Mombasa to Nairobi: 17-hour journey by rail

[John Ashworth]

17-hour journey by rail

Sunday Nation
By JOHN FOX johnfox@idc.co.ke
Posted Sunday, December 9 2012 at 02:00

It was a dusty and seemingly derelict place.

“Is this really the station’s main entrance?” I asked the taxi driver.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “The railway is dead.”

Not quite. The young guy behind a grill took my ticket and assured me that the Mombasa to Nairobi train would be running as usual on a Sunday evening – as it still does on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

From Nairobi it is on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Three return trips a week – and Kenya Airways makes 13 return flights a day.

I had been reading Stephen Mills’ new book that I reviewed here last week: A Railway to Nowhere.

I like train journeys. And the book inspired me to do the trip, which I hadn’t done since Rift Valley Railways took over the managing of the railway seven years ago.

I took a flight from Nairobi so that I could be in line, so to speak, with the story of the making of it – starting in 1896 in Mombasa and reaching Nairobi in 1901.

A few friends who have taken the train in recent years have said something like, “It was an interesting experience – but not one that I would want to repeat”. I now know what they meant.

“Interesting” is an interesting word, isn’t it? It could mean all sorts of things – from good to bad, from pleasurable to painful.

As for my train ride, it wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t very good; in fact, much of it was very bad – and, lying awake as the train rolled and braked and rolled again there was a good deal of pleasure in thinking about how I could write it up – or should I say ‘down’?

Because what Rift Valley Railways is offering could – no, should – be so much better.

There was a small kiosk on the platform. It seemed to be selling little else but bottled water and toilet paper. I bought some of both – and was 50 per cent right because, though it was possible to get water onboard, there was no toilet paper in the one toilet available for the carriage I was travelling in. The toilet had lost its seat. There was a hole in the floor ... And this was first class, for which I had paid Sh4,405.

The fan in my cabin didn’t work. The small cabinet over the sink was taped up. The window was grimed. I had the company of a cockroach – a small one, but a cockroach nevertheless.

Grubby paintwork

The linoleum floor covering was torn in many places, all the way to the dining car. The dining car was scruffy, with grubby paintwork, yellowed posters, and smeared windows that looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned for weeks.

The evening dinner, to be polite, was quite ordinary: a thin soup, a choice of chicken pieces or beef cubes with rice, and a soggy fruit salad. (It amused me to remember what the farmer and politician, Sir Michael Blundell, said about the food on his first train ride from Mombasa; he described the dessert as “the inevitable fruit salad” – and that was in 1925.)

The waiters seemed to want us out of the dining car as quickly as possible. When I went back there after the early morning’s breakfast, so that I could read and write more easily on the tables, I found the waiters were noisily occupying it themselves.

I got to remembering other train journeys I have taken. In India there was the Pink City Express, from Delhi to Jaipur: a modern and fast machine, with clean lines and well-padded seats.

Slower ride

In Botswana there was the train that started in Bulawayo in, then, Rhodesia and ended at Mafeking in South Africa: a slower ride in splendid coaches of warm wood, polished brass and green baize.

The great thing about train journeys is that you get a proper idea of space and time. You get a feel for the places you are travelling through. If you want speed, then take a plane – but you will learn little about the geography of what you are overflying.

And in a train you can learn about fellow passengers. You can chat with them in the dining car or over a drink in the buffet carriage. The train from Mombasa had a buffet carriage, but the serving hatch was boarded up.

When daylight came, I could see why we had been stopping so often. It was at every little station, where people were waiting to board with all manner of goods, from chickens to charcoal.

The Athi Plain was not “teeming with game” as the passengers described it in the pioneering days of the early 1900s. But there were a few gazelles to be seen, zebras and wildebeests. The viewing of the passing countryside and the industrial outskirts would have been nicer if the windows had been cleaner.

One piece of paper told me that the train would arrive in Nairobi at 9.30 am; another said 10 am. It actually arrived at mid-day – 17 hours after leaving Mombasa. Yes, this experience could be so much better.