Rovos Rail Journey to Zimbabwe

January 22-24, 2026 - From the itinerary:

Day 1 highlights: cross the Tropic of Capricorn during tea. Cross the Limpopo River sometime during dinner.

Day 2 highlights:Travel towards Bulawayo - the second city of Zimbabwe, capital of Matabe

Day 3 highlights: The train travels between Gwaai and Dete along one of the world's longest stretches of straight railway line - 114 KM. Game drive at The Hide in Hwange Natiopnal Park.

Here's our route:

January 22, 2026 - We got an urgent message from the travel agent yesterday letting us know that due to a washout, we would be bused about 65 km, about 40 miles, to pick up the train en-route. This was a bit of a disappointment. We also found out that there was no "Rovos Rail Station". Thankfully I insisted on getting the voucher for the journey which had the actual address listed.

We got there on time, did our initial checkin and got some champagne. (this isn't us in the first photo, this is a writer and a TV producer who were also on the train).

Then we went to see the Rovos Rail Museum which had lots of train travel memorabilia from days gone by. Along the way we saw the resident donkeys and cows. The Museum attendant was an interesting guy who worked on the S. African railroads coming on 40 years.

We went back to the station and enjoyed some champagne while waiting for something to happen.

Amazingly, we saw that Rohan Vos, the owner of Rovos Rail, greeting the passengers.

He then led us all on a tour of the train yard where there are several wild peacocks. He told his story of how he was only hours away from going bankrupt and got a money influx at the last moment to keep going. Rovos Rail would be an interesting business case at a business school (although maybe it's a case of what entrepreneurs shouldn't do).

He has a full workshop. He buys old carriages and engines. He guts them and rebuilds them from the ground up, including wood paneling, all internal features and facilities.

There are 21 cars on our train. We are 4 from the front. The dining cars (2) are in the middle and the observation car is all the way at the end. There are two club cars located about midway between the dining car and the respective ends of the train.

We have a "crosswize double cabin". Idea being that there is less movement when sleeping.

forgot to add a photo of the shower.

There is a strict policy of no mobile phone or computer use anywhere on the train except for individual cabins. They do enforce it, as I was told off for blogging in the club car. I clarified the policy and I can use the phone to take photos and can use it to read my e-book.

They request you shut your windows and shades whenever you leave your cabin. If the train stops (which it does frequently), strangers can't reach in and steal anything.

Very slow train journey, average speed is 45mph. Stops a lot. At one point I said that if it went any faster we would be going backwards - sure enough we did.

There are about 80 passengers on the train and the owner needs 36 to break even, so sounds like he'll make some money on this journey. Most of the passengers are Americans and many seem to be on a tour together. There are a few people who have been on several times and one couple has been on 8 times. There's even a guy who shops for his trousers at the same store as John (Rob's nephew)

The rhythm of the next 4 days is:

Breakfast - 7-10

Lunch 1pm

Tea 4:30

Dinner 7:30

These are all single seating services

Here is our menu for the 4 days:

We felt extremely lucky that we did not need to be bused and took the train immediately from the start at the station. There were quite a few loud people in the lounge car at the beginning of the journey, but everyone cleared out as lunch came close. We are a bit confused about why lunch is so late, given tea is served at 4:30. Here we are in the lounge car sipping champagne.

Lunch was nice. Chris had the chicken and I had the squash option. All alcohol is included in the price, so it's a very liquid journey.

After lunch we retired to the club car near our cabin to watch for animals. I did see a herd of an animal that looked like a big antelope. I saw some sort of big buffalo type of animal running away, but that might have been a cow.

The stations were very run down, but there were some exceptions

The scenery is much nicer as we get outside of the towns. We passed Modimolle Mountain (Kranskop) which is a significant peak in S. Africa's Limpopo Province and is part of the Waterberg Massif.

Polokwane appears to be where our route crosses the Tropic of Capricorn. This was where we were supposed to be at lunch, but it appears we are running at least 3 hours behind - I believe this delay is why there was an original plan to take the bus.

The weather started coming in and we enjoyed traveling on the train through the rain. The train does seem to move slowly and starts and stops, seemingly without reason. One time today it definitely felt like we hit something and we stopped rather abruptly. I guess nothing was wrong as we eventually started up again.

After our main course the train manager comes to the dining car, ofwhich there are two, and makes the day's announcements. Today's announcement was a welcome and told us we would make the Tropic of Capricorn at midnight. Once they made up the lost time from earlier in the day the train would stop for a few hours in the night.

The dinner service was very slow and we finally finished at about 9pm. We watched as others actually fell asleep at their tables (no photos, unfortunately)

It was a rather rocky and noisy evening and I was glad to be crosswise so I didn't get thrown out of bed.

January 23, 2025 -

We got to the South African border at about 6am and eventually exit formalities were completed. It probably took a couple of hours to get this done.

At some point we got up for breakfast. I finally got my papaya.

We found out some more details about our fellow passengers. With us is a group of 30 people who are Notre Dame sports team alumni (all are from the USA and are about my age). They are all going to Victoria Falls and they have a very good tour manager called Marc Nathan who is an independent and his email domain name is Cannibal. Unfortunately, he only works with groups and corporate clients, but he might be an interesting addition to get ideas for future Africa trips. In addition, we have 2 French couples. Marie and Jacques are in their 30s and are probably the youngest on the trip. The average age on this train is probably 68... Also are Marc and Tomas who are gay and from Paris. Marc owns a mattress/bedding company. He was once hired by a very rich Dubai lady to furnish the house she bought for her 2 children studying in Scotland. She hired him to provide all the bedding for the house and it included several trips to Scotland for measurements. Tomas works as a pilot for Air France. This is their 8th trip on Rovos Rail.

