offered porridge, tea, crisps, and so on by people walking along the track by the train. But we stuck to our picnic breakfast of boiled eggs, sweetcorn, apple and digestive biscuits. It was a gentle way to spend the morning, sitting in the compartment or standing in the corridor admiring the lovely, changing African bush and farmland and taking too many photos. We thought it was a good way to travel. It was a bit less than half the price of going by air, but much better.
As everywhere children liked waving at the train.
Beginning to get up a few thousand feet.
Lots of wonderful baobabs.
Peter was interested to see that there was rice farming in such a high part of the country. He was especially interested to see that it was paddy rice, rather than upland rice.
The mountains near Mbeya.
Very nearly there: the urban sprawl of Mbeya. We arrived at about three in the afternoon, and were taken to our hotel, chosen because we thought it was near where we used to live, and we thought the house might still be there. When we lived there the population was about 10,000. It's now more than half a million.
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