Alishan Forest Railway

I am not really sure if this will interest anyone, but then again, I am not really sure anyone reads this blog, so I couldn’t care less. And before you start saying: “Hey, Alishan Forest Railway is just one overpriced tourist trap,” hey, I hear you. I am not saying it’s not, it’s just that the alternative is to – sit on my butt at home? Not too palatable. So let’s jump right into it.

One nice morning I woke up in a Chiayi hostel, appropriately named Mystery Inn. I am incredibly happy to have stayed there, very relaxed atmosphere, nice little breakfast, literally a stone’s throw from the main railway station.

“Where does the Alishan Forest Railway start?” I asked in the morning at the reception.

“At the main railway station.”

I checked internet but uncle Google told me something different:

I was like: ‘Yay, there’s the depot, too!’ The American girl I had met the previous night in the hostel told me about it:

“It’s in the direction of the railway station. Barely 200 meters away!”

I, being a sucker for railway photography, was naturally pleased. Only that it wasn’t exactly 200m. If you notice the scale on the map, it was probably more than 1 km from the hostel. Obviously, she, as an American, must have had but a vague idea of the metric system 🙂

In any case, I was almost fretting I wouldn’t catch the train. Not too much, though, as I managed to snap this little flower in the city streets:

And then I came there:

But there was no station. And the train was about to leave at 8:30! So I whipped out my phone, loaded up Google Maps, but alas! no internet connection. I don’t have mobile internet.

‘The station must be somewhere nearby,’ I thought to myself. And indeed it was. Just a bit further I caught a glimpse of the platform and hurried to buy a ticket there. How surprised was I when I saw this station building:

It was called 北門 or North Gate. Luckily, there was a standard iTaiwan wifi access in the station, so I pulled out my Moto G4 again and victoriously located Beimen on Google Maps. Then I looked at the timetable:

God, was I lucky! Apparently, Beimen is not the starting station; rather, it’s the first station down the line. Had there been no stop, I would have missed the train. I mean, there were other two, but still, this one was slightly cheaper and the earliest anyway. One way or another, I realized the guy at the hostel was telling the truth – the railway indeed started at the main Chiayi railway station, I just failed to notice the teeny-tiny in-the-typical Google-Maps-fashion-inconspicuously-gray railway line stretching from the railway station through the depot on to the east.

One way or another, I did manage to get the first train, albeit at the cost of extra stress. I had to hurry, but on the other hand I was able to take some pictures of the old trains in the ‘Garage Park’.

There was this train (Zhongxing Express) at 8:30 from the main station to Fenqihu, followed by two reserved trains further to Shizilu, both prosaically called Alishan Express, spaced half an hour apart from each other. I had been told that the the railway is not open in its entirety; some parts are off limits because of recent landslides (and deemed too expensive to fix). So one has to get off at Fenqihu, getting a bus to Alishan thence. Therefore, this earlier Zhongxing Express suited me well. However, not everything turned out as it had looked in the beginning…

So I bought the ticket but was not let onto the platform by the station attendants until the train arrived. I was literally locked inside the vintage waiting room. It was comical as I think the attendants outnumbered the tourists getting on at this station. Just before 8:40 the train arrived:

Only I was getting on here and then one Taiwanese couple; two more locals were watching the train arrive from behind the fence (you can see them in the picture above) and waved us good-bye later on when we set off happily on to our journey and passed them.

This is the very next station Lumachan and I used the time to get off and take a snapshot of the locomotive:

Because it’s narrow gauge, it’s quite cramped inside:

The diesel continued chugging along happily, and for its tiny gauge (2ft 6in or 762mm) it was making pretty good headway, running at decent speed. Jungle was passing by the windows:

From time to time, a station appeared out of the blue green:

Quite a few hikers were getting on and off at these spots:

All got their tickets (and temperature!) checked by the conductor who nimbly moved between the four carriages, a thing forbidden for regular passengers (I did it nonetheless 🙂

Cue some more jungle scenery behind the windows while the train was visibly climbing:

Sometimes the landscape was interrupted by cute little settlements with stations:

And then back to the jungle again…

In some stations the train had to stop accurately enough to match the position of small stairs, as the platform was way too short, which was no mean feat!

Even though it was fairly cold outside, aircon was on full blast throughout the train, so much so that I was freezing my a$$ off.

