The journey begins at Lobito, Angola’s Atlantic rail port and the western end of the historic Benguela Railway, the line that gives this trip its name and its purpose. The train pulls out at midday and begins the long climb inland through Benguela Province toward the central plateau.

Because the route crosses so many borders, your passport is collected at the outset by the train manager and returned before the end, which spares you the repeated formalities of a journey like this. The lectures begin today as well, held in the lounge car and running throughout the trip; given how little is written about much of this country, they are worth attending, and they turn the long travel stretches into something closer to a moving seminar on the regions outside the window.

The afternoon is for settling into your suite and finding the lounge and observation cars as Benguela Province rolls by, the land rising from the coast into the green highlands of the interior. Dinner is formal, as the evenings are on Rovos, and the kitchen is genuinely good, so it is worth leaning into. By the time you turn in, the train is climbing toward Huambo and the heart of the Angolan plateau, with the first of the walking tours the following morning.

A morning tour of Huambo, one of Angola’s largest cities, set high on the central plateau. It was founded under Portuguese rule and known for decades as Nova Lisboa, and it carries a layered history in its architecture and its streets.

Huambo was among the cities most heavily affected by Angola’s long civil war, which ran from independence in 1975 until 2002, and a good deal of what you see is the work of the rebuilding that has followed. The guided tour takes in the colonial-era buildings, the markets, and the daily life of a city steadily finding its feet again, and it is an honest, human introduction to a country still not much visited. The local guides are the real value here, filling in a recent history that most visitors arrive knowing very little about.

You rejoin the train around midday and continue east across the highlands. The afternoon is spent on board as the plateau country rolls past, open and high and green in the wet months, with tea served in the observation car. Dinner is formal again as the train carries on toward Kuito, where it will stop overnight, and the easy rhythm of the journey, long travel stretches broken by mornings ashore, settles into place.

A morning stroll through Kuito, in the central highlands, a town once known as Silva Porto and sitting in the heartland of the Ovimbundu, Angola’s largest ethnic group. Like Huambo, Kuito was among the places worst affected by the civil war, and the town you walk through today is one that has come through a great deal and is quietly rebuilding.

The walk takes in the colonial-era buildings and the streets at their own pace, with a guide to explain the history and the present. It is a quieter, smaller stop than Huambo, and the value is less in any single landmark than in the sense of a place and its people; this is travel as much about understanding as sightseeing, which is the character of the whole Angolan leg.

You rejoin the train late in the morning, and the afternoon is given over to the journey east. This is a day to settle into the lounge or the observation car and watch the highland country go by, the villages and small farms and the wide plateau light. Tea is served in the afternoon, and dinner is formal as the train continues toward Luena for the next overnight stop. The pace is unhurried by design, and by now the long stretches between towns have become part of the appeal rather than time to be filled.

A guided walking tour of Luena, the capital of Moxico Province in eastern Angola. Moxico is a region closely tied to the country’s recent history, and the local guides tell that story as you walk, giving a grounded sense of what the area has lived through and where it stands now.

Back on board, the day’s travel is some of the most scenic of the Angolan leg. The line follows the course of the Cassai River, known in the wider Congo basin as the Kasai, a major tributary of the Congo whose catchment drains a vast area and supports rich birdlife and biodiversity. From the observation car you look out over the river, the villages along its banks, and the fishermen working the water with nets, an unguarded view of daily life in a remote part of the country.

Dinner is formal as the train continues east toward Luau, on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before you turn in, set your watch forward an hour for the new time zone. Today is the last full day in Angola; in the morning the journey crosses into the Congo, and the character of the trip shifts again, from the highland towns to the mineral country of Katanga.

The morning brings the border crossing into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at Luau and Dilolo, handled by the train staff while you have breakfast. The DRC, once known as Zaire, is the second-largest country in Africa and has had a long and difficult recent history; this rail line is one of the very few ways to travel through its remote southern interior, and simply crossing it by train is part of what makes the Copper Trail unlike anything else.

There is no excursion today. The day is spent on board as the train travels toward Malonga through the varied country of the southwest, a mix of open plain and forest, with villages strung along the line. It is a good day for the lectures, which help make sense of where you are, and for the observation car, where the Congo unrolls behind the open platform at the rear.

Tonight’s dinner carries an African theme rather than the usual formal dress, a small change of pace. The train continues overnight toward Kasaji, deeper into the heart of the continent, and you turn in to the steady motion of the rails. By morning the journey is well into Katanga, the mineral-rich south that gives the trail its copper, and the next two days are built around it.

A full day on board as the train works its way deeper into the south of the country, the historic mining region of Katanga, now divided into the Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces. The route passes through Mungulunga and the area around Mutshatsha as it heads toward Kolwezi, the heart of the copper belt.

