Day 8 – The Tazara: Ten Hours Late

The banana was one of the best I’ve ever eaten. It came through a lowered window somewhere in the middle of Tanzania, handed up from a platform while the train sat still under a sun it wasn’t supposed to be under, and I have thought about it ever since.

But I am ahead of myself.

We got to the Tazara station in the morning. Instagram had said ten o’clock; we left at half past. The station, built with Chinese involvement in the 1970s, is a grand thing gone soft at the edges, and it was full. Many people appeared to have spent the night there. The procedure was simple enough. I went to the ticket office to check my name was on the list, then sat and waited in the first-floor hall. The VIP lounge had a bar with its counter caved in. There was a little kiosk, and at it, pure nerves, I bought yet more snacks and another bottle of water, which after the seven litres each already in the bags was plainly unnecessary and which I bought anyway.

Then they called the train, and I climbed on, and felt the thing I have felt boarding other trains, the Chepe in Mexico, the Reunification Express in Vietnam, the Trans-Siberian, the Dogu Express in Turkey. Finding our carriage was easy: first class is at the front, so the first carriages at the platform. The compartment was the one Rama had promised: four berths and a door we could lock, ours alone. There is no air conditioning, but it is winter here, and you can breathe. A woman came round each day to ask what we wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For breakfast she offered spaghetti, which we declined. For lunch and dinner, we ordered and ate in the compartment because the restaurant car was always full at mealtimes.

The train pulled out slowly, working its way through the informal markets on the edge of the city before the savannah opened up. Baobabs and small villages went by the window. The line runs through the Nyerere National Park, the old Selous, and we saw wildlife from the train, giraffe among the trees. By the published timetable, this stretch should have passed in darkness; because we were already hours behind, we crossed it in daylight.

We had left Dar a day late to begin with. Then, over the run, the train shed more time: a locomotive fault that held us a couple of hours, and other stops and slownesses that were never explained and did not need to be. We were meant to reach Mbeya the next morning, around eight or nine. We would not get there until half past six the following evening, more than ten hours behind the plan. It meant losing a day in Malawi, though we did not yet feel the loss.

What I remember is not the lost time but the carriage while it was being lost.

At the small villages along the line, little markets assembled themselves out of nothing, and hot food and drinks were passed up to the passengers. Many of these places usually met the train at night; because of the delay, they were meeting it in full sun. When we stopped for a long time in open country, people walked out to the stranded train on foot, and the lowered windows became a row of improvised stalls. We bought sweet pineapples, roasted peanuts, corn grilled on the cob, in place of a dinner that had not come, and I ate that banana.

Inside, first class was its own small society, and the delay landed differently on each of us. There were three Japanese travellers, one of them an influencer who used every stop and every spare moment to film himself, holding long conversations with himself up and down the platform. There was the Dutchman from the museum, with his toe-shaped shoes, filling his empty day as we were filling ours. An English couple stayed shut in their cabin for almost the entire journey. Two more young Japanese women. And an American woman, married, or once married, to a Zambian man, travelling with her two teenage children towards Lusaka. She was doing the whole line, and with the delays she would arrive three days behind her plan.

That was the thing I kept noticing. For the American mother, the delay was three lost days with two teenagers. For some it was boredom, the slow arrival of the question of when we would get there. I could not find the part of myself that was supposed to mind. At night the creaking that keeps some people awake worked on me like a lullaby, and I slept extremely well.

The sun had gone down over the savannah, the humid coastal air of the morning giving way, as we climbed towards the highlands, to a breeze that turned cool and then sharp. Dinner was rice and beans and chicken and ugali, eaten in the compartment while the train swayed south into the dark. Then the platform stops with their fruit and their chai, and then sleep. In the morning the train was still going, still behind, the highlands coming up cold and green outside the window, Mbeya still ahead of us.

Practical Notes

Getting there

Tazara, Mukuba Express, Dar es Salaam to Mbeya. First class, four-berth sleeper, booked ahead through Rama at Gecko Adventure Tanzania (see Day 1); tickets cannot be bought online.
What I paid: $140 per person ($280 for the two of us), including exclusive use of a four-berth first-class compartment booked through Rama.
Scheduled vs actual: timetabled to leave Dar around 10:00 and arrive Mbeya the following morning (roughly 08:00 to 09:00). We left at 10:30 and arrived at 18:30 the next day, more than ten hours behind, on top of having already departed a day late. Causes included a locomotive fault for a couple of hours and various unexplained stops.
The compartment: clean carriages and toilets, lockable door, basic bedding, a small sink, no air conditioning (fine in winter). A staff member takes meal orders daily.
Food: there is a restaurant car, but it was full at every mealtime, so we ate in the compartment. The menu is fixed: beef or chicken with chips, ugali or rice. Platform vendors at the stops sell fruit, roasted peanuts, grilled corn and chai, and this is some of the best eating on the trip. You do not need seven litres of water each. I bought them anyway.
Worth knowing: follow @tazarasite on Instagram for departure updates; that is how we knew about the delay. By the published timetable, the Nyerere (Selous) section is crossed at night; our delay shifted it into daylight, so we saw it, giraffe included.