Four days in Durban: swimmable in winter, and the best curry on the continent
Three nights on the Indian Ocean. A promenade and a stadium arch, an aquarium built into a wrecked ship, three small museums that explain the city, and Gandhi's settlement on the way to the airport.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Durban
- Places
- 8 across 4 days
Durban is warm when the rest of the country is not. The sea here sits around 22 degrees in the middle of winter, the sun is out, and while Cape Town is being rained on, people are surfing in shorts on a six kilometre promenade. That alone would make it worth four days.
What makes it interesting is who lives here. From 1860 the sugar estates of Natal brought in indentured workers from India, and when the contracts ran out most of them stayed. The result is a city with one of the largest Indian populations anywhere outside India, its own curry tradition, and a dish invented here that consists of a quarter loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with mutton.
It is a working port rather than a resort, the third largest city in the country and the busiest harbour in Africa, and the middle of it is scruffier than Cape Town by some distance. Go for the sea, the food and three small museums that say more about South Africa than most large ones.
Highlights
- The Golden Mile at six in the morning, when the whole city is running on it
- The arch over Moses Mabhida Stadium, by cable car or by 550 steps
- Bunny chow, eaten off the paper with your hands, from a place with no tables
- The KwaMuhle Museum, in the office that used to run every black resident's life
- Gandhi's settlement at Inanda, where he spent twenty years working out what to do
Where to stay
Durban, three nights
A Portuguese fleet sighted this bay on Christmas Day 1497 and called the coast Natal for the date. British traders settled the sandbar in the 1820s and named the port after the governor at the Cape, and the sheltered water behind The Point turned it into the harbour that still pays for the city.
Sugar is the other half of the story. The climate suited cane, the cane needed labour, and from 1860 ships brought indentured workers from Madras and Calcutta on five year contracts. Enough of them stayed to change the city permanently, and a young lawyer who arrived in 1893 to handle a commercial case for one of the merchant families spent the next twenty one years in South Africa becoming Gandhi.
Three nights is right. The centre is small, the beach is long, and the good things are close together apart from one trip inland.
Day by day
Day 1 in Durban
The promenade, and the arch above it
Get to the beach first. The promenade runs about six kilometres from the harbour mouth to the north end, it was rebuilt for the 2010 World Cup, and by late afternoon it is full of runners, skateboards, fishermen on the piers and people selling ice cream from bicycles.
Then go up. The stadium behind the beachfront has a steel arch over it with a viewing platform on top, and the view at sunset is the whole coast, the harbour and the Berea ridge behind.
- 16:00
The Golden Mile
VisitWide sand, warm water and shark nets, backed by a paved promenade with piers running out from it every few hundred metres. Surfing is serious here and the breaks north of the piers are the ones to watch. Swim between the flags: the rips are real.
- 18:00
Moses Mabhida Stadium
OtherBuilt for the 2010 World Cup with a 106 m arch springing from both sides of the bowl. A cable car runs to a platform at the top, or you climb 550 steps up the northern leg. Go for the last hour of light.
- 20:00
California Dreaming
EatOn the beachfront, glass fronted, aimed at the promenade crowd, and reliable for a first evening. Seafood, cold beer and the sea about twenty metres away.
With more time: If you land in the morning instead, walk the promenade north to south early: by six the whole city is out on it, and it is the best hour of the day here by a distance.
Day 2 in Durban
The Point, the aquarium and the working harbour
The southern end of the beach runs into The Point, the sandspit that made the harbour, and everything today is within a kilometre of the water.
The aquarium is the city's one large paid attraction and it is a good one, built inside the hull of a fake wrecked cargo ship with the tanks where the holds would be. Go at opening.
Afterwards, cross to the harbour side for lunch and a pair of tugboats you can climb around inside.
- 09:00
uShaka Marine World
LeisureOpened in 2004 and one of the largest aquariums in the southern hemisphere: ragged-tooth sharks, a kelp tank, dolphins, and a water park attached for anyone under twelve. Three hours if you take it seriously, and the shipwreck architecture is worth an hour on its own.
- 12:30
Wilson's Wharf
OtherA short strip of restaurants and a small theatre on the harbour edge, looking across at the container cranes. Unfussy seafood, tables outside, and boats going past close enough to read the names off.
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- 14:30
Port Natal Maritime Museum
VisitTwo steam tugs and a minesweeper tied up in the old harbour, and you go aboard and wander through the engine rooms and cabins yourself. Small, cheap, and much more fun than the indoor exhibits alongside it.
With more time: The beachfront between the aquarium and the piers is the quietest stretch of sand in the city on a weekday morning, and there is a paddling pool and a small pier for children at the southern end.
Day 3 in Durban
Three museums and a spice market
The centre of Durban is not beautiful and it holds the three collections that explain the place. All of them are small, all are within a fifteen minute walk of each other, and none costs much.
Start with the building where the city administered its black population for fifty years, which is now a museum about exactly that. Then the old courthouse, then the record of indentured labour a few streets west.
Leave time for the market. The spice stalls in the Indian quarter grind mixes to order and the smell reaches the pavement outside.
- 09:30
KwaMuhle Museum
VisitThe former Department of Native Affairs, where black residents queued for the passes that let them live and work in the city. The exhibition explains the Durban System, under which the municipality funded that control from its monopoly on selling sorghum beer, which is to say it paid for itself. Free, blunt and about an hour.
