The journey begins at Victoria Falls Station in the late afternoon, with the train pulling out at five and heading south. 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 as the train begins its southbound run through the Zimbabwean lowveld.

If you have come a day or two early to see the Falls properly, as most guests do, you will already have walked the rainforest paths and taken in the spray and the gorge. From the train, the late light over the bush makes an easy start to the journey as the Falls fall behind.

Dinner tonight is formal, as the evenings are on Rovos, and the kitchen is genuinely good, so it is worth leaning into. The train works south through the evening toward Hwange, and an early start in the morning means it is worth turning in at a reasonable hour. By the time you wake, the train is on the edge of one of the great national parks of Zimbabwe, with a dawn game drive ahead, the wildlife centrepiece of the trip coming early on this southbound run.

An early continental breakfast, then a morning game drive at first light in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe’s largest reserve at more than fourteen thousand square kilometres. The cool early hours are the best time to be out, when the predators are still moving after the night and the game gathers at the pumped waterholes that hold it together through the dry season. Hwange is best known for its very large elephant population and its strong numbers of lion, with leopard and more than four hundred species of bird across country that ranges from teak woodland to open plains. You travel with a guide who reads the bush, and the drive is a genuine safari rather than a token stop.

You return to the train for lunch, 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 Dete and Gwaai, and passes Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city and the capital of Matabeleland, the country’s old industrial hub and the heartland of the Ndebele.

Tea is served in the afternoon as the train travels through baobab country, the big, ancient trees standing across the dry lowveld. Dinner is formal as the train heads on toward Beitbridge and the South African border, which is handled during the evening. By the time you turn in, the safari is behind you and the journey is crossing into its second country.

Breakfast is served as the train crosses the Limpopo near Musina, the wide river running through fever-tree country that Kipling fixed in the imagination in his Just So Stories. You are now into Limpopo, South Africa’s northernmost province, a region of classic Bushveld country, and the journey settles into a relaxed southbound run across it.

Lunch is served as the train crosses the Tropic of Capricorn, the line marking the edge of the tropics, a quiet milestone on the way south. The afternoon carries you deeper into the Bushveld, the warmer, lower country below the Highveld, with the observation car the place to take it in.

Tea 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 line then climbs toward the escarpment, where the high plateau rises and the country opens out below. Dinner is formal as the train works toward Pretoria through the evening. This is the last night on board, and after three nights crossing the subcontinent it has a relaxed, valedictory feel, with the capital and journey’s end ahead in the morning.

A final, unhurried breakfast as the train makes its way into Pretoria, with your luggage ready for collection and your passport to hand for any checks. After three nights from the Zambezi to the Highveld, the journey draws to a close in the capital.

The train arrives at Rovos Rail’s private station in Pretoria in the morning, where the journey ends. The station has been restored to its early grandeur and makes a fitting end to the trip, with the locomotives and workshops alongside if you have the time to look. Pretoria is one of South Africa’s three capitals, set in the warmer Bushveld north of Johannesburg and known for the jacarandas that line its streets in spring.

From here you continue to your onward arrangements. Pretoria and neighbouring Johannesburg sit at the heart of Gauteng, with the country’s main international airport between them, so the run makes an easy end to a trip or a starting point for onward travel, whether to the Kruger and the Lowveld, on to Cape Town, or further afield. After three nights on the train, the capital is a practical and central place to finish.