This is a travel day, and a chance to settle fully into the journey after the border crossing. The country shifts between open grassland and patches of forest, with villages and the first signs of the mining industry that defines this part of the Congo. The observation car and the lounge are the places to be, and the day’s lectures are worth catching for the background they give on the region’s geology and its history, which is the whole reason the railway exists.

Lunch and tea are served on board as the scenery passes, and dinner is formal as the train continues toward Kolwezi, where it arrives in the morning. The pace today is slow and the rewards are in the watching: this is some of the least-travelled country on any rail journey in the world, and the quiet passage through it, from the comfort of the train, is a large part of the point. Tomorrow brings the trip’s most unusual excursion, a working copper mine.

An early breakfast, then a guided visit to one of the copper mines around Kolwezi. This is the centre of the Central African Copperbelt, which holds some of the richest copper and cobalt reserves on earth; the DRC supplies the majority of the world’s cobalt, and this region sits at the heart of a supply chain that reaches into batteries and electronics worldwide. The visit explains the extraction, the long history of mining in Katanga, and what the industry means to the towns built around it, a genuinely rare look at something most travellers never see.

After the mine, you head to Katebi Lodge for a relaxed brunch in green surroundings, a quiet contrast to the morning and a chance to take stock of what you have seen. The setting is calm and the food is built around local ingredients.

You rejoin the train early in the afternoon, and it departs Kolwezi toward Tenke as the country of the Congo basin rolls by. Tea is served in the observation car, and dinner is formal as the train continues toward the next overnight stop. The Kolwezi day is the clearest expression of what the Copper Trail is really about: not scenery for its own sake, but a journey along the route of the mineral trade that shaped this whole part of Africa, seen first-hand and at close range.

A morning on board, then an afternoon drive through Lubumbashi, the DRC’s second-largest city and the capital of Haut-Katanga Province. Founded in the colonial era as Élisabethville, it is the commercial hub of the mining south, and the drive gives a feel for the place: the markets, the colonial-era architecture, the landmarks, and the energy of a large and busy African city.

This morning is also when you pack a small overnight bag for the three-night safari in South Luangwa that begins tomorrow, including warm layers for the early game drives and suitable shoes if you plan to walk. The main luggage stays on the train, which carries on south while you are in the bush, and rejoins you afterwards.

You return to the train in the early evening, and it departs toward Sakania on the Zambian border. Dinner is formal as the journey continues, and the border formalities are handled overnight and into the morning. After eight days of Angolan towns and Congolese mining country, the trip is about to change character entirely, leaving the railway for the first time to fly into one of the great wildlife areas of Africa. The cultural and industrial first half gives way to the safari at the heart of the journey.

Border formalities into Zambia are completed over breakfast as the train runs toward Ndola. On arrival you transfer to the airstrip for a charter flight to South Luangwa, leaving the train to continue south without you for the next three nights.

South Luangwa is one of the finest parks in Zambia and one of the best in Africa for big game. It was among the country’s first protected areas, set aside early in the twentieth century, and runs to some nine thousand square kilometres along the Luangwa River, with the Muchinga Escarpment rising to the north and west. It holds large herds of elephant and buffalo, good numbers of lion, an exceptional density of leopard, and more than four hundred species of bird. It is also the birthplace of the walking safari, pioneered here by the conservationist Norman Carr, which remains one of the best ways to experience the valley.

You land around midday and transfer to your camp, small and comfortable places set in the bush along the river, for lunch and check-in. In the late afternoon you head out on your first game drive, around three hours, as the heat goes out of the day and the animals begin to move. Dinner is relaxed and casual back at camp, with the sounds of the bush around you, and you spend the night in the valley, a long way in spirit from the train.

A full day in the park, on the classic Luangwa rhythm. A gentle wake-up and light breakfast, then a morning game drive of around three hours, out in the cool early light when the bush is at its most active and the predators are still moving after the night. South Luangwa is leopard country above all, and the riverine woodland along the Luangwa is as good a place as any in Africa to find them.

You return to camp mid-morning for brunch, then the heat of the day is given over to leisure: the pool, the veranda, a book, the slow life of a safari camp. For those who want it, this is also the time for a guided walking safari, the activity the valley invented, which brings you closer to the small details of the bush that you miss from a vehicle.

High tea in the afternoon precedes the second game drive, heading out as the light turns gold over the valley. This drive carries on past sunset, and South Luangwa is well known for its night drives, when a spotlight picks out the nocturnal animals, leopard on the hunt, genets, civets, and the occasional porcupine, that the daytime never shows. Dinner is back at camp under the stars, casual and unhurried, and you turn in to another night in the bush.