- 11:30
Old Court House Museum
VisitDurban's first courthouse, built in 1866, now the city history museum. Colonial furniture, a costume room covering a century of dress and a miniature car collection in the foyer, which is the sort of museum this is and none the worse for it.
- 12:45
Bunny chow for lunch
EatOrder a quarter mutton, take the paper bag outside and eat it with your hands. Pull the lid off, use it to scoop, and keep the bread: soaking it is the whole idea.
- 14:00
Durban Cultural and Document Centre
VisitThe archive of Indian indenture in Natal: contracts, ships' lists, photographs and the names of people who arrived under a number rather than a name. Small and quiet, and the necessary companion to the food you have just eaten.
With more time: The Victoria Street Market a few blocks north is the place for the spices, and the botanic garden up on the Berea, planted in 1849 and the oldest surviving one in Africa, is a good hour late in the afternoon.
Day 4 in Durban
Inanda on the way out
The road to the airport goes north, and so does the last thing worth seeing. About twenty kilometres inland at Inanda is the smallholding Gandhi bought in 1904 and turned into a communal settlement, printing press and school.
He was twenty three when he arrived in Durban and forty five when he left for India. Almost everything he later did there, the newspaper, the ashram, the idea of satyagraha, was worked out on this side of the ocean first.
The settlement was destroyed in the unrest of 1985 and rebuilt afterwards. His house, Sarvodaya, has been reconstructed and there is a small museum in the grounds.
- 09:30
Mahatma Gandhi Settlement
VisitA hillside above the Umgeni valley with the rebuilt house, the site of the press that printed Indian Opinion, and a view over Inanda. Go with a guide, arrange it in advance, and allow two hours including the drive out.
- 13:00
Lunch before the flight
EatUmhlanga is on the way from Inanda to the airport and has the easiest lunch on that road. Allow forty minutes from there to the terminal.
With more time: The Inanda heritage route continues past the settlement to the Ohlange Institute, founded by John Dube, the first president of the ANC, where Nelson Mandela chose to cast his vote in 1994.
Before you go
Where to stay
Umhlanga, fifteen kilometres north, is where most visitors end up: a clean, safe, slightly bland seafront suburb with good hotels, a lighthouse and a promenade of its own. It is also nearer the airport and further from everything worth seeing.
The Berea, the ridge above the centre, is the alternative and the better one for a short trip. Morningside and Musgrave have guesthouses in old colonial houses, restaurants on Florida Road, and a five minute drive down to the beach.
The beachfront hotels along the Golden Mile itself vary enormously street by street. The northern end near the stadium is the safer bet; the Point, at the southern end, is mid redevelopment and patchy.
Getting around
A car is the practical answer, and parking is easy by South African standards. Uber and Bolt work well and are cheap.
The People Mover bus loops the beachfront, the centre and uShaka every fifteen minutes for a few rand, and is genuinely useful for the first two days here. It runs from six in the morning until eleven at night.
King Shaka International Airport is 35 km north and opened in 2010. There is an hourly shuttle bus into the centre for a small fraction of the taxi fare, and the taxi drivers will try to reach you before you reach it.
Eating, which is the point
Durban curry is its own thing: hotter than most Indian regional cooking, heavy on chilli and tomato, and usually mutton. The place to start is bunny chow, a quarter or half loaf with the middle pulled out, filled with curry and the bread lid put back on top. No cutlery, no plate.
It has nothing to do with rabbits. The best explanations trace the name to the Banias, the Gujarati merchant caste who ran the cafes that sold it to workers who were not allowed inside.
Beyond that: shisa nyama grills in the townships, seafood on the harbour, and a spice market in the centre where the mixes are ground while you wait.
The weather, and safety
Summer here, from November to March, is hot, extremely humid and prone to spectacular afternoon storms. Winter, from May to September, is dry, in the low twenties, and the reason to come. The sea is swimmable all year and the main beaches are netted and patrolled.
The central business district empties after dark and is not somewhere to walk at night. The promenade is patrolled, lit and busy, and is fine. As everywhere in South Africa, leave nothing visible in a parked car.
Durban gets written off as a beach with a port attached, usually by people who spent one night at an airport hotel on the way to a game reserve.
What it actually offers is warm water in the middle of winter, a food culture that exists nowhere else in Africa, and a version of South African history told from an angle Cape Town and Johannesburg never cover. Three nights is enough to get all three.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- When is the best time to visit Durban?
- May to September. Dry, low to mid twenties, low humidity, and the sea still warm enough to swim in without thinking about it. December and January are hot, sticky, stormy and packed with South African holidaymakers.
- Is Durban safe?
- The promenade, the beachfront and the northern suburbs are fine with ordinary care. The central business district is fine by day and empties after dark, and The Point is patchy. Use cars at night rather than walking, and take a guide for the townships and Inanda.
- Is three nights enough?
- For the city, yes. Add two more if you want the Drakensberg, three hours inland, or the Zululand game reserves to the north, both of which are usually what people come to KwaZulu-Natal for.
- Where do I find the best curry?
- Not in a hotel. The famous bunny chow places are cafes and takeaways in the centre and in Overport, they close early, and the queue at lunchtime tells you which one to join. Ask about the heat before you order: local mild is not mild.
- Do I need to hire a car?
- For the last day, yes, and it makes the rest easier. The first two days can be done on the People Mover bus and on foot if you would rather not drive.