Train on the Bridge

Named after the warrior queen Shalati, our hotel is actually a train situated on the historic Sabi Bridge inside Kruger National Park. Among the first female chiefs of the Tebula, she was known to defend her clan with a war axe. Today, the defense is provided by slingshots wielded by servers who try to deter impossibly persistent monkeys.

When the train became operational in 1894, it was to transport riches to the colonizers. But the mining operations turned sour and by 1923, they began experimenting with new tourism ideas, including hunting while the train parked overnight near the bridge. Letters in the press remarked: “This so called-called game reserve is merely a refuge for dangerous wild animals, a focus of disease, and should be swept away”. Another indicated “In the twenty years which have passed, the land might have held hundreds of happy smiling homesteads instead of only lion and disease”.

Eventually, James Stevenson-Hamilton accounted as follows: “The interest betrayed by the public in the animals and the remarks I overheard when mixing with the guests, made me at last confident that, could only our national park scheme mature, it would become popular and therefore an asset to the country. It was beyond measure encouraging to feel that the South African public, despite tradition, might be content to look at animals without wanting to kill them”.

He was right. Kruger National Park is now a precious thing which benefits conservation of the land and the wild game. It employs locals living and working in surrounding villages. This time, it is supported and paid for by strong foreign tourism, although locals have plenty of affordable access themselves.Read more