The journey begins at Rovos Rail’s private station in Pretoria. Check in at least an hour before departure, or arrive two hours early to see the locomotives, the workshops, and the small railway museum. The train pulls out at ten in the morning and heads south across the goldfields of the Witwatersrand, the gold-bearing reef that built Johannesburg and modern South Africa, before the country opens into the wide grasslands of the Highveld.

There is time to settle into your suite and find the lounge and observation cars before lunch. The afternoon is about easing into the pace of the train, which is unhurried by design: no television, nowhere to be, the Highveld rolling past the window. Tea is served in the afternoon as the line carries you southwest toward Klerksdorp, through the old gold and farming country of the North West.

Dinner is worth knowing about up front. Evenings on Rovos are formal, and the kitchen is genuinely good, so it is worth leaning into rather than dressing down. After dinner the observation car, open at the back of the train, is the place to be, with the dark country going by behind you. By the time you turn in, the train is well out across the plains, heading for the diamond fields and the first excursion of the trip in the morning.

Breakfast is served at leisure as the train glides across the ochre plains of the northern Karoo, a landscape of windmills, sheep, and low koppies in the distance. The country here is dry and open, the first real taste of the semi-desert that fills the middle of the country.

After lunch the train reaches Kimberley, the town that diamonds built, for an afternoon at the Mine Museum and the Big Hole. Diamonds were found here in 1871, setting off one of the great rushes of the nineteenth century, and the Big Hole is the largest hand-dug excavation in the world, a vast crater around 215 metres to the rim and now part-filled with water, from which something on the order of 2,700 kilograms of diamonds were recovered before work stopped. The fortunes made here founded De Beers and shaped the region for a century. The museum recreates the rush-era town with period buildings, a restored tram line, and a diamond display, and it makes a strong, human stop before the landscapes take over again.

You rejoin the train in the early evening and settle in for dinner as it eases southwest into the night. Outside, the thornveld and salt pans give way to the open country of the Great Karoo, and the train runs on through the dark toward Matjiesfontein, deep in the semi-desert, where the second excursion waits in the morning.

Breakfast is served as the train crosses the Great Karoo, the vast semi-desert that was once an inland sea. Over millions of years its sediments were laid down and worn into the flat-topped hills and open plains you see now, and it is one of the world’s great fossil grounds; the emptiness has a real pull, and the light across it is part of the appeal.

After lunch you disembark at Whitehill Siding for a walk of around five kilometres into Matjiesfontein, accompanied by a Rovos staff member, an easy stroll across the Karoo into the village. Matjiesfontein is a perfectly preserved Victorian railway village and a national heritage site, founded in 1884 by the Scottish railwayman James Logan as a refreshment stop and health resort on the line, drawing visitors to the dry Karoo air. The single main street, the Lord Milner Hotel, the old station, and the platform museum have all been kept much as they were, with a collection of vintage cars and railway carriages alongside.

Back on board for tea, the train begins the climb into the Hex River Pass, threading the four tunnels that carry the line through the mountains, the longest of them around thirteen kilometres; the carriages go dark as you pass through, so take care moving about. Dinner is formal as the train descends nearly 750 metres down the escarpment toward Worcester and the Cape Winelands, a dramatic close to the day, with the last night on board ahead.

A final, unhurried breakfast as the train makes its last run through the Hex River Valley, the vineyards and orchards of the Cape rising on either side as the line drops through the mountains toward the coast. After the deserts and plains of the journey south, the green of the winelands is a fitting change for the final morning.

The train comes into Cape Town Station around mid-morning, where the journey ends, with Table Mountain standing over the city. Cape Town sits between the mountain and the sea in one of the most striking city settings anywhere, and after two nights crossing the country it is a destination worth lingering in rather than leaving straight away.

From here you disembark for your onward arrangements. There is good reason to stay on for several days: the cable car or the walk up Table Mountain, the Cape Peninsula and Cape Point, Robben Island, the V&A Waterfront, and the Cape Winelands of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek all sit within easy reach, and the train delivers you right into the heart of it all.