Safari from the train window

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November 24th 2005

Published: January 1st 2006

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robinbye

Looking out the window

Catching the Tazara Railway

The story so far
The previous post from our boat trip on Lake Malawi led to numerous emails and text messages from worried parents as well as some people suggesting it all just happened in my imagination after having one beer too many and falling asleep on the sun deck. For our parents, we are still alive and currently at home in Norway with you, eating your food, sleeping in your houses, driving your cars and spending your money, thus, it is time to be worried in an all different way. For the rest of you, I can assure those who doubt what happened that my imagination is rather non-existent after too many beers and that my story is a true story of those events that took place that dreadful night on November the 18th, in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand And Five.

Earlier, I wrote that the remainder of the boat trip was rather eventless after our scary night. That's mostly true, however, I'd like to tell you about the second night. When we arrived at one of the many islands on the lake, "our" first class deck was suddenly occupied about a

Sunglass reflection

hundred or so of the President's best men! Going straight for the bar, it appeared that the President had just launched a new party and had held a speech on the island. Now, his 100 men had to take the ferry up north while His Highness himself caught a plane. The 100 men didn't seem particularly envious though, as it soon became clear that the President was paying the bar bill! We went early to bed, and when we woke the next morning, the party was still going on, however not as strongly as a few hours earlier. Men were sleeping on the deck, in chairs and on benches, while some even slept with their heads on the bar. One man who could hardly sit on the bar stool held an empty beer bottle in his hand. Without the man noticing, the bartender carefully removed the bottle from his hand and placed another in it: 'Courtesy of the gentleman over there,' the bartender said. The man lifted his head slightly and gulped down a sip without a word. 'That's how they spend our financial support to developing countries,' Helene said with a smile! Perhaps she's right. Many industrial countries are

Enjoying the dining compartment

trying a more direct approach nowadays by pumping the money into specific projects rather than giving a lump sum to governments. This seems to work reasonably well in some cases, but in the end, we cannot do this down to the last cent, can we? These countries' goal must be to become independent at some stage, with their own goverment running their countries in a sustainable manner. If such non-corrupt governments will ever come to power is another question.

Landing in Nkatha Bay, we walked around for a couple of hours, however, there was little of interest. Then we caught a bus to Mzuzu, one of the bigger towns in Malawi. Here, the President had already arrived and was going to hold another speech, presenting his new party. We then caught a bus toward Karonga, situated some 120 km from the Tanzanian border. The plan was to stay the night, then catch a minibus to the border, walk across after the formalities, and catch another minibus to Mbeya. Enjoying our five people per row luxury bus, we were just talking about how lucky we were to have such a responsible driver who safely drove us down hair pin curves

Local kids

Everytime we stopped at a "station" I took the time to practice my Swahili or give the kids some candy. Looking at those faces, how can you not?!

when the bus suddenly stopped. We had descended about 1000 meters from the top of a steep mountain and were still alive. Asking the bus driver why we stopped, he apologised (!) for our slow descent and explained that the reason for it was engine problems. The bus was not going to proceed any further but he had hopes for another bus to arrive soon; a bus he saw leaving the bus station in Mzuzu around the time when we did. We sat down next to the bus on our backpacks. The situation didn't seem particularly bad --- yet. 90 minutes later the bus driver came over to us and asked if we wanted our ticket fare back. 'How would that help us,' I replied and refused, 'you are responsible for getting us safely to our destination.' The "other" bus had not appeared and clearly it was not going to either. Our only option was to wait for the next official bus, which might not appear until the next day! At this stage it was getting dark. In the absence of electricity, the only lights were a few fireplaces here and there among the houses in the little village where

Sunset

we had stopped. Considering the last few days' incidents, we were quite paranoid at this stage. I asked the bus driver if we were safe and he could ensure us that we were, as long as we kept sitting behind the bus, hidden from the village on the other side! This information didn't exactly help in calming us down. A little later a ute-like small truck arrived, offering us a lift onwards. A british student, the only non-local traveller apart from ourselves, jumped on. We didn't dare to, because we thought the chances too great for the car to stop before our destination. Due the the fuel expenses, drivers usually refuse to drive any further unless the car is completely full. We would likely end up in another village but without the "protection" from our bus driver and "guarantee" of onward transport. At least we could enter our current bus and lock the door for the night if it came down to it.

Another hour went by and we enjoyed the amazing starlit sky. There are probably no more stars to view here then elsewhere on the Earth, however, when there is no man-made city light interfering, the sky

Kids

Kids, as well as adults, always met us at each stop, trying to sell us fruit or crafts or simply hoping for us to throw something useful out the window like half-empty water bottles.

becomes incredibly clear with innumerous stars on display. About halfway through renaming the various constellations, a truck stopped just behind our bus. A man who had traveled with our bus ran over to talk to the truck driver and I realised I had to be quick to secure a spot myself if the truck driver would take us. He would. We secured the backpacks on the trailer and entered the truck driver's cabin. Helene got the only spare seat, while the other man, his son, and myself sat down behind the seats where a little space existed for sleeping. It turned out the man was going all the way to Karonga --- could we have been luckier? After a couple of hours, the other passenger took his son, gave the truck driver his last, hard-earned cash and left. The driver then took us all the way to our hostel, which turned out to be full for the night. Luckily, he knew about another place and took us there, where there were room for two tired Norwegians, one with a particularly sore bum. When tipping the truck driver generously, his smile went all around his head. He had probably received the

Landscape

The typical landscape you see when crossing Tanzania on the Tazara railway.

equivalent of a month's work and nearly danced his way over to the truck, although he had lost probably an hour of precious sleep from driving us to the hostels.

The next day we caught a minibus to the border, crossed it without any troubles and got to Mbeya without any throuble.

