Boarding Pass

As the Kilimanjaro Express, bound for Zambia, pulled out of the tiny siding of Mlimba, Tanzania, where we had been stuck for 36 hours, the stoned Scottish bulldozer driver stuck his head into the cool sliptream and howled his delight. Stepping back from the window, he turned and grinned and said: “If you’re marching, you ain’t fighting!” For a man who had spent much of the previous day and a half in trouble with Mlimba’s one and only policeman on account of his smoking choices, this was a pretty accurate statement. It also made me understand why I love travelling by train.

A long, slow train trip is a cure for many things. When you are on a train that’s picking its way slowly over a landscape, there is not much you can do about the rest of your life.

You have to park all your troubles and cares because there is nothing you can do about them while you are somewhere near the edge of Lake Baikal on the

Rossiya Overnight Train bound for Vladivostok, or watching a Karoo sunrise from the dining car of the Cape Townbound Shosholoza Meyl.

All you can do — right then — is be in the moment. And when you’ve been in the moment for four days while your train starts and stops across Zambia and Tanzania, well it’s the best therapy money can buy. I claim no responsibility for the momentous decisions that might follow that journey (having made a few of my own — that’s a story for another time).

Meanwhile, dream on as you read our big story this week about the building of the world’s great railways.