Last few kilometers:

Into the mist and beyond…

Finally we pulled up in Fenqihu:

There was no time for me to lose, as I wanted to catch a bus to Alishan. I tried to ask one person who had a tag saying ‘Tourist information’:

“Excuse me, where is the bus stop to Alishan?” upon which she produced her smartphone as apparently she did not understand a word of English. I didn’t want to lose time with Google Translate as that would likely get me nowhere and I could actually miss the bus. So I flew out of the station, through some old street full of early tourist crowds and quickly found the main road. There was a bus stop and I immediately located bus timetables, but…

There were quite a few of them, some of them old, other newer, with some conflicting information. So I logged on-line and googled when the bus from Fenqihu to Alishan leaves. The only information I was able to find was about a bus at 14:30. It was 11:15 and I was in no mood to wait almost two-and-a-half hours for a not-quite-certain bus connection, by which time most likely I will have had to be going back down.

Then I found out that most buses from Chiayi to Alishan actually bypassed Fenqihu, because they went straight through Shizhao, about 5 kilometers from here. I knew a bus was supposed to stop at Shizhao at 11:40 and the next one an hour later. If I got lucky and started to hitch-hike, maybe I could even catch the earlier one! Otherwise, I could just walk down in about one hour. So I set off but soon I found another bus stop with yet another timetable, according to which a bus was supposed to come at around 11:30 to Fenqihu and continue on to Alishan. So I ditched the whole hitch-hiking idea as I did not want to miss a bus while hitch-hiking on an open road and started waiting again. However, I am sure no bus showed up at all as I was observing industriously, remembering the last time I missed a small mini-bus when wanting to visit Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum near Kaohsiung.

When it was close to 11:40 (and pretty obvious the bus wasn’t coming) I decided to walk down after all. After further 150m I found yet another bus stop that seemed to feature a newer schedule that did not contain this 11:30 bus, but another, later one, at about 12:30. I was already fuming with anger and continued on my way down while hitch-hiking. Luckily, I caught a lift in less than 5 minutes. A middle-aged couple asked me where I was going and I explained to them that I wanted to get to Alishan:

“Where are you staying tonight?” the wife asked me.

“In Zhongli…”

“Zhongli… what Zhongli?”

“The Taoyuan Zhongli.”

“The Tao… but that’s way far up in the north! Why? How are you gonna…”

“Ermmm, because I live there… and have to go to work tomorrow…”

“We are going to Chiayi. If you want, we can take you there. You can then catch a train to Zhongli.”

“No thanks.” Fat chance. I came here for Alishan and was determined not to give it up, despite my schedule being incomprehensibly tight to these Taiwanese travellers.

They quickly dropped me off at Shizhao, but by this time it was already noon. The husband was very kind and went to the police station to inquire where the bus stop is. He needn’t have worried as I was going to try hitch-hiking again (the next bus up to Alishan was still some 40 minutes away) but you try explaining this to him in simple, graded English!

In any case I got off, grabbed some snacks in local 7-11 and quickly tried to hitch a ride. Not a few minutes passed when another car pulled up that was doing the cross-island highway and after a few attempts they understood I would like to get dropped at Alishan:

“Please get in!” said yet another wife in a soothing tone. After I got in they put on their facemasks. I felt sorry for them that they had to do it because of me, but they did not seem to be bothered in the least. Then the lady suddenly pulled out a wad of blue surgical masks:

“Here you go,” she said, “I know foreigners have tough time getting them in pharmacies.”

There was nothing else for me to say other than the obligatory 謝謝你!

On our way up we passed Shizilu and I was so surprised! All the guidebooks, all the websites say that to get to Alishan by Alishan Forest Railway one must get off at Fenqihu and get a bus from there and that it makes no sense to go all the way to Shizilu (served by the two reserved Alishan Express trains). Yet in reality it’s quite the opposite – there is but one bus from Fenqihu to Alishan a day and it is very likely too late in the afternoon (or maybe there is one more, but too early in the morning, before the first train arrives) while Shizilu is straight on the main road between Chiayi and Alishan, which sees a bus every hour at least! Next time I will know better than to trust on-line tourist guides…

I got dropped off right next to the turnoff to Alishan with the sky heavy with rain-soaked leaden clouds. The intermittent light drizzle was inconvenient, but not yet an obstacle to my sightseeing. I passed the bus station and checked that the last bus down was leaving 17:10. Quite early, as usual in Taiwan. Then another surprise – one needs to pay to enter the park and it’s  $300, uncharacteristically steep for Taiwan. But suddenly I sniffed out a discount:

If you use public transportation to arrive here, you only need to pay $150. Just show your bus ticket.