Along the way it was interesting to see that the points are shifted manually. It was also bizarre to see people just walking down the train track.

Our next stop was the Zimbabwe border and that's where all the fun started. We were allowed to get off the train and walk back and forth on the station siding which was remarkably unremarkable. There was a small shop and a guy playing the mbira (traditional metal hand organ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbira) inside a metal bowl. Sometimes he played it behind his head.

I finally saw the box where sand is released when trains need extra traction in the wet. It's the same system used in the UK and (probably) the US.

It was also interesting to see the

Our normal stop would have been a few hours, but this time it took 4 hours 20 minutes to clear customs. It seems the government of Zimbabwe has decided to respond to President Trump’s changes in visas granted to Zimbabwe citizens.  All the US citizen double entry visas were denied (over 40 of them) and we were only given single entry visas without any refund of the extra $15 we paid for the double entry.  This causes some issues with our outing to The Devil’s Pool which is on the Zambia side in a few days, but more on that later.  Marc (see above) said this can be handled by applying for another single entry visa, only paying upon arrival to avoid losing any money if it’s denied at the border.  To make matters worse, for some reason my data has stopped working and there is no wifi available.  Chris was going to try to get 24 hours on his plan, but it's stupidly expensive - $20 for 10MB of data!  We’re thinking there are also some issues with the phone service - we can’t seem to get through any network.  We might have to forego the devil’s pool, but it’s silly to worry about it now as there’s nothing that can be done.

We enjoyed the day doing nothing on board. My downloaded book somehow got deleted, so I was totally disconnected. I did find a book about the year 1066 to keep my mind occupied and we enjoyed watching the world go by from our bed in the cabin. Here are some memories from the day including the baobab trees, which are my favorite tree.

Here is lunch and Dinner which included the amazing disappearing butter trick! The dinner service was so slow, we needed some way to pass the time.... The gnocchi was rather disgusting and we left before desert.

January 24, 2026: Today we have a safari excursion at The Hide at Hwange National Park planned for the afternoon.

The train was so loud and banging in the night that at one point we thought it might be tipping over. It did stop for a few hours, so we were able to get some sleep. That said, we again enjoyed watching the world go by from the bed in our cabin before breakfast.

Breakfast was the same as other mornings - a continental breakfast selection at a central table. There was the continental breakfast that had the papaya yesterday, but not today, so I ordered from the menu and today's special was eggs benedict.

I mentioned that all the alcohol was included, but I had a taste for virgin bloody marys which they made really well. I must have had dozens of them.

We started to understand why the train was so slow and jerky. The state of the tracks was awful. They weren't very level and parts were sinking, out of alignment and/or pitted. No wonder 45 mph seems to be the top speed.

The topography is changing again, from mountains, to veldt. We passed some local villages with their unique thatch hut design.

and crossed more swollen rivers

At lunch time

we entered Hwange National Park. It is Zimbabwe's largest national park. It's at the edge of the Kalahari Dessert and is known for its elephant herds. The French couple mentioned that on the last time they took the train an elephant charged the end of the train and damaged it. The train attempted to go faster, but it's fastest was slower than the elephant.

We were immediately able to see wildlife from the train. Wildebeests, zebra, secretary birds, hippos, impala, and secretary birds were visible as we chugged along. No elephants unfortunately.

Animals seen from the train as we made our way through Hwange National Park

We got to the siding and disembarked for a 3 hour safari through the private concession at The Hide. (note to Lisa: this might be worth considering for a future trip - thehide.com) The Hide boarders on Hwange and our jeep, piloted by Divine, took us through both areas.

We started out with 6 to a vehicle, but other jeeps got stuck in the mud

and we ended up with 9 people. Divine got a tip from me because a)he found amazing animals to watch and b) we never got stuck - even in the deluge at the end of the day. In this video you can see the water was so deep that it came up through the hood....

But I get ahead of myself.

Almost immediately the guide found a pair of hunting cheetah. They were after a herd of impala - the bush's "McDonalds on the hoof". Because we are just coming out of rainy season, there was a lot of water, but also a lot of babies which sure were cute. We were able to come up very close to one of the cheetahs who was quite out of breath and resting in the grass. There were some very cute helmeted guineafowl and banana birds flying around. Here is a video of the best shots from the day.

The rain this year was more than normal and there seemed to be standing water everywhere. So much so that jeeps kept getting stuck in the mud. Thankfully, the plentiful game meant we were close to The Hide and the tractor could come out and rescue stranded vehicles.

We then went on almost immediately to find pairs of mating lions,

one of which was just laying about on the road.

After about 2.5 hours (which passed very quickly) we were taken to a place to have a nicely organized sun-downer at a picnic site.

Unfortunately, in the middle the storm we saw coming finally hit and we really got soaked. Someone asked to be shown hippos on the way back to the train and we made a detour. There were some hippos to be seen and we raced back to the train in the rain. The rain turned into thunderstorms.

Dinner was delayed by 15 minutes and we only started at 7:45. It was quite formal for the last night - the waiters were in tuxedos and we had candle light. Unfortunately, the service was so slow and the food cold, Chris and I finally bagged it at 9:30. We didn't even hear the day's announcement.

Net net, the train journey reminded me of a cruise, without sufficient space to get away from anyone. Despite this rather disparaging comment, I was glad to have done it and enjoyed the slow approach to travel. The safari stop was amazing. The cabins were very well appointed and comfortable. I suggested Rovos might want to make the trains smaller to decrease the pressure on the kitchen and public spaces - that probably would have made it perfect.