With a few notable exceptions (the iron ore freight train in Mauritania springs to mind) we haven’t done a lot of train travel in Africa. Passenger routes aren’t that extensive, for starters. But now we’ve made up for this by spending nearly three days straight on the Tazara train from Zambia all the way to Tanzania.
Booking tickets online is not a thing. So at breakfast one day on the patio at our guesthouse in Livingstone, I asked our host about the train. He laughed. I showed him the email address and WhatsApp numbers I’d found online. Not just anywhere online either – right on the Tazara website. ‘Sure, you can try to book tickets’ said Remy, and laughed again and went back inside.
It would have been faster to go by bus (well, it would have been fastest by air, but that’s no fun). At any rate we weren’t going to get there any faster by relaxing at the guesthouse, so I sent a flurry of WhatsApp messages and emails.
Back at the breakfast table two days later, I smugly announced to Remy that someone had responded to me on WhatsApp. There was a train on the following Tuesday, and we could have two berths on it. Remy seemed surprised, not just that we’d got tickets but that we wanted them in the first place. Most of his guests wanted to bungee jump from the bridge over Victoria Falls and it was obvious Remy thought that was a preferable activity. But we are suckers for unreasonably long train trips, and had been looking forward to this one for quite some time.
Fast forward a week or so and we were aboard the Tazara train, tickets and all. Good thing we had those tickets, too, unlike a random passenger who boarded without one and got a resounding slap in the face from the conductor for it.
That’s right, this isn’t your average train trip. We thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish, possibly in part because neither of us got slapped in the face.
This post is about our experience aboard the Tazara train, traveling from Zambia (New Kapiri Mposhi) to Tanzania (Dar es Salaam). It’s a guide to whatever you need to know to take the same journey, and what awaits you along the way. And – if you’re in the neighbourhood, then you should definitely take this journey.
All aboard? Oh well, no rush…
The Tazara train route
The Tazara is an international train, running between New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. It’s a great way to cross the border and travel between these two countries, but you need time and flexibility to fit it into your plans. Don’t expect it all to go smoothly.
There are two trains per week going in opposite directions, the ‘Mukuba Express’ and the ‘Ordinary’ train:
- The Mukuba Express train departs Dar es Salaam on Fridays around 4pm. It departs New Kapiri Mposhi on Tuesdays around 4pm. If it ran according to schedule it would take approximately 46 hours.
- The Ordinary train departs Dar es Salaam on Tuesdays around 2pm. It departs New Kapiri Mposhi on Fridays around 2pm. This one takes an indefinite amount of time. There isn’t even an indication of the schedule on the Tazara site. It stops at every single station so I think you can just assume it takes ‘a hell of a long time’.
You’ll cross the border on the train. It stops on both sides for everyone to get out and do passport control, visas on arrival, change money, and so on.
Before you go
It was suggested to us by a Tazara employee on WhatsApp that the train might take about forty hours, or less, or more. It took sixty in the end, so best come prepared.
- You’re going to cross a border, so make sure your nationality is eligible for visa on arrival or visa-free. Entering Tanzania, you’ll need fifty USD for the visa. Bring a pen.
- Tanzania requires proof of yellow fever vaccination so get the shot and bring your international vaccine card. Otherwise, you’ll be getting the jab at the border, anti-vaxxer or not.
- You need cash in both local currencies to buy food on the train, depending which country you’re currently in. There are money changers on the border so you can exchange Kwatcha and Shillings as needed. Know the rate.
- If you plan to be online at all, make sure you have e-SIMs for both countries downloaded. Service is slow and patchy so don’t rely on it.
- The train has a restaurant, bar, and lounge car. They serve meals at set times. Breakfast is a bit ghastly but lunch and dinner were good. They have bottled water, soft drinks, and beer – almost always warm. Bring some extra water and snacks. There was tea available in the mornings but not even instant coffee. We’ve always got an aeropress and coffee with us so we were set – we’d just ask for hot water.
- The train ran out of water on the second day and they never refilled the tanks despite idling for hours at a time in village stations. If you are really set on brushing your teeth and washing your hands, you’ll need to buy extra bottled water for that. Supposedly there are showers on board although I never saw them and since there was no water it didn’t matter anyway.
