Day 9 – Tazara to Mbeya: The Bill for the Pleasure

By the second day, the train was in my bones. The constant low roll over old rails, which the night before had been a lullaby, had worked its way into me, and when I tried to write in the notebook my hand shook with it.

Outside, the country kept changing. Beyond the savannah had come the wet Kilombero valley, green and full of water, and beyond that the long climb towards the Southern Highlands, the train hauling itself up through country that fell away on either side. The air changed with the height. The heavy, warm, salty air of the coast had gone thin, clean, and cold. We were climbing towards seventeen hundred metres.

At a long stop in Makambako the platform filled with vendors, roasted corn and sambusas passed up through the windows. Somewhere in the second-class carriages was Matt, a Welsh photographer who had not got a first-class berth and was travelling six to a compartment instead of four, in much tighter space, and who was spending most of the journey in the restaurant car with a Kilimanjaro beer. He had taken wonderful photographs, he said, during the long halts in the villages, but inside the train he was bored. He told us we were right to get off at Mbeya. The further the line ran towards its terminus in Zambia, the more the delay compounded, a day becoming two, perhaps two becoming three, and the terminus receding accordingly.

That was the thing beginning to come clear. In the compartment next to ours, the American woman’s teenage daughter was quietly miserable about not being able to wash. She had a point. The carriages and toilets were clean, and there was a sink in the middle of the corridor to wash at, but there was no shower, and by the second day that was starting to tell on everyone but me.

The gold of six o’clock caught the dust the train threw up. At half past six the train slowed, and the first lights of Mbeya appeared in the cold, and then, suddenly, the train journey was simply over.

Mbeya station is out of town, at Forest, several kilometres from the centre, and every taxi and tuk-tuk was taken by storm the moment we stepped down. I booked a bajaj on Bolt, and we reached the Beaco Resort, in the centre, by seven. It is a kind of urban safari camp, with small independent cabins, and in the garden in front of ours stood a giant swing five metres high. We had our first shower in two days, which felt like an achievement. It was dark; we were advised not to go out alone, and we ate at the hotel: biryani and Indian food for Lorena, kuku wa kuoka, grilled spiced chicken, with chapati for me. That night, for the first time, we dug the down jackets out of the bags. After the beaches and the snorkelling of Zanzibar only a few days earlier, pulling on a winter coat was a strange thing to be doing.

And here, in the cold, the delay finally cost us something we could count. We had lost a day of Malawi. Which meant giving up the plan I cared about most, the one that had shaped the whole trip: to move by public transport. If we went by minibus now, we wouldn’t have time to see Livingstonia. So I called the reception and booked a private driver for the morning, a transfer to the Malawi border, leaving at six, with a packed breakfast made up for us. Then I wrote to Gift, the driver the Mushroom Farm had recommended, to ask him to collect us on the other side, and wrote to the Mushroom Farm itself to say that, sadly, we could now only stay one night in the Cob House.

The train had given me two days of great pleasure, and I would not give them back. But it had a cost, and this was the invoice: a lost day, a cold night, a private car booked at six in the morning, and our plan to cross into Malawi by public transport quietly set aside.

Practical Notes

Where I stayed

Beaco Resort, Beaco Avenue, central Mbeya. https://beacoresort.co.tz/
What I paid: $44 for two, one night.
My take: A kind of urban safari camp with small independent cabins, a hot shower very welcome after two days on the train, and a good hotel restaurant, useful because we were advised not to walk around after dark. Mbeya is high and genuinely cold at night; have warm clothes accessible, not buried at the bottom of the bag.

Where I ate

Beaco Resort restaurant, Mbeya.
What I ate: kuku wa kuoka (grilled spiced chicken) with chapati; biryani and Indian dishes for Lorena.
What I paid: $28 for two, drinks included.

Getting there

Tazara, second day, arrival at Mbeya. Scheduled to arrive in the morning; we arrived at 18:30, more than ten hours late (full timetable comparison in Day 8).
Mbeya station to the centre: the station is at Forest, several kilometres out of town, and taxis and tuk-tuks are mobbed the moment the train arrives. I booked a bajaj on Bolt, which worked; we were at the hotel by 19:00, and it cost $1.70.
Onward to Malawi: because the delay had cost us a day, we abandoned the plan to continue by public transport and booked a private driver through the hotel to the border, leaving at 06:00 with a packed breakfast (details and cost in Day 10).