Rovos Rail tourist train is on its way from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on its annual vintage trip from the tip of the African continent to its heart, rolling through famous tourist attraction sites in Southern Africa.
The luxury train left Victoria Falls on Monday heading northwards to Dar es Salaam in its 15-day journey from South Africa to East Africa.
This epic 2-week journey , which happens a few times in the year, travels through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Tanzania and is one of the most famous vintage trains in the world.
The sojourn begins in Cape Town taking guests to the historic village of Matjiesfontein, the diamond town of Kimberley, and the capital city of Pretoria and Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa.
The train continues through Botswana into Zimbabwe for an overnight at the Victoria Falls Hotel, then crosses the mighty Zambezi River to Zambia and joins the Tanzania Zambia Railway to Chisimba Falls where guests enjoy a bush walk.
It enters the Tanzanian border then descends into the Great Rift Valley negotiating the tunnels, switchbacks, and viaducts of the spectacular escarpment in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania.
Mbeya, near the Zambia border, is the first welcoming city for the Rovos Rail train shortly after entering Tanzania. From Mbeya, the train cuts across the Southern Highlands’ attractive sites including Livingstone Mountains, Kipengere Ranges, and the Great Rift Valley. It then descends into the Rift Valley, giving its passengers a chance to view and enjoy spectacular scenery as the train negotiates 23 tunnels before cutting through the center of the Selous Game Reserve, the largest wildlife game reserve in Africa.
Covering 6,100 kilometers, the 2-week tourist-tailored journey from Cape to Dar es Salaam takes place every year on a vintage Edwardian Train snaking through the southern to eastern parts of Africa on tourist missions.
Rovos Rail, or the “Pride of Africa,” is a luxurious train that follows Cecil Rhode’s trails from the Cape, passing through Southern Africa to Dar es Salaam and linking its passengers to other parts of Africa through other railway networks in Eastern Africa.
It is an exciting, and perhaps the only moment of a life-time ride on such a train pushed by steam engines and with old wooden coaches dating back to the late 1890s, but modified into a 5-star hotel with all the required first-class tourist facilities.
The old Edwardian Rovos Rail train rolls with 21 wooden coaches with a capacity to accommodate 72 passengers. The wooden coaches are aged between 70 and 100 years, and have been furnished into passenger-worthy carriages. Prices starts from $11,000.
Owned by Rovos Rail Company, the vintage train made its first maiden trip to Dar es Salaam in July 1993 to complete Cecil Rhode’s dream of laying a railway line from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt, snaking across the African continent from the southernmost tip to the northern tip of this continent.
Source: Rovos.com, Eturbonews
