Train travel in Botswana . . .

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 Country information

Click for interactive map of African train routes

South Africa to Botswana by train...

There are no trains from Botswana to South Africa, as the daily train to Mafeking and weekly train to Johannesburg were withdrawn in 1999.  However, you can take a comfortable train between Cape Town and Johannesburg, see the South Africa page for details.  Then there's a daily bus between Jo'burg and Gaborone leaving Johannesburg at 14:30 and arriving Gaborone at 21:10.  In the other direction, the bus leaves Gaborone daily at 06:30, arriving Johannesburg at 13:00.  For times, fares and online booking see www.intercape.co.za.

Zimbabwe to Botswana by train...

In 1999, the weekly Johannesburg-Gaborone-Bulawayo train was withdrawn and the daily Mafeking-Gaborone- Bulawayo 'blue train' was cut back in to run purely within Botswana, Francistown-Gaborone-Lobatse.  However, after an absence of 6 years, an international train service between Zimbabwe and Botswana restarted in June 2006, from Francistown to Bulawayo, 3 times a week.

Francistown ► Bulawayo				Bulawayo ► Francistown
		Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday				Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Francistown	depart	09:00		Bulawayo	depart	11:00
Bulawayo	arrive	15:00		Francistown	arrive	16:30

The train has standard class coaches with reclining seats.

The fare is 25 Pula one-way (£3 or $5).

For train connections to Gaborone and Lobatse (near the South African border) see below.

The train uses Zimbabwe's modern standard class coaches like this, complete with with TV entertainment(!)

IMPORTANT:  All Francistown-Gaborone-Lobatse trains were cancelled from April 2009 A shock announcement in early 2009 was that Botswana Railways was to stop all passenger service indefinitely because of mounting losses.  The day train stopped running in 2006, and the last overnight train between Francistown, Gaborone & Lobatse ran on 1 April 2009.  See this article.

To get the most from a trip to Southern Africa, you'll need a good guidebook - and I think the Lonely Planet guides are about the best ones out there.

Buy Lonely Planet Southern Africa online at Amazon

Or buy direct from the Lonely Planet website, with shipping worldwide.