maintained, you might be awoken at night with the false impression that the train is travelling at high speed. If you're
great | escapes
Deliberate deceleration Luxury train journey prompts a lifestyle re-evaluation
The dinner gong sounds. Is it 7:30pm already? I can’t believe I’m going to be late because I can’t choose a tie. Why did I pack so many? And why can’t I remember how to make a knot? For more information, go to rovosrail.com
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I put on my jacket and make my way down the passage, unsure for a moment if I’m going the right way. Then I arrive at the table, take a seat and sigh in relief. But even though my thoughts are still rushed, they’re forced to be quiet when I find myself captivated by the scene. This is the dining carriage of Rovos Rail, voted by
wired.com as one of the seven most luxurious trains in the world. My first impulse is to reach for my phone to take photographs of the crystal wine glasses, the silverware and the rest of the luxurious scene. The same impulse strikes when the first course arrives. The standard procedure would be to ‘compose’ the plate, angle the camera, take the picture, crop, filter, tag, tweet and post. Then there’d be endless refreshing to wait for the ‘likes’ and retweets, all the while hoping the food would still be warm when I took my first bite. But this is different. With no phones allowed at meals,
Don’t forget You must have valid passports and applicable visas for cross-border trips. Antimalarial medicine as well as a yellow fever vaccination certificate may be relevant for some countries. Also, because the track over which the train travels is inconsistently maintained, you might be awoken at night with the false impression that the train is travelling at high speed. If you’re a light sleeper or suffer from motion sickness, bring appropriate medication.
friends jealous of what we remember, or are we afraid of what we might forget? And are we, as Om Malik wrote in the New Yorker, a society that photographs everything but looks at nothing?
Train travel allows you to soak in the details of the countryside
No hurry
I sit back and savour the highlights. Balsamic and lemon marinated slices of ostrich fillet served on a potato, beetroot, walnut and watercress salad. Grilled Cape rock lobster tails with a haricot-flavoured bisque cream, Mediterranean vegetables and lemon rice. Garlic and lemon grilled prawn skewer on a green salad with a julienne of peppers, mangetout and cucumber drizzled with coriander and ginger dressing. I wonder about our tendency to capture and document every moment, instead of just experiencing them for what they are. Are we trying to make our Facebook
At the end of the meal, as many jetlagged passengers retire to their suites with weary smiles and polite nods, I sip on mint tea, grateful that a single dinner seating on all Rovos Rail trips means no rushing guests out to prepare for the next group. My thoughts then turn to the nature of our journeys through life, something that’s been on my mind since my birthday two days before. I look out the window and see an aeroplane overhead, its lights flashing, a pulse against the night sky. I wonder about the passengers travelling the same distance in two hours that I’ll be travelling in two days. Of course, journeys on the road aren’t much better when you consider that a bus is like a smaller, slower plane and that a car is like a smaller, faster bus. You might not be next to the understandably frazzled mother and her screaming twins or the overweight man and his overpowering cologne, hogging the armrest and disturbing your nap every time he opens another bag of chips. You might even remember to pack your own food, lest you waste money on stale petrol station pies. But with delay-inducing traffic jams and the physical stress of being behind the wheel, you end up just as tense.
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great | escapes
No phones are allowed at meals on Rovos Rail
Life is different on the train. With an average speed of just 45km/h, there’s no rush to get from A to B. It doesn’t even matter that there are often delays outside the train’s control – they use shared tracks, after all – because it’s easy to make up the time later. And it’s not like anyone notices. All that matters to me and the 35 other passengers is using the journey as an opportunity to press pause.
A new normal
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And so, after leaving Pretoria on Friday afternoon, touring Kimberley on Saturday and visiting Matjiesfontein on Sunday, we approach Cape Town. As we enjoy our final afternoon tea in the Observation Car, the international guests gasp and point, their cameras out to capture what they’ve been waiting for. It’s Table Mountain and their excited expressions are much like the one I had when I saw the Pyramids of Giza for the first time. But
I can’t share in their joy, because the moment I’ve been dreading is upon me. Cellular signal has come back. My phone spasms, tempting me to attend to it. I take one look at the screen’s cluttered notifications and set the device to flight mode so that I can enjoy a few more moments of peace. And even when we arrive at Cape Town Station, and I’m taking a short Uber trip home, the city I’ve lived in for 12 years feels brand new. Journey over, I continue to wonder why we’re always rushing from one moment to the next; moving and chasing and striving instead of just slowing and stopping and being. And why did this weekend journey leave me feeling so blissed out? Perhaps it’s because, as the modern world continues to yank us into the future at an ever-faster pace, taking time out to slow down and relax is the greatest luxury of all. Text | Eugene Yiga Photography | Rovos Rail