- The toilets were ok to start and got progressively worse. Bring toilet paper. There is a separate room with sinks for washing up (again, not so useful without water).
- Bedding is provided, on the Express in first class anyway.
- Don’t leave your valuables unattended. You won’t get a key to your compartment, so if you’re sharing with others coordinate that the last to leave locks up. Then, you have to find a conductor to let you back in.
Getting tickets for the Tazara train
You can’t book this train online. Try to book tickets in person and pay for them on the spot, as paying is the only real guarantee you’re getting onboard. You can buy the tickets directly from the Tazara offices in Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, and Kapiri Mposhi (but there’s absolutely no other reason to be in Kapiri Mposhi than departing on this train, so going there days ahead of time to buy a ticket would be weird). Note that if you’re picking up this train in Tanzania, Mbeya is also an option.
The trains do sell right out so you should definitely try to get tickets ahead of time – the Tazara website itself suggests booking two weeks ahead. Waiting until you’re in one of the above-mentioned towns is a bit of a gamble. If you are dead set on a certain date and trying to book the train far in advance or from somewhere else entirely, I think you’d need to get a local travel agency to arrange it and pay up front for you.
But, if you aren’t worried about the exact date you travel and also don’t happen to be in Lusaka or Dar, you can consult the Tazara website for (some) information. Hilariously, the ticket fares page on the website is blank, but there is a list of email addresses and WhatsApp numbers for contacts in the local Tazara offices. To book the train you need to get in touch with one of these people, and make a reservation. Then, once you get to Lusaka or Dar you go straight to the office to pay and pick up your ticket.
We had no luck with the email addresses, but someone responded to one of my repeated WhatsApp calls and messages. I chatted with Agatha for several days, on and off. She rarely sent a clear answer but did say she’d reserved two berths for us.
What Agatha didn’t tell me was that this was not actually a reservation at all; it was more like she was just humouring me. When you book like this what you’re doing is basically putting your name on a list of people who think they might fancy taking a forty-eight hour train trip on that particular day.
We learned this a few days later when we arrived at the Inter-City Bus Terminal in Lusaka and set off to meet Agatha at the office in the Tazara House building nearby. She informed us that there were exactly two berths still available. Mainly we were just lucky to get there before anyone else wandered in off the street and took the last two spots.
The key thing to remember here is: if you think you have a reservation, you probably don’t. So get the actual tickets in hand at least a day in advance or as soon as you reasonably can.
In general, about tickets:
- We didn’t have a preference regarding the Express or the Ordinary train. We took the next train with availability, which happened to be an Express.
- The tickets cost about 40 USD each, for first class on the Express. The office doesn’t take cards – bring cash. First class tickets on the Ordinary train are about 32 USD.
- Spring for first class. It costs only a little more than second. In first you have four berths per compartment. In second you have six berths, so it’s quite a bit more crowded. Third class is open seating and I’d strongly suggest avoiding it.
- If you want your own compartment you need to book all four (or six) berths. Otherwise, you get a berth in a shared compartment. They are separated by men and women. We would have booked our own compartment but there were literally just two berths left so we were split up, but that didn’t matter.
Livingstone/Lusaka to Kapiri Mposhi
‘TIA’ said Lance the guesthouse manager in Livingstone, when he heard that we’d arranged a ride to the bus station at 5.30 am the next day. Lance put the taxi driver’s number in his phone. ‘I’ll call him at 5 to wake him up.’ he explained. ‘TIA. And I’ll call you at 4.30 Lance.’ I said. Lance slapped his leg and laughed uproariously. And he was right, the driver never showed. But Lance got up and made us breakfast and then we caught our bus to Lusaka.
If you’re leaving from Livingstone, buy your bus tickets to Lusaka in person at the Inter-City Bus Terminal at least a day ahead. It takes about eight hours to get from Livingstone to Lusaka by bus.
When we arrived in Lusaka the first thing we did was pay for our train tickets. The Tazara House office is near the bus terminal so we walked straight there. Then we booked seats on a bus the next morning to Kapiri Mposhi, and stayed overnight in Lusaka.
