Africa's 2 great trains, and how to pick yours

First light on the Mara plains, and a male lion is already up, watching the wildebeest from the long grass. Lions here do most of their hunting in the dark and the cool first hours of the day.

With the migration in, the prides have more prey on their doorstep than at any other time of year. The clip is the opening of Dan Palmer’s 2025 film for Governors’ Camp Collection, the same film as last week’s river crossing.

They wear the same "most luxurious train in Africa" label and sell different fantasies. Rovos Rail is vintage and unhurried: wood-panelled carriages, dressing for dinner, no phones in the lounges, and the only one that runs to Victoria Falls, from about $3,270 to $7,520 per person.

The Blue Train sells modern polish instead, with art-deco suites and a butler per suite on the Pretoria to Cape Town run, from about $2,270 to $3,500 per person. For a first luxury train it is the smarter entry point; Rovos is for rail romantics.

The same train runs everything from 2 nights to Durban to a 16-night crossing to Dar es Salaam, and the dining car, the wine and the pace are identical on all of them. What changes is how long you sit still, and the fare, from about $3,020 to well over $30,000 per person.

For a first trip, Pretoria to Victoria Falls is the best all-rounder: 3 or 4 nights at the same fare, from about $4,030, with a Hwange game drive and the Falls themselves added on. Do not book a 16-night epic to find out whether you like slow trains.

A $3,000 fare for a few nights on a train sounds absurd until you see what sits inside it: every meal, every drink including the fine wines, 24-hour room service and the guided excursions. Set it against a safari camp at $850 to $1,200 per person a night before park fees and flights, and the gap narrows fast.

What still lands on top: flights, transfers, visas, the compulsory cancellation insurance and about $25 per guest per night in tips. Travelling alone adds 50% on the short routes, so get a written quote before you fall for a suite.

Kruger Shalati is a train of converted carriages parked for good on the old Selati railway bridge above the Sabie River, beside Skukuza, with a pool on the bridge deck and hippo, crocodile and elephant in the river below the windows. It opened in December 2020, and the rail week is the week to give it its due.

It is a design-and-location stay first and a safari second: a busy operation in the busiest corner of Kruger, with game drives on the public roads. In 2027 a Carriage Suite on the bridge starts at R13,750 (about $835) per person per night sharing, with meals, house drinks and 2 drives a day, and the bridge is the whole point.

Rohan Vos ran an auto-spares business in the coal town of Witbank when a vintage train trip in 1985 left him infatuated. He hauled 3 vandalised dining cars out of a Johannesburg country club to restore for family holidays, then found the state railway's price to rent a locomotive was too steep to swallow.

An official's fix was to take paying passengers, and on 29 April 1989 the first train left with 4 of them aboard. Nearly 4 decades on, Rovos is still family-controlled, still restores its carriages by hand at Capital Park and still keeps phones out of the lounges.

That's issue 11. If it was useful, forward it to the friend who keeps promising themselves the Blue Train one day. If it wasn't, reply and tell me why. I will read it.

Murray Walker
Editor, Safari Dispatch

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