Early in the morning – well, around 9 – we took the train up to Alishan. This was a small Japanese era train which passed behind small houses and flowering trees, passed little wooden stations from that era, and left all signs of people behind and climbed up the steep central hills towards Taiwan’s most highly reputed tea gardens. It was a very pretty journey and is of course primarily a tourist train these days, a slow little train making its way up like the Darjeeling express. It was notable how the landscape changed as we went higher and crossed microclimates: at one point there was a sign in English saying ‘end of tropical, start of subtropical’ and with that instantly the vegetation changed to become more like that which we find at home, though less arid of course.
On the other side we were greeted by an old uncle who is our driver for our time here. He put our bags in his car and we strolled around to explore the little town around the end of the train line. There are several little trains here, all for tourists, but the rest go from a different point; we will go there tomorrow.
We went first to a deserted street for coffee at an old sundry store. It was clearly a street that expected hordes of tourists, as aside from the cafe there were a couple of souvenir shops that seemed geared to tour buses. But we were the only ones there. I wonder if there will be a recovery in tourism after coronavirus. One of our new travel companions is a global health expert who works on vaccines, so the conversation was very corona-focused, not that it’s not at the top of all of our minds, but at least this person gave a different and expert perspective, along with an impressive stream of snacks (as far as I can tell, the couple brought along two suitcases: one for their clothes and one for their snacks).
We strolled around a bit more after coffee, going up and down the paths through dense, wet greenery wreathed in the mists that are typical of Alishan. Although never far from humanity it was lovely and peaceful. Eventually we arrived at one of the points on the tourist train, an old camphor tree, and a dozen metres from it, a little van making and selling Taiwanese cronuts. We immediately bought one for each of us, and they were very tasty, piping hot. Taiwanese style cronuts are far lighter and seem to just be croissant dough wrapped in a sort of doughtnut shaped mould similar to the ones they use for takoyaki, and with a very thin, barely perceptible sugar sheen. I daresay not nearly as nice when they are not freshly made.
The old uncle was a very enthusiastic sort, and suggested that we go up to see the sunset on the sea of clouds. This is a spot where, if the conditions are right one stands on a cliff edge to see heavy clouds below and clear sky above, so the setting sun looks as though it is sinking into a particularly picturesque ocean. We climbed up the hundreds upon hundreds of stairs and waited, but unfortunately the conditions were not right. It was cold and misty and though it cleared up above once or twice it was never for very long, and the sun finally set behind the mists. There were rows and rows of photographers with their tripods there, so we stuck around as long as they did, but were later told that these were enthusiasts who come every day to capture that perfect shot. (They didn’t bring their cameras up the hundreds of stairs: there was a place to bring a car which is where the uncle collected us).
We stopped for dinner before arriving at our bed and breakfast, a little lodge in a tea garden. Our plan is climb the hill behind the bed and breakfast to see the sunrise over the hills and their tea garden.