It takes about three and a half hours to get from Lusaka to Kapiri Mposhi, so leave early. We took the bus on the same day as the train was departing. This is doable, but since our bus bizzarely spent quite some time off-roading, we cut it close. If your mental health is already hanging by a thread, consider going to Kapiri Mposhi the day before. Counting on public transport is always a bit risky.
From the bus station in Kapiri Mposhi it’s a few kilometers to the New Kapiri Mposhi Railway Station. Lots of taxi drivers were lurking around when we got off the bus.
Aim to arrive at the station at least two hours ahead to be on the safe side.
Moral of this whole story so far, don’t waste time. You’ll do plenty of that later once you’re aboard the train.
Life on the Tazara train
‘He looks like the guy from The Last of Us’ said The Dancer to me, and he pointed at Oyv. I looked across the table at Oyv, wearing his dark sunglasses and pushing down steadily on the aeropress as the train carriage lurched and swayed. The Dancer was the train employee who’d served all our meals so far in the restaurant car, and when he wasn’t serving up plates of ugali/nshima (depending which side of the border we were currently on) and greens, he was dancing up and down the aisle. It’s a long trip and there was plenty of time to people-watch.
Besides people-watching, since the train goes right through Selous Game Reserve you can do some wildlife-spotting on the way. The railway was built by the Chinese between 1970 to 1975, and runs through tunnels and across rivers and gorges. As the Tazara website points out, this affords passengers the opportunity to ‘appreciate the awesome and inspirational engineering works of the Chinese’.
The train made lengthy and inexplicable stops of often an hour or more in every single little village we passed.
We’d get out for a look around, and sometimes random people would board and ride in the bar for a stop or two. Although the train ran out of water it never ran out of beer, despite the efforts of a local teacher who’d boarded in reasonable condition only to be incapacitated and physically dragged off the train by the barstaff a few stations later.
Tentatively scheduled to take forty-four hours, in the end it took sixty. As the train slowly chugged along with no particular end in sight, we just clattered around between our compartments and the lounge car. I made us a lot of PB&J sandwiches, Oyv brewed coffee whenever we could convince The Dancer to boil us some water, and we hung out in the lounge car sipping warm beers, talking to whoever else was around, and watching Africa roll by with each clacking turn of the wheels.
The border: Zambia (Nakonde) to Tanzania (Tunduma)
We arrived Zambia’s side of the border late in the afternoon on day two. We were tracking the train on maps.me and saw everyone getting off, so we got off too. There was no announcement.
The train stops very close to the locked immigration building. Eventually some officers came from town, after someone called and told them the train had arrived.
We got our passports stamped, changed money, and got back on the train. When it eventually rumbled back to life we rode a bit further to Tanzanian immigration, housed in what looked like an abandoned building. There we lined up again in front of a table to get our passports stamped and pay for the visas. All very ordinary, right up until a man wearing a white lab coat walked in with a cooler. He produced two syringes and vaccinated a couple of passengers on the spot. Like I said, bring your yellow fever certificate.
Arriving in Dar es Salaam
Although I noticed a door in our carriage marked ‘Broadcasting room’, at no time did the staff broadcast any announcements about delays, sudden departures from remote stations, arrival at the border, or any other useful information. When we arrived in Dar at the Tazara Railway Station at about three in the morning, the conductor let us know by banging loudly on the compartment doors up and down the carriage.
At that hour of the night walking is decidedly out. If you arrive late and don’t want to take a taxi, then you can stay in the station until morning. I wouldn’t suggest actually sleeping, but it’s partially lit and there were a lot of people around. We took an Uber and went to Kibodya Hotel 6, banking on there being a night-guard out front who’d be able to wake up the receptionist and get us in (there was).
I was sorry to get off the train (not least because it was the middle of the night and I was tucked up snugly in my berth). It’s a long trip but if you like train travel in general, then this is for you. Just remember, maybe most importantly of all: embrace the feeling of ‘It gets there when it gets there. As Lance said, ‘T.I.A’.
Read More
For more of our adventures (and misadventures) as we travel from Cameroon to Japan, check out the rest of my stories from the road.
If you’re in Tanzania, you might want to check out these other posts about traveling in this amazing country.
