Train in vain (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

If my last post made you a little jealous, this one should hopefully rebalance things a little and make you glad to be in the western world where public transport is (mostly) reliable and (usually) on time.

For the next part of my journey, I'd booked myself on what promised to be a very long but very interesting train journey from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. The journey is scheduled to take 48 hours, but often takes longer as delays due to strikes, wild animals on the tracks, broken down trains etc etc mean it can take nearer to three to four days. However, it sounded like an amazing journey all the same and the kind of trip one can only do when you have seven months away rather than just a two week holiday. 

The train line was built by the Chinese in 1970s to transport copper from Zambia's Copperbelt region to Dar es Salaam so that it could be shipped to China, hence the rather unusual travel option in a continent with few remaining train lines. For a pretty reasonable price I could get a first class berth (sharing a compartment with three others) which would include a bed, while the train had a restaurant car and first class lounge. Having enjoyed a slightly shorter long distance train journey with Rachel in Vietnam last year (from Hanoi to Danang) this seemed the perfect option, and one that would be safer and more comfortable than getting a bus all that way.

So I booked my ticket and collected it from the travel agency on Thursday and then caught a taxi to the train station on Friday morning in plenty of time to catch the train which was due to depart at 13:50...

....and then I arrived at the station to be greeted by this sign!!!

 

...so the train had been cancelled and wouldn't be running again until next Tuesday! (it only runs twice a week anyway so this was just the next scheduled departure). The booking office could only tell me that a 'technical problem' was to blame so I decided to cut my losses and get refund on the ticket then and there and figure out an alternative way of getting to Zambia.

36 hours on a hot bus on African roads did not exactly appeal at this stage, so I decided to bite the bullet and splash out on a plane ticket to take me direct to Lusaka (the Zambian capital) and pick up my planned route from there. I'm therefore flying on Sunday morning and will arrive in Zambia at around the same time I would have done anyway if I'd got the train yesterday. This has however left me with two extra days to kill in Dar es Salaam on my own, and as it's not the most exciting of cities it has allowed me to be a little more prolific in blog postings!


Dan