The journey begins at Victoria Falls Station in the late afternoon, and it begins with one of the great railway crossings anywhere. The train pulls out at four and runs straight onto the Victoria Falls Bridge, the steel arch built in 1905 across the gorge of the Zambezi just below the Falls, with the river far below and the spray rising downstream. Crossing it slowly, with time to stand on the observation platform, is a fitting way to start a journey that ends on the far Atlantic coast.

Once across, you are in Zambia. 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 afternoon is for settling into your suite and finding the lounge and observation cars as the country opens out beyond the windows.

Tea is served in the afternoon, and dinner tonight is formal, as the evenings are on Rovos; the kitchen is genuinely good, so it is worth leaning into rather than dressing down. The train runs on toward Choma through the Zambian night, and by the time you turn in the Falls are behind you and the long westward journey has properly begun. The pace from here is unhurried by design, with travel stretches broken by excursions, and the first of them comes in the morning.

A full day on board crossing southern Zambia, with the lectures beginning this morning in the lounge car. Given how little is written about much of the country ahead, they are worth attending, and they turn the long travel stretches into something closer to a moving seminar on the regions outside the window.

Around the middle of the day the train crosses the Kafue railway bridge, a steel girder bridge of thirteen spans running some four hundred and seventy-seven metres above the Kafue River. It is an impressive piece of engineering, and the views down to the river as the train moves slowly across are a highlight of the day.

In the afternoon you disembark for a sunset cruise on the Kafue River, drifting on the calm water with a drink in hand as the light goes. There is game and birdlife along the banks, and the river turns gold as the sun drops, a relaxed and well-timed close to the day. You return to the train in the early evening, and it continues toward Lusaka, where it stops for the night. Dinner is formal as the Zambian countryside slips by in the dark. It is a gentle, varied first full day, history and engineering at the bridge, then the quiet of the river, then the comfort of the train, and it sets the rhythm for the journey to come.

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, and a grounded counterpoint to the wildlife viewing that comes later in the valley.

You return to the train for lunch as it travels on through Zambia’s Central Province toward Kabwe, the country rolling by from the dining car and the observation platform. Tea is served in the afternoon as the journey continues north.

Dinner is formal as the train heads toward Kapiri Mposhi, where it halts for the night. This is a relatively easy day, built around one good, honest experience rather than long sightseeing, and it leaves you well rested for what comes next. In the morning the trip changes character entirely, leaving the railway for the first time to fly into one of the finest wildlife areas in Africa for the three-night safari at the heart of the journey.

This morning you pack a small overnight bag for the three nights in South Luangwa, including warm layers for the early game drives and suitable shoes if you plan to walk, and collect your passport before disembarking. The main luggage stays on the train, which carries on while you are in the bush.

After breakfast you transfer to the airstrip at Ndola for a charter flight into South Luangwa. The park is one of the finest 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 west. It holds large herds of elephant and buffalo, good numbers of lion, an exceptional density of leopard, and a great variety of birds. 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, a small and comfortable place 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 spa treatment, the slow life of a safari camp. It is a welcome pause, and a chance to do very little in a beautiful place.

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. After the structured days on the train, the open rhythm of the camp, drives at dawn and dusk and rest in between, is part of what makes the safari leg feel like a trip of its own.

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.

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. For those who want it, this is also the day 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.

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 west toward the Congo and Angola.

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 you transfer straight to the station and rejoin the train, where your main luggage is waiting and the comfort of your suite makes for an easy return.

Lunch is served as the train resumes its journey, now heading north and west toward the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tea follows in the afternoon, and dinner is formal as the journey continues toward Lubumbashi. The border formalities into the DRC are handled by the train staff during the evening. After the bush, the train feels like a different world again, and the safari at the heart of the trip gives way to the mining country of Katanga and the long Congolese leg, the part of the journey that fewest travellers ever see.

An early breakfast, then a morning 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. It is a working introduction to the Congo rather than a polished sightseeing stop, which suits the character of this leg.

You rejoin the train late in the morning, and it continues west across Katanga. During lunch the line passes the open-pit copper and cobalt mine at Luishia, a first sight of the industry that gives the trail its name and a reminder of why the railway was built at all.

Tea is served in the afternoon as the Congolese country rolls by, and dinner is formal as the train continues toward Kolwezi, where it stops for the night. The lectures are worth catching today for the background they give on the region’s geology and history. 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 as the country of the Congo basin rolls by. Tea is served in the observation car, and dinner is formal as the train continues west toward its overnight stop near Mutshatsha. 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, before the line turns toward the Angolan border.

