Flights from Mombasa are twice the price compared to flights from Nairobi. So, we had two choices: a night bus or a night train to Nairobi. As usual, we made a wrong decision and chose a train. The first disaster is that there is no ticketing office in the city, and you have to drive to buy it at Mombasa Terminus (Bolt 1000 KES / 40 minutes). Of course, everyone will tell you that you can pay with M-Pesa, but registering and activating an eCitizen account is so painful that we decided to go to the station. It took us a terrible 3 hours to buy a ticket, and you would think there was a queue. But no, nobody was in front of us, but booking it and getting the payment done took three hours. Note that you can pay by card there, but only for economy (1500 KES) and first class (4500 KES), and they will add a high transaction fee for card payment. However, we could pay the premium class only in cash (12000 KES/person), and someone from the staff there paid it via M-Pesa (300 KES/transaction fee). Then, they did not have any functional printer there, so it also took an hour to find a working printer in some office to get our tickets because it did not arrive in our email, which we put in the booking.
Then we drove back to the city and luckily read some reviews about the train. We discovered that you can not carry any liquids, food, knives, etc., in your main luggage. So we packed an extra box and went to the bus station to send it by bus to Nairobi (800 KES / 20 kg box). Then we again took a Bolt taxi from the city center to Mombasa Terminus. They lined us up on arrival like criminals, and some smelly dog would walk around us and our luggage. Then, everything went through the scanner in front of the station and, after 20 meters, through the second scanner at the station entrance. There, we bought some refreshments and boarded the train, which was comfortable and on time, and they even served some acceptable beef steak. But paying roughly 100 USD for a six-hour ride in these new premium coaches is too much; it’s simply not worth the money because the service experience is far from business class in the airplane.
Upon arrival in Nairobi, it was a bit chaotic. Still, most Uber and Bolt drivers were standing in the main parking lot, where the local taxi mafia was trying to catch us for the overpriced ride to our hotel in the Westlands area.