‘Damn!’ I cursed, ‘And I thought I would be saving $100 by hitch-hiking!’ But then, how would I have had a bus ticket, if I had paid by my EasyCard? In any case, I tried to get in using the ticket from the train:

“Hi, I would like to buy one ticket. How much is it?”

“300. But if you came here by public transport, it’s only 150.”

“I arrived by train. Does that count?” And with these words I shoved my train tickets into her face.

She started thinking and called her colleagues. They began discussing something in Chinese.

“It’s a means of public transport,” I chimed in, trying to bolster my case.

“We’re sorry… ummm…”

I was starting to entertain serious second thoughts of not going in after all when of the girls suddenly got an idea:

“Are you perhaps a student?”

“Errr… ummm… actually, I am!” I realized I had just started my intensive Chinese course at Chinese Culture University and showed them my branded EasyCard. It did not take long and they issued me a student ticket for $150. Yay!

I couldn’t believe my luck. On to the station!

I arrived at the station shortly before 13:00 when the next train was scheduled to leave. There are three trains from this station, one to Zhushan (which I wanted to take) for $150, and then one to Zhaoping and one to Sacred Tree station, both for $100. I wanted to go to Zhushan, because it’s the longest ride and it actually passes through Zhaoping but I was told that the train was not going anymore today, that I should aim for the next day. Then I found out it probably runs only once a day, for sunrise. So I bought a ticket for the very next train, the one at 13:00, which was to Zhaoping:

It looked just like the one from Alishan to Fenqihu:

I simply could not afford to lose any more time. I boarded the train and it prepared to leave in no time. Inside it looked much the same as the one from Chiayi.

However, this train was much slower. I don’t think it was caused by the considerable altitude (some 2,200-2,300m above sea level); rather, the reason being so that the tourists do not feel like in a trap, paying $100 for a super short ride. It takes seven minutes, but it’s literally crawling along the track. I could probably keep up with it at a brisk walking pace.

We stopped at Zhaoping:

I got to shoot an empty carriage, too!

The weather was steadily getting worse:

Finally time for some nature shots:

Now don’t get me wrong, I have a huge amount of tree pictures, but they all require an immense amount of processing, as they are separate pictures that need to be stitched into panoramas. It’s impossible to get these massive trees into one shot. But if I started working on it, I would not post this any time in the near future. More likely still,  I would never get around to it. This blogpost is getting too long anyway.

The main attraction of Alishan is its forest with some really old and big trees, mostly cypresses. Quite impressive, I would say, and I have visited Lalashan before, a place famous for its giant trees. But let’s delve deeper into this magical forest:

Then there is the Sister Pond:

Or ponds? I think it’s the Little Sister Pond and Big Sister Pond:

More trees (and for Taiwan East Asia so typical paved hiking trails):

It did feel like in a fairy tale:

Here is one of the big trees that I managed to somehow fit in one shot (at least most of it):

This sign was so funny:

I can’t imagine how anyone would count all the people:

“…137, 139, 140. Ok, I can’t go on that bridge. Need to wait.”

There was yet another sign, for a much smaller bridge, with the limit of some 80 people. The bridge was so small that it would be physically impossible to stuff 80 people there unless you were trying to get inscribed into the Guinness Book of World Records and stacked them on top of each other.

More atmospheric shots:

After I passed the Shouzhen Temple and the Giant Trees Boardwalk #2, I reached the Sacred Tree station:

There was a train ready to take me home:

I wasn’t too keen on that, though, and it was not for the price of the ticket. I still haven’t visited the Giant Trees Boardwalk #1. But I indeed could not afford to miss the departure – only in the position of a photographer:

All aboard!

And here’s the video:

Now back to some more good ol’ trees:

There is one wee human to scale (for comparison purposes):

I almost felt like only dragons are missing in this forest:

Here, finally, the walkways were not all paved and with monstrous concrete railings in the shape of obviously fake bamboo or tree trunks; instead, there were plenty of wooden boardwalks, which blend in the nature much better:

And a little macro shot of a rain soaked spiderweb to finish things up:

I did seriously consider trying to hitch-hike and therefore I intentionally wasn’t hurrying to catch the 16:10 bus. However, the rain, increasing in force and turning constant, made me hurry nonetheless and while I did return to the bus station at 16:30 (and expected to try my luck hitch-hiking, with the rain now pounding the roadway with a steady force) there was a bus ready to go! I did not really mull it over and got on as I still had to get all the way back to Zhongli, which meant some 5-hour journey ahead of me.