Taiwan’s cities are all found along the coast, but much of its beautiful scenery and national parks are up in the mountains, in the interior of the island. We didn’t want to leave the country without exploring some of Taiwan’s nature, so we decided to head to Alishan and Sun Moon Lake, two top destinations that are easily connected by bus, making them a convenient duo to add to the itinerary.

From the city of Tainan, the best route up into the mountains is by train. Alishan Forest Railway was originally used for logging, and is now a tourist train route that takes you from 70m elevation to 1400m through beautiful scenery of cedar forests and mountain valleys. The train doesn’t currently run all the way to the top of the mountain, so we stopped off in a town called Fenqihu. It was rainy season when we visited, but in general the mornings were dry, the afternoons very wet and the evenings dry again. True to form, the sky was perfectly blue for the entire train ride, and the heavens opened approximately 5 minutes after exiting the station and 10 minutes before making it to our accommodation. We’d planned a hike here for the afternoon through a bamboo forest, and didn’t have time to wait for the rain to stop. The trail was extremely scenic, but extremely overgrown, and clambering through all the bushes covering the path got us even more drenched. After about an hour we made it to a covered rest area, and discovered that our ankles were getting absolutely destroyed by leeches! We’re not super squeamish about that sort of thing, but combined with the rain we were feeling less and less good about continuing. We pushed on for a bit, but after not too long the trail became so overgrown that it was almost impossible to continue without a machete, so we ended up turning back. We were able to take a different route on the way down which ended up being the most scenic part of the whole hike, with incredibly tall bamboo trees (? I don’t know if they’re trees but saying tall bamboos sounds weird to me) as far as the eye could see in every direction.

After a night in Fenqihu we headed further up the mountain to Alishan, one of Taiwan’s most popular resort areas. Again the weather was fantastic in the morning, and we considered hanging around to try another hike in the dry, but decided getting to Alishan as early as possible was better. We were able to arrive with enough time to walk the main loop through the park for a couple hours before the rain set in on this day. The trails here were very well maintained, mostly wooden boardwalks with a few stone and gravel sections, and the walk was my favourite experience in Taiwan so far. Forest, lakes, waterfalls, suspension bridges, a couple of small temples, train tracks, all covered in mist which made the scenery all the more magical. We did a full loop, and reached the final train station with 10 minutes until the next train back to town. But we were enjoying the walking so much that we weren’t ready to head back to the hotel at only 2.30pm! So we headed back up another trail… and the rain started. We were able to hide for a bit at a food stall area where we tried ginger crisps dipped in sugarcane juice, wasabi sausage, and a basil seed and honey drink, and then ran back to the train during a lull for another scenic ride back to the hotel area.

After hiding for the rest of the afternoon, we headed out for dinner at around 8pm and discovered it was dry and a great temperature, so decided to head back into the forest for a nighttime stroll. The boardwalks were lit up but completely empty, and our leisurely walk was very serene. We’d heard that there are fireflies here at this time of year, so we wanted to head to an area with no lights, and ended up doing almost the entire loop again through the pitch black forest, surprising many frogs who thought they had the trail to themselves.

To make the most of our short time here we pulled ourselves out of bed at 4am (after an unnecessary and unsolicited wakeup call from reception at 3:20am) to get the train even further up the mountain for sunrise. It wasn’t too cloudy and the colours in the sky were fantastic, though the sun itself was hidden by a perfectly positioned cloud so we didn’t actually see it until it was fully risen. It was worth the early morning though, and the hike down from the top allowed us to do some new trails and still be back to the hotel in time for a hot bath and a nap before check out. Our afternoon bus worked out perfectly with the rain schedule this time, and by the time we made it to Sun Moon Lake it was dry again, so we headed out for another walk along the lakeside trail, our fourth wander/hike/walk/amble in 24 hrs.

Our hotel here included hop on hop off boat tickets, so on Saturday we were able to explore the various sights around the lake with ease. We hiked up from an old lakeside temple to the newer hillside temple honouring the same monk, and then even further up to a hilltop pagoda with awesome views over the water and surrounding forests. Then we headed to a town with the most lively food market we’ve found so far, and had some delicious pork skewers, tea eggs, braised pork rice, sweet potato fries and many free samples of various local rice wines the vendors kept calling vinegar when trying to explain in English. On our final morning we considered renting a bike to visit another temple, but no one would let us take a 30 minute ride for less than the half day rental price, and then it started raining, so we went back to the hotel for some Lord of the Rings and relaxation before our bus back down the mountain to Taichung.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!