Day Three

Alishan, Chiayi

After an early rise and Chinese breakfast I headed to the bus stop for Bus 7322 to Alishan, a place high up in the mountains. The bus takes between 2.5-3 hours to make it's way up the mountains through windy roads.

AlishanTaiwan23.515036/120.80975

Alishan

After paying the park entrance fee I made my way to the train station to take the Alishan Forest Railway train to Zhaoping, a short ride away.

From this station I wandered around through the park for a couple of hours.

The sun was out and it was a really nice day to be away in Nature.

The park is famous for it's old tree's, some of which are over 2000 years old.

Normally the place is quite busy, but this Monday there weren't a lot of people around and if you ventured of the main tails there was hardly anyone there.

And venture off I did, while walking around I noticed a trail that would take me up to a mountain top, which could be a great view. The trail hugged the railway line and went over very mountainous terrain with lots of steps. After a while I noticed people following the train tracks, which were nice and flat and decided to to the same.

This made for a much faster walk :). It was around 3:30 when the clouds started rolling in. The last bus was at 17:10 and I was about halfway down the 2-hour trail. The starting point of the trail was about half an hour from the bus stop so this was cutting it close. About two-thrids to the top the clouds covered everything, continuing wouldn't be for the amazing views, so I turned around and headed back to the park entrance.

From the park entrance it was another 2-3 hour bus ride down to Chiayi, where I had to get back to the hotel to get my bag that I was able to store there for the day. Luckily the hotel is near the train station, from where I took a 2-hour train to Kaohsiung. It was round nine in the evening when I arrived, time for dinner at a local night market.