All the way from Zimbabwe to Angola, music drifts up from the railway tracks in a steady rhythm.
asserted
music → drift → rhythm
“Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh,” goes the metronome, then “throb” as wheels strike the track’s fishplated joints.
asserted
wheels → swoosh → joints
Station names flash past the windows like lyrics from a song: “Kafue, Fubero, Kafulafuta,” they sing in tune with the train’s drumbeat.
asserted
they → flash → drumbeat
“Kipula, Tshinsenda, Lubumbashi.”
At night, I lie in the dark, sedated by movement; wondrous place names flicker before my closed eyes.
asserted
names → lie → eyes
Disembarking 3100 kilometres later, I’m like a sailor stepping onto the wharf; my body sways with the train’s percussion.
asserted
body → disembark → percussion
Pretoria-based luxury rail company Rovos Rail’s 15-day Copper Trail itinerary traverses the world’s second-largest copper reserve, which straddles Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
asserted
which → base → Congo
The journey begins in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and rumbles north through Zambia to the copper mining hub of Ndola.
asserted
journey → begin → Ndola
From here, it traces the Lobito Corridor freight line through the southern DRC, bears west along Angola’s Benguela Railway and terminates at its Atlantic port city of Lobito.
asserted
it → trace → Lobito
Funded by the EU, the Lobito Corridor has the potential to become Africa’s first transcontinental transport link, ferrying resources from the copper belt to Lobito.
asserted
Corridor → fund → Lobito
But it’s a work in progress: while the Benguela Railway has been rebuilt with Chinese funding after it was destroyed during the Angolan civil war, the line running through the DRC remains in a desperate state of repair.
asserted
line → ’ → repair
If anyone could tackle this stretch, it is Rovos Rail’s trailblazing founder, Rohan Vos, 80.
uncertain
it → tackle → stretch
“In 2015 I came here, and I said, ‘Right, this is the one line that we’re not doing, let’s have a look’,” he says.
asserted
he → come → look
“So I trolleyed it from Sakania on the border [with Zambia] all the way to Dilolo [on the Angolan border].
asserted
I → trolleye → border
But, at the end of the day, not that bad that we couldn’t travel it.
asserted
we → travel → it
It took nearly five years to get the necessary permissions; in 2019, Rovos travelled along the corridor on its journey from Dar es Salaam to Lobito.
asserted
Rovos → take → Lobito
That itinerary has since been replaced by the Copper Trail, which took its maiden trip in 2022; now, for just the second time, it is retracing the route.
asserted
it → replace → route
A splash of good luck
Victoria Falls Bridge is cradled in vapour on the day of our departure.
asserted
Bridge → cradle → departure
From the patio of The Victoria Falls Hotel, my sister Jennifer and I can hear its namesake waterfalls catapulting into Batoka Gorge.
asserted
waterfalls → hear → Gorge
It’s a fitting prelude to our journey: the hotel was built in 1904 to house workers on the proposed Cape to Cairo Railway.
asserted
hotel → ’ → Railway
That route was never completed, but this part of the line is still in use; it skirts the hotel’s perimeter, crosses the bridge into Zambia and branches out like capillaries into the sub-Saharan reaches.
asserted
it → complete → reaches
It’s late afternoon when we board the Pride of Africa at the station near the hotel entrance.
asserted
we → ’ → entrance
The train glides out of Victoria Falls and pauses on the bridge we’d admired from afar.
asserted
we → glide → bridge
We disembark and walk to a lookout point for a panoramic perspective: the train, gleaming forest-green, stretches like a steel cable between two countries; behind it, Victoria Falls delivers its splashy benediction.
asserted
Falls → disembark → benediction
“There’s another train coming, so they’ve put a little pressure on me,” says train manager Darren van der Merwe.
asserted
Merwe → ’ → me
We hustle back onboard and slide into Livingstone for the completion of immigration procedures.
asserted
We → hustle → procedures
With many guests travelling solo, it’s a full house of 57 passengers from Europe, the US, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
asserted
it → travel → Europe
Among them are slow-travellers, railway buffs and people with deep personal connections to the places we’ll visit.
asserted
we → visit → places
One man is embarking on his 16th Rovos Rail journey; he diligently tracks gradients, the fluctuations pulsing like a heartbeat on his chart: rise and fall, rise and climb, freefall down to the coast, flatline as we pull into Lobito.
asserted
we → embark → Lobito
The elephant in the room
Zambia is an infinite strip of celluloid spooling past the windows, our wood-panelled deluxe suite is a private cinema.
asserted
suite → spool → windows
We have twin beds, a desk and chairs, a minibar, an en suite.
asserted
We → have → beds
Entertainment-on-demand streams in through panes of glass: bickering baboons, fever trees the colour of polished brass, a tide of wild sugarcane in flower.
asserted
Entertainment → bicker → flower
The Kafue River rolls beneath us for nearly half a kilometre as we cross the 120-year-old Kafue Railway Bridge.
asserted
we → roll → Bridge
It’s Heroes’ Day, which commemorates Zambia’s struggle for independence from Britain, and the river is frothy with pleasure boats.
asserted
river → ’ → boats
But the cheerfulness belies environmental threats: drought, thirsty sugarcane plantations and, last year, toxic infiltration from a collapsed tailings dam at a Chinese state-owned copper mine 400 kilometres north of here.
asserted
cheerfulness → belie → mine
“A great number of fish died, lots of birds disappeared,” says Rovos’ onboard historian, Nicholas Schofield.
asserted
historian → die → birds
“There are schemes to try to clean things, but it is an area of immense tension.”
asserted
it → be → tension
But a more elemental friction besets the villagers we see tending their crops beyond the railway: human-wildlife conflict.
asserted
we → beset → railway
Some of the elephants orphaned in such conflicts are cared for by Game Rangers International (GRI) at Lusaka National Park, on the outskirts of Zambian capital Lusaka.
asserted
Some → orphan → Lusaka
Halting in the city, we take a bus to the park, where elephant keeper Matthews Shachishu is preparing a milky broth for his charges.
asserted
Shachishu → halt → charges
From the camouflaged viewing deck we watch the calves tottering along for their feed.
asserted
calves → watch → feed
…and 105 more, not listed.
The Aporia