A full day on board as the train works its way west through the far south of the Congo toward the Angolan border. The route runs through open country and patches of forest, past villages strung along the line, heading toward Malonga and then Dilolo, the DRC’s westernmost town on the frontier with Angola.

This is a travel day, and a chance to settle fully into the journey again after the mine visit. The observation car and the lounge are the places to be, with the Congo unrolling behind the open platform at the rear, and the lectures help make sense of where you are. It is country almost no one sees, and the slow passage through it is the reward.

Tonight’s dinner carries an African theme rather than the usual formal dress, a small change of pace, as the train makes its way toward Dilolo. Before you turn in, set your watch back an hour for the new time zone. This is the last night in the Congo; in the morning the journey crosses into Angola, the fourth and final country, and the character of the trip shifts again, from the mining south to the highland towns of the Angolan interior and the long descent to the Atlantic that ends the journey.

The morning brings the crossing into Angola, at Dilolo and Luau, handled by the train staff during breakfast. Once across, you disembark at Luau for a walking tour. Luau is the eastern gateway of the country and the starting point of the historic Benguela Railway, the line that this whole journey has been following in reverse; once a vital artery linking the heart of Africa to the Atlantic, it is the reason the train can make this crossing at all. The walk takes in the town and the bustle of local life, with guides to fill in its place in the story of the railway and the region.

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 whose catchment drains a vast area and supports rich fish life and the communities along it. From the observation car you look out over the river, the villages of Cassai and Cameia, and the fishermen working the water, an unguarded view of daily life in a remote part of the country.

Dinner is formal as the train continues toward Luena, where it stops for the night. After the industrial country of the Congo, the Angolan interior is a change of register, greener and higher, and the next three days work west through its highland towns toward the coast.

A morning walking tour of Luena, the capital of Moxico Province in eastern Angola. Moxico is a region closely tied to the country’s recent history, including the long civil war that ran from independence in 1975 until 2002, 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. It 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 as it departs westward toward Tchicala-Tcholohanga, climbing gradually onto the central plateau. The afternoon is given over to the journey, with the highland country rolling past, the villages and small farms and the wide plateau light. This is a good stretch for the lounge or the observation car, and for the conversations that build up among guests over a journey of this length.

Tea is served in the afternoon, and dinner is formal as the train continues toward Kuito, where it stops for the night. 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. The journey is steadily climbing toward the heart of the Angolan highlands, with two more town stops before the long descent to the Atlantic.

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. 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 the cities, and the value is less in any single landmark than in the sense of a place and its people. After the mining country of the Congo, the human scale of these highland towns is a distinct and worthwhile side of the trip.

You rejoin the train late in the morning, and the rest of the day is spent climbing west toward Huambo. The plateau country is some of the most pleasant of the journey, high and open and green in the wet months, and the afternoon passes easily with tea in the observation car. Dinner is formal as the train continues toward Huambo, where it stops for the night. One highland city remains, and then the line begins its long fall from the plateau toward the coast and the journey’s end at the sea.

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. Like the smaller towns before it, Huambo was heavily affected by the long civil war, 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; the local guides are the real value, filling in a recent history that most visitors arrive knowing very little about.

You rejoin the train around midday as it departs west toward Lépi and on toward Cubal, beginning the descent from the highlands. This is some of the most scenic travel of the whole route, the line dropping off the plateau through the hills toward the coastal plain of Benguela Province.

Tonight is the last on board, and dinner carries a theme rather than the usual formal dress, a relaxed and convivial close to two weeks of travel. The train continues toward Cubal for the overnight stop. There is a valedictory feel to this final evening, after fifteen days and four countries; the journey from the Falls is nearly complete, and in the morning it reaches the Atlantic.

A final, unhurried breakfast as the train makes its last run down through Benguela Province to the coast, the highland country giving way to the dry coastal plain and, at last, the sea. After two weeks crossing the breadth of the continent, the first sight of the Atlantic is a fitting end to a journey that began at the Falls on the far side of Africa.

The train arrives at Lobito Station in the middle of the morning, and the journey concludes. Lobito is Angola’s Atlantic rail port and the western terminus of the Benguela Railway, the line the whole trip has been tracing; the town sits on a long sand spit, the restinga, curling around a sheltered bay, and it is once again the eastern end of a renewed trade corridor carrying copper from the interior to the sea.

From here you disembark for your onward travel. There are connections from Lobito and from Luanda, Angola’s capital up the coast, with flights from Luanda reaching Europe and the wider region. After a continent crossed by rail, from the spray of Victoria Falls to the Atlantic shore, Lobito is a quiet and satisfying place to end, the closing of a journey that very few people have ever made.