For many years Zanzibar has been at the top of my dream holiday destination list. By great coincidence, Kapiri is at one end of a train line to Dar Es Salaam, and so the next phase of our journey was planned. The Tazara trains are half owned by Zambia and half by Tanzania, and the line was built by the Chinese. The trains used to have a reputation of reliability, but that has slipped in recent years. The online reports warned that Kapiri station is chaotic on departure day, and to expect great delays during the journey. The estimated journey time is 42 hours, so we booked a cabin, packed lots of food and some good books.

On departure day itself, the station was amazingly calm. Everything was very organised and we borded the train at 15:30 ready for a 16:00 departure. The train departed at 4 pm on the dot – things were looking good. We settled into our cabin, which had two sets of bunk beds. We were provided with sheets and blankets, and one toilet roll. As we pulled out of Kapiri station we waved goodbye to the local children, and then set about meeting our carriage neighbours. The train has a third class section, in which there are just severe upright seats. The backs are almost vertical and they look very hard. Not enjoyable for a journey of several days. There is also a section of second class sleeper berths which we didn’t manage to inspect, and our section of first class berths. The station staff appear to have given one carriage to Zambians and one to tourists, so in ours there was a mix of Dutch, Germans, South Africans, Brits and Japanese. Almost every berth only has two people to the four beds, so it seems muzungus are willing to pay for their privacy. There is also a bar carriage and a restaurant car. First class here is nothing like first class in Europe, but the beds are comfortable and the cabin seems reasonably clean. For £33 per ticket we certainly couldn’t complain, although the carcasses of previous trains that were liberally strewn alongside the tracks were slightly off-putting! We reassured ourselves that they were all cargo carriages, and none seemed to be from passenger trains.

We made our way down to the bar and met Peter, a Dutch man who has been doing consultancy work for Zanaco bank. Not an easy job when almost everything here is done manually, there is no internet banking, and sometimes every cash machine in the country is broken for several days at a time! The beers cost between 75p and £1 each, so we sampled a couple. Peter then got chatting to some Zambians, who were drinking an ‘interesting’ spirit out of a bag. Of course he wanted to try it and convinced us to give it a go too. So we purchased our polythene bag, poured it into a bottle of coke and gave it a go. I’m pretty sure it was gin, and it tasted ok, but I think we will stick to the beers in the future!

The train also offers room service to first class customers, although we have chosen to eat in the bar. This is mainly because the light in our cabin is so terrible that we wouldn’t be able to see the food in the evening. On the menu for both lunch and dinner are either chicken, fish or beef, with either nshima or rice. A meal costs £1.50 and tastes pretty good.

So for the first evening, the train was chugging along nicely, we were well fed and well watered. We smugly thought that the infamous delays wouldn’t apply to us…..

How wrong we were! The train generally bounces around all over the place, makes very loud noises and grinds to a halt occasionally. However, at midnight there was an almighty bang, the train lurched forward and then stopped. We had broken down and we couldn’t move again until a new engine arrived. This took eight hours. Once it arrived though, we carried on happily. For two more hours….when we came bouncing into a station. Engineers were called out, they scratched their heads, prodded at a few wheels, frowned a bit and walked to the next carriage. This lasted for three hours, and then we could move on again. For the rest of the day things went swimmingly, and we passed the time by looking out of the window, chatting to our carriage neighbours and playing backgammon.

In the middle of the night we got to the border post, where Zambian officials got on the train and stamped us out of the country. People also came and exchanged Kwacha for Tanzanian shillings. This was a tricky process as the people who make money from exchanging currency can’t manage simple maths. When we originally asked how many shilling we would get for one kwacha, we were told 5. The exchange rate is 1:268. After much discussion he said he would do 1:26, and couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t do the swap at one tenth of the going rate. When we eventually just said ‘We have 90 kwacha, how many shillings will we get?’ he got his phone out and gave us a rate of 1:260. Ultimately a very good deal for us, but it took a long time to get there and he still doesn’t know how to say his own rate!! At around 2 am we then arrived at the Tanzanian border post. More custom officials got on the train, took our passports and $50 from each person and disappeared. It was a bit of a nervous wait, while they issued the visas, but thankfully they returned and we were reunited with our documents.

During our time in Kapiri, the world cup has been keeping us entertained in the evenings. However, we have watched our fair share of boring matches. Graham was most distressed to find out that our train travel coincided with both semi-finals, but I pointed out that they would probably be low-scoring, uneventful matches….We were woken up late on Tuesday evening by some jubilant Germans shouting seiben to ein, seiben to ein. In my sleepy state, I thought that Germany must have beaten Brazil and that the odds on that were 7:1. It was only the next morning that we realised we had missed Germany giving Brazil a pummeling! Sadly for the Dutch on our carriage, they were not to share in this joy, and were eliminated by Argentina. The only consolation Graham has is that we will be in Stone Town for the final, watching from a bar on the beach.

The scenery as we travelled through Zambia was very typically African. Red earth, lots of bushes and very few trees. There were lots of small houses and some traditional huts. When we crossed over the border to Tanzania, the scenery changed. It is much more mountainous, slightly more green and the fields are still full of maize. The houses are made from brick held together with mud. During the final couple of hours of the journey, the train passed through a game park. I was hoping that this would essentially be a free safari and spent this leg of the journey glued to my seat, staring out of the window. We spotted baboons, impala, deer and some interesting birds, but no exciting game. My favourite spot however was two men with fishing spears, stark naked except for the brightly coloured beads tied in a string around their waist. Amazing!

We eventually pulled into Dar Es Salaam 24 hours late. A journey of 1160 miles had taken 68 hours, giving an average of 17 mph. That is the equivalent of going from London to Edinburgh in 23 hours! Just remember that this is the Express train, and there is a slow train that also makes the journey once every week. Yikes!

• Tazara