The journey begins at Rovos Rail’s private station in Pretoria, with the train pulling out at ten in the morning and heading north. Because the trip crosses a border, your passport is collected at the outset by the train manager and returned before the end, sparing you the repeated formalities. There is time to settle into your suite and find the lounge and observation cars before lunch.

The line runs north through the Bushveld, the warmer, lower country beyond the Highveld. Lunch is served as the train passes Bela-Bela, the old Warmbaths, known for its mineral hot springs, and Modimolle, formerly Nylstroom, a name from the Voortrekkers who took its north-flowing river to be a source of the Nile. The route skirts the edge of the escarpment, where the high plateau drops away, opening up long views to the north.

Tea is served in the afternoon as the train crosses the Tropic of Capricorn, the line marking the edge of the tropics. Dinner tonight is formal, as the evenings are on Rovos, and the kitchen is genuinely good, so it is worth leaning into. During the evening the train reaches the Limpopo at Beitbridge and crosses into Zimbabwe, the great river running through fever-tree country that Kipling fixed in the imagination in his Just So Stories. By the time you turn in, you are across the border and into Zimbabwe.

Breakfast is served as the train travels through baobab country, the big, ancient trees standing across the dry Zimbabwean lowveld, one of the more distinctive landscapes of the trip. This is a quieter, on-board day by design, a chance to settle into the rhythm of the train and watch the country roll past from the lounge or the observation car.

Through the day the train works toward Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city and the capital of Matabeleland. It is the country’s old industrial hub, a city with a strong sense of its own history, laid out with wide streets and some fine colonial-era architecture, and the heartland of the Ndebele people. The approach gives a feel for the shift in the landscape as the line crosses the watershed country of central Zimbabwe.

Lunch and tea are served on board as the journey continues, and dinner is formal as the train heads on through the evening toward Hwange and the safari that is the centrepiece of the trip. There is no excursion today, so it is an easy day given over to the train and the country, the long views and the slow pace that a journey of this kind is built around. By the time you turn in, the train is working northwest toward the great national park and an early start in the morning.

Breakfast is served as the train runs up toward Hwange, and through the middle of the day the line crosses one of the longest straight stretches of railway in Africa, around a hundred and fourteen kilometres dead straight between Gwaai and Dete, skirting the eastern edge of the park with a chance of wildlife from the window.

In the afternoon you disembark for a game drive in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe’s largest reserve at more than fourteen thousand square kilometres. Hwange is best known for its very large elephant population and its strong numbers of predators, lion and leopard among them, across country that ranges from teak woodland to open plains and the pumped waterholes that hold the game together through the dry season. You travel with a guide who reads the bush, and the drive is a genuine safari rather than a token stop, the wildlife heart of the journey.

You return to the train in the early evening, and dinner is formal as the journey continues toward Thomson Junction and the final approach to the Falls. After a day built around the game drive, the last evening on board has a relaxed feel, with the Zambezi and the journey’s end ahead in the morning.

A final, unhurried breakfast as the train makes its last run toward Victoria Falls, with your luggage ready for collection and your passport to hand for any checks. After three nights crossing the subcontinent from the Highveld, you arrive at one of the great natural sights of Africa.

The train reaches Victoria Falls in the morning, where the journey ends. The Falls, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, are right at hand: the Zambezi pours over a wall nearly two kilometres wide, dropping into the gorge and throwing up the spray and roar that give them their name. They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, by combined width and height, the largest curtain of falling water in the world.

From here you disembark for your onward arrangements. It is well worth building in at least a night or two in Victoria Falls to see the Falls properly, walk the rainforest paths along the gorge, and take in the river and the town, whether for the activities around the Falls or simply to wind down after the journey. After three nights on the train, the Falls are a destination worth lingering over rather than glimpsing in passing.