Not quite Hogwarts Express - but close

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(Vidas writing) We traveled by train from Nairobi capital to the coastal town of Mombasa then to Lamu where we stayed for three days. We first bought our tickets at Nairobi at a very old fashioned train station that was built in the early 1800’s British Colonial days. We thought it was interesting that there were only two trains possible - one line going east (to Mombasa) and one going west. We bought second class tickets in the sleeper cars and two meals.

They told us to come an hour early and so we did. This was only the second time that I have been in an overnight train, It looked very like the cool train in the Harry Potter movie. The train left at around 7:00pm and was supposed to arrive in Mombasa at 10am the next morning. Kovas and I purposely waited till the train started moving then we ran and tried to jump on the train (like in the movies).

The train had very, VERY narrow hallways; two people could barley squeeze past on each other. The rooms had four beds, 1 window, and 1 sink. Each cart had two bathrooms that you shared. The bathroom toilets were simply holes that passed everything to the ground. Yuk. I was surprised that it seemed that most of the passengers on the train in the sleeper cars were white. At first I thought that all of them were tourists, but as we met them, most of them worked in Kenya or were volunteering.

There are3 shifts of meals in the restaurant car. They had one menu that you pass to the person next to you. That was very resourceful! After dinner most of the passengers went to their compartments to sleep. Kovas, Lukas, Dad, and I played poker in the empty restaurant car instead. We met interesting people, like an inventor of a malaria prevention contraption. Sleeping on the train wasn’t as bad as I thought. I thought that it would be hard to fall asleep because it was bumpy, but I fell straight asleep.

Once we were about 2hours away from our destination, the train just stopped. It turns out that the train in front of us de-railed. Ugh! The crew’s estimate was 4 hours before we would go again. That 4 hours turned into 8 additional hours. Almost all the passengers left and went to the road to hitchhike to Mombasa or to find alternate transport. Only 8 other people stayed with us in the sleeper cars. Instead of reaching our beach destination, we only arrived in Mombasa at 6pm and had to spend the night there and travel further the next day.

I enjoyed the trip and will always remember this train ride. The trip was fun, interesting, and different.

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