A third day in the valley, with the same unhurried shape and the freedom to choose how you spend it. By now you will have found your rhythm, and the camp and its guides will know what you most want to see, so the drives can be tailored toward the leopards, the big herds, the river, or the birds, depending on what has caught your interest.

The morning drive again makes the most of the cool early hours. The Luangwa River itself is the great draw on a slower day: in the dry season it shrinks to a string of pools crowded with hippo and crocodile, and the banks draw elephant, antelope, and a constant traffic of birds, from carmine bee-eaters nesting in the cut banks to fish eagles overhead. A morning on foot, or simply parked on the riverbank watching, can be as rewarding as any drive.

The afternoon brings high tea and the last evening drive, another chance at the cats and the night life of the valley. Dinner is the final one in camp, casual and relaxed, and worth lingering over; after three nights, the place and its people have a way of getting under your skin. You turn in for the last night in the bush before rejoining the train and the long run south to the Falls.

A final, shorter game drive at first light, around two hours, a last look at the valley before you leave it. The early light is the best of the day, and there is always the chance of one more good sighting on the way out.

You return to camp to check out and say your goodbyes, then transfer to the airstrip for the charter flight back to Ndola. The flight is worth the window seat: from the air you can see the Luangwa winding through the valley below, the whole landscape laid out in a way the ground never shows. On arrival at Ndola you transfer straight to the station and rejoin the train, where your main luggage is waiting and the familiar comfort of your suite makes for an easy return.

Lunch is served as the train departs Ndola and begins the journey south through Zambia toward Kapiri Mposhi and on toward Lusaka. After three nights in the bush, the train feels like a different world again, and the afternoon settles back into its rhythm: tea in the observation car, the Zambian countryside rolling by, and a formal dinner as the journey resumes. The safari at the heart of the trip is behind you; ahead lie Lusaka, the Kafue, and the Falls.

A morning visit to an elephant orphanage near Lusaka, a conservation project dedicated to rescuing and raising orphaned elephants with the aim of returning them to the wild in Kafue National Park. It is a genuine and well-regarded operation, and the visit explains the work honestly: the challenges of hand-raising orphaned calves, the long process of rehabilitation, and the successes and setbacks along the way. Seeing the young elephants and the teams who care for them is a quietly moving stop.

You return to the train for lunch as it continues through the countryside, and in the afternoon disembark again for a sunset cruise on the Kafue River. Drifting on the water as the light goes is a relaxed counterpoint to the morning, with hippo, birds, and game along the banks and the river turning gold as the sun drops.

Back on board in the evening, dinner is formal as the train heads on through the night. After the intensity of the safari and the long industrial leg before it, the Lusaka day is a gentler one, built around two good, grounded experiences rather than long travel or hard sightseeing. The journey is now firmly in its final stretch, with one more day on the rails and then the crossing into Zimbabwe and the Falls that give the trip its destination.

The day begins early with the crossing of the Kafue railway bridge, a steel girder bridge of thirteen spans running some four hundred and seventy-seven metres on concrete piers above the Kafue River. It is an impressive piece of engineering and a fine way to start the morning, with the river and its valley spread out below as the train moves slowly across.

The rest of the day is spent on board as the train runs south across the Southern Province of Zambia, through Choma and the farming country of the plateau, toward Livingstone and the Zambezi. This is the last full day of the journey, and it is a good one to spend simply enjoying the train: the lounge, the observation car, a last round of the lectures, and the conversations that build up among guests over two weeks of travel.

Tea is served in the afternoon, and dinner is formal as the train makes its final approach toward Livingstone. There is a valedictory feel to this last evening on board, after fifteen days and four countries; the journey from the Atlantic is nearly complete, and tomorrow brings its destination. You turn in with the train drawing closer to the Zambezi and the great river crossing that ends the trip.

The final morning brings the train’s last approach to Livingstone, where Zambian border formalities are completed. Livingstone is named after David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and missionary who was the first European to record the Falls, and it served as the provincial capital until 2012; it remains the Zambian gateway to the Zambezi.

From Livingstone the train makes the crossing that ends the journey: the Victoria Falls Bridge, built in 1905 across the gorge of the Zambezi just below the Falls. It is one of the great railway crossings in the world, the steel arch spanning the chasm with the river far below and the spray of the Falls rising downstream, and crossing it slowly by train is a fitting close to a journey that began on the far Atlantic coast. Border formalities into Zimbabwe are completed at the crossing, and the train arrives at Victoria Falls Station, journey’s end.

From here you disembark and continue to your onward flight or hotel. The Falls themselves, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, are right at hand, and it is well worth building in at least a night or two in Victoria Falls to see them properly, walk the rainforest paths along the gorge, and take in the river that the whole journey has been travelling toward. After two weeks and a continent crossed, they are a destination worth lingering over rather than glimpsing in passing.