Train safari: "The journey is the goal."
This is a philosophy I strongly believe in, and was the main reason we chose to travel by boat along Lake Malawi. Rather than cramming into overfull buses, we chose the train as our means of transportation from Mbeya to Dar Es Salaam. Mbeya is a town and transportation centre just north of the border to Malawi. From Dar Es Salaam, lots of buses, trucks and freight trains bring goods to Mbeya, where it is redirected either south to Malawi or west to Zambia.

At the station, it turned out that men and women are not allowed to share cabins. This came as no surprise, as we knew this from reading our invaluable Lonely Planet travelbook. Considering the train trip would take nearly 36 hours it would very boring not being able to share the same coupe. Thus, following Lonely Planet's advice, we simply paid for an entire first class coupe with four beds! There were quite a few people exchanging looks behind us and even the ticket salesman had troubles hiding his surprise. He accepted though and received the money for one half-price (I had an ISIC card) and three full price tickets, around USD 75 total.

The Tazara railway is supposed to be a classic and runs all the way from New
Kapri Mposhi (not too far away from Lusaka) in Zambia to Dar Es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast. One of its main features is that it enters the Selous Game Reserve about two-thirds of the way from Mbeya to Dar. I unpacked my binoculars, digital camera and video camera and positioned myself with my head out of the window 30 minutes after leaving Mbeya. 'It might be a little early for game viewing, dear,' Helene said, but I patiently explained that animals don't care about humanmade game park borders and that you only get a glimpse of the animals before they disappear. Two hours later I withdrew my head with a funny hairdo and an extremely sore neck. Not a single animal had appeared, however, some action had occurred, as I nearly chopped my head of against poles and trees placed dangerously close to the rails.

Enjoying a cold beer in the salon and being served dinner in our coupe sounds fantastic but this Orient Express cliche doesn't really work that well on the Tazara. First of all, the food is very average. Second, the beer isn't really cold. Third, please abandon your idea of a train where you hardly notice you're moving --- The Tazara rocks from side to side, simply going from the coupe to the bathroom takes three beers to build up enough courage. Thus you end up in this eternal cycle where you laboriously make your way to the bar a couple of cars away and order a few beers (you don't want to make the trip to often!), then you struggle back and drink them too quickly "while they're still semi-cold," which was my postulate, before nature requires you to go to the bathroom. But then you might as well pick up a few more beers on the way, and there you go again.

Although Mbeya-Dar Es Salaam requires you to cross nearly the entire country of Tanzania from west to east, the main reason for the long train trip duration are the many stops, 45 to be exact. Every half-hour or so we stopped. Sometimes we saw the usual church and school and huts, other times there were hardly any houses around at all. Still, people crowded around the train, selling fruit and handmade crafts to the travelers through the windows. This kind of window shopping was quite entertaining. We didn't buy anything as usual, I did however have a bag of candy from which I grabbed a few goodies and threw to the kids at every station. They loved it, and I did my Queen Elisabeth royal wave with my hand when the train started moving again. Other times I leant out the window and practiced my swahili, which was quite entertaining as well.

As we got closer to Dar, I started exercising my how-to-nearly-kill-yourself-in-a-particularly-stupid-way game watching again. Bending my head far out I would be able to spot the animals well before we passed them, enabling me to rip out my binoculars, digital camera, or video camera in time to capture them. Again, not a single animal showed up. I was starting to get a little annoyed. Helene calmed me down and said we probably hadn't entered Selous yet, and besides, we were to enter it at its northern edge, so maybe we wouldn't see that many anyway. Again, I wondered why the animals should stick to some, for them, imaginary border, but I kept my mouth shut.

A little later the landscape exploded with animals. They were everywhere. Various antelope animals such as impalas or maybe Thompson's gazelles, baboons, giraffes, warthogs, buffaloes, zebras... It was amazing! I snapped photos away while gulping air and quickly withdrawing my head when a branch from a tree tried to snap my head now and then. It was an excellent appetizer for the safaris to come later in our journey. About an hour later it was over. Clearly we had left the invisible Selous Park border and the animals refused to go outside.

Dar Es Salaam
In Dar, we stayed at the YWCA. The Christian hostels such as YWCA and YMCA prove to be cheap and clean, thus if you manage to smuggle alcohol to your room and avoid the curfew after 10pm by bribing the guard, you can still have an enjoyable holiday.

Dar Es Salaam itself wasn't very exciting. It is a very noisy city with people saying hello everywhere and trying to sell you stuff. Add the temperature, and you have the perfect recipe for how to kill yourself physically and mentally --- just take a walk and "discover" the city! We soon found ourselves yearning for an internet cafe with air conditioning, thus we spent a lot of time indoor. Most enjoyable of other activities was perhaps a crafts market called Nyumba ya Sanaa. Containing crafts made by real artists and lots of overhead fans, this place also offered an excellent lunch. As a matter of fact, the food was probably the best part of our entire stay in Dar. We had the most fantastic sea food dinner at the Holiday Inn restaurant, eating a giant tuna steak and grilled king fish, and I also enjoyed a marvellous seafood platter at the City Garden restaurant, with lobster, king prawns, king fish, octopus, and red snapper.

After two days in Dar Es Salaam, we took the slow ferry (half price compared to the jet ferry) to Zanzibar. It was a real hassle to avoid all the touts trying to sell ferry tickets outside the ticket offices. The best strategy is perhaps just to not say a word and walk quickly and determined while looking for the office under your sunglasses. The boat trip to Stonetown, the old city and cultural heart of Zanzibar, took about 3.5 hours and was enjoyable apart from the rain that came during the last hour and forced us to cram ourselves indoors. Arriving, the sun showed up again, giving us a sign of what to come the following days.