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Why not take on the expedition to Victoria Falls
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There is no limit, the Cape to Cairo. The beaches of the Cape and the pyramids of Cairo
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The term from Cape to Cairo sounds a bit crazy. So if you've been interested in African travel at all
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you might have heard of a term called the Cape to Cairo. The Cape to Cairo is one of those once-in-a-lifetime journeys
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that people dreamed their entire lives of doing, from early overlanding pioneers to Hollywood stars
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and even to solo traveller grannies. So the reason that this journey is so famous
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is that it's actually quite hard to do. There's not that much infrastructure in Africa
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Most of the infrastructure comes from the colonial period, unfortunately, which is a time when people were only building roads and railways
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to extract resources out of Africa and into Europe. and then even after that after world war ii and many african nations getting liberated
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the cold war actually saw lots of proxy wars being fought in africa by the new superpowers
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that were popping up and that just caused more poverty and disunity among african nations today
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we still have problems of corruption and even terrorism making things like a trans-african
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highway hard. And when I say trans-African highway, the United Nations have actually been trying to
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build a thing called a trans-African highway since the 1970s. And it's not just one highway
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it's actually a network of nine different highways that snake the entire continent
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But to my previous point of how hard it is to build things in Africa, only one of these nine highways has been completed, the trans-Sahelian highway
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So if we talking about equitable sustainable travel for everyday Africans rail is obviously the way to go It emits much less CO2 and it can be much more affordable for people who desperately need accessible transport
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I've been doing some research. You can still kind of take a train from Cape Town
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to Cairo today with a level of difficulty. Your hinterland is there
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This is Cecil John Rhodes And he was talking about all the land that he needed to claim to build a railway from Cape to Cairo
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He was kind of like the Elon Musk of Victorian era Southern Africa
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He never succeeded. But we do go on a deep dive about him and how he tried to steal all this land and how he tried to build this railway in a longer extended video over on brightrip.com
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And you should go check it out if you want to get that wild ride of a story
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But the point is, he tried and he failed. If you type in these two cities into Google Maps
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it gives you a route of about 10,000 kilometers and tells you that it'll take like 160 hours to do
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If you want to switch from driving to train, Google doesn't let you. Google doesn't think that there's a train route between these two cities
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But the thing is, if you try really hard, there actually kind of is
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It's just a little bit incomplete. Okay, so disclaimer, any of the lines I talk about here might not be functioning at the time you're
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watching this video. None of these trains are online, not even my local South African ones
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and there is no way of knowing if they are actually running except for calling the station
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which only probably works in South Africa. In reality, you probably have to go there in person
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or get a really good fixer to help you on the ground. But if you're up for that challenge
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Let's begin. From Gatown, the only trains that go internationally are fancy cruise liners like the Rovos Rail
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and the Blue Train. For this exercise we not gonna look at those because I not that fancy I mean they do look kind of cool like this one has a bathtub in it But let stick to normal people trains If you a normal person you can go up to Johannesburg
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and then decide which one of South Africa's neighbors you want to meet. If you want to avoid buses as much as possible
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we are going to choose Mozambique and take the train all the way to Kamatiput
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At Kamatiput, you unfortunately can't cross the border by train. You have to get out of the train and then walk across the border
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I guess you could like find a taxi or something, but that's not guaranteed. On the other side of the border, you can actually take a Chinese-built air-conditioned train
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from Maputo to Chikawala-Kawala on the border of Zimbabwe. Here, you also have to get off and walk across the border
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And then you can hop on a train to Bulawayo. And this is a really cool part because the next stop is the mighty Mosi-Ua-Tunya or Victoria Falls
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On this line, there's also a good chance that you get to ride in a vintage carriage from like the 1940s or 1950s
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Once you get to Victoria Falls, you'll have an amazing view of one of the most beautiful natural sights in the world
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Unfortunately, if you're a normal person and you didn't take a fancy cruise train, you can't cross this amazing bridge by train
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You have to get off and once again, walk across the border. Across the bridge, you can take a train from Livingston to Kapiri Mposhi, which is the end of the British line
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From here, we get onto the Chinese-built stuff. What's really cool about the Chinese to Zara Rail is that it's the first one on the route that you don't have to walk across a border
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Apparently, your passport just gets stamped as you ride across by an official on the train
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At the end of this 1,800-kilometer line, you'll end up in Dares Salaam
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This is where today's Cape Takaro line kind of falls apart. There is no direct train connection to take you any further north
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There is the inner city express between Mombasa and Nairobi but from Nairobi the tracks end once again The closest piece of rail that you can aim for is all the way in Khartoum which is 3 kilometers away And between these two cities lies dirt roads sketchy mountain passes
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and plenty of bandits and terrorist activity, unfortunately. But that shouldn't put you off
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because between these two cities is also beautiful mountain passes, amazing people and wildlife
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and the best coffee on the planet. China is planning to eventually connect Mombasa to Khartoum
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but that future seems quite way off still. So once you've decided to cross this gap by road or plane or walking or whatever
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we're back on Chinese-built lines. The Chinese-built lines here basically follow the old British lines
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but they also are interrupted. There's a gap between Wadi Alfa and Aswan, and here you can take a ferry
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But unfortunately, like everything on this route, it's hard to know if the ferry is even running
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But that shouldn't be too hard of a challenge for you. And once you've gotten across this gap
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then you can take the train all the way to Cairo. And you've done it
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You've done a Cape to Cairo. And your name will forever be written in the Traveler's Hall of Fame
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I'm kind of a big deal. I'm very happy for you. If you are inspired to do a Cape to Cairo
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first of all, don't blame me. I do not take responsibility for whatever happens to you
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But secondly, be sure to check out Mark Smith's blog, seat61.com. He's got interactive maps for the entire continent
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He also has underground accounts on there of what it's like to ride the trains. Finally, be sure to check out brighttrip.com if you're a curious traveler like myself
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There's more of this type of content on there. We even have a guide coming up for how to travel Europe by train, which is a completely different kettle of fish
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Until next time, stay curious
