A luxury rail journey — Rovos Rail or Seven Stars Kyushu

Some journeys treat the train as the way to arrive somewhere; these two treat it as the destination itself. Rovos Rail across southern Africa and the Seven Stars around Kyushu are both closer to a moving hotel than to transport, and each takes only a few days, which is part of the appeal — you surrender to the pace without surrendering a fortnight. Rovos runs restored Edwardian carriages of wood panelling and polished brass between Pretoria and Cape Town, with longer routes toward Victoria Falls and beyond. Your compartment is a proper en-suite room; the dining car serves multi-course dinners for which guests dress; and at the rear an open observation car lets you stand in the slipstream and watch the veld unspool. Screens are gently discouraged, which sounds precious until the first evening, when the absence of them turns strangers at dinner into company and the window into the entertainment. Seven Stars Kyushu is a different kind of craft. A small luxury sleeper train for around thirty guests, designed down to the marquetry and ceramics by Eiji Mitooka, it loops around the southern Japanese island over two or four days, pausing for onsen towns, pottery studios and coastal views. The service is exact, the interiors are handmade, and the whole thing runs with the quiet precision that Japanese railways are known for. It is often booked out far ahead, sometimes by ballot. Both ask you to slow down, dress for dinner, and let the landscape do the work while someone else worries about the timetable. Neither is cheap, and both are unashamedly comfortable rather than adventurous — this is the gentlest kind of experience on the list, closer to a floating dinner party than an expedition. If you want the moving-on itself to be the pleasure, and you can accept a few days of being thoroughly and unhurriedly looked after, there are few finer ways to spend them.