The first view you get of Kruger Shalati is as you cross Crocodile Bridge in Kruger Park. You can just make out the train that almost disappears into the mighty steel and stone structure of the historic bridge across the river.
Kruger Shalati is a hotel in a train on that bridge, one of those rare properties that will amaze you as much for its engineering and its history as for its service and hospitality.
A feat of the imagination and of much calculation has resulted in a luxury boutique hotel suspended audaciously 50 feet above the Sabie River. This is safari – with a difference. What that means, for one, is that you can lie in your bath and tick off wildlife sightings most people can only dream of. The idea for the hotel was inspired by the location’s history – a disused railway bridge adjacent to what is now SANParks Skukuza camp in Kruger National Park, that was last in use in the 1970s. The line was originally built more than a century ago as part of a railway link to different gold sites in the Northern Transvaal. Tourism was soon added and in 1923 South African Railways introduced a nine-day tour through the Sabie Game Reserve, that included an overnight stop on the bridge (now in Skukuza) for wildlife viewing.
The only way to view game in this area then was by train – this was long before roads were introduced and motor travel and rest camps became the modern way to experience the wild. The train experience was eventually discontinued because of the danger to wildlife.
The hotel is essentially a train, made up of 12 carriages on the bridge, which were converted from 1950s relics recovered from a “railway graveyard” in Ladysmith. Rusted, burned out and vandalised the carriages were transported to Germiston on the East Rand in Joburg to be gutted, re-engineered and refurbished. It took 12 weeks to finish a single carriage and then each carriage – a 36-ton load – was transported over a four-day journey to the Kruger Park. One year to the day from the first carriage being placed on the bridge, the last carriage (built for universal access, with a specially designed lift for wheelchair mobility) arrived – in March 2021. Chef Andrew Atkinson heads up the kitchen, offering an exciting mix of cuisines with influences as diverse as Asia and the Middle East. The team here are brimful of enthusiasm and we found service to be utterly top-notch. Kruger Shalati excels at the welcome. We are excited to find out that the staff have been recruited from surrounding communities as part of land claims settlements, and that the hotel has offered opportunities to many who previously had no employment. A fantastic use of space and commitment to the community. A MUST STAY.
