Hi everyone,
Myself and a friend are planning to cycle from Taipei to Taitung in a couple of weeks, and would greatly appreciate everyones thoughts on the route. the route is set out on this google map:
maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& … 5&t=p&z=10
Is this the best way to go? are there alternative routes anyone can suggest? any tipe of where to stay along the way?
thanks everyone!
Ask urodacus if he’s still around, he has experience in these matters.
As does Wookie…
I did Hualian to Taidong last summer so I can only chime in for that part of the trip. There are some amazing places to stay along the way. I found a little fishing village called Shitiping but there’s also Jichi (sp?) Dulan, and many more…
How many days are you planning to do it in and how are you planning to get back? (I’m also thinking of doing something similar in August.)
Hi
I did Xindian over old highway to get to yilan then down through taroko gorge to hualian and taidong at CNY (im crap with name places though)
Good stuff, we made it in 3 days but were in saddle all day and didnt have to compete with sunburn/heatstroke since it was early february
Bigeest thing to note is that once on the east coast you can either take coastal road or inland highway, you better have VERY good climbing legs to do the former - you’re literally up and down mountain sides all route
taruko gorge is beautiful, BUT we cycled during low traffic and it still felt dangerous at times - I was nearly killed when a honda civic came round a blind corner overtaking a minibus and even though I was “in the dirt” he still clippe my handlbars, they have a series of tunnels where cycling is banned, they are VERY dark inside so make sure you have GOOD lights and can easily access them
We had a great time and managed to find some good cheap hotels to stop in, although we had targets we kind of just aimed east, then south and tried to get where we were going, but remained flexible
PS take big plastic bin bags (garbage liners?) and you can cover your bike with these to get them back on the train/MRT as
“luggage”, much cheaper and lighter than a cycle bag
[quote=“itakitez”]
PS take big plastic bin bags (garbage liners?) and you can cover your bike with these to get them back on the train/MRT as
“luggage”, much cheaper and lighter than a cycle bag[/quote]
We came back from a Hualien area bike trip 2 weeks ago (the heat was constant and flat and heavy) and took the 2 hour express train from Song Shan station which is not actually near Song Shan airport, it’s off of Ba De East of Keelung Road about a kilometer: we needed to go to the larger entrance back in the alley about a block.
We were expecting to have to take our bikes apart as notified originally, but when one of our group (a Taiwanese fast-talker) whined with the gatekeeper, they let us roll the bikes right in and onto the freight compartment - which actually said “bike storage” on the inner door to the passenger compartments - no breaking them apart, and thus no bags needed. But I’m not sure we could have gotten that exception if we didn’t have a Taiwanese to help us communicate, so I would suggest bringing at least one local negotiator along, and anyway bringing a couple of big garbage bags along isn’t a bad idea. We also picked up some pretty cheap bike bags at RT Mart (the one beween Civic and Ba De to the West of Fuxing) for about NT$550 a pop if I recall correctly - Giant shops wanted 1200-1500!
Train was one of the express trains to Hualien station (it stops at Taroko station too I think) and it’s fast and easy and comfortable and cheap (I wanna say NT400 per person).
Good on you!
That certainly is a challenging route. But it will be spectacular.
Are you both fit enough to complete it? Those are some hard climbs.
Would you be camping or lodging?
I would suggest you go light on the gear and lodge. That would necessitate planning your overnights carefully, ending your ride in built-up areas. There’s lodging in Ba-Ling, and in Li-Shan, and probably in other areas along the way.
There are travel guides (in Chinese) for all of the counties in Taiwan. They have info and pictures of lodging houses, eateries, scenic spots, etc. on basically any area in Taiwan. They can be bought at Local bookstores around the island. Get a guide for each county you’ll travel through and plan carefully.
You would be away from population centers, so you’d need to bring a good tool kit and spare tubes, spokes and such for emergency repairs.
I’ll be going from Yang Mei to Hualian in two weeks, but I’ll be taking the easy flat land route–south by the cast to Kenting and then north by the coast to Hualian–perhaps we’ll meet up along the way.
Good luck!
[quote=“marcusat”]Hi everyone,
Myself and a friend are planning to cycle from Taipei to Taidong in a couple of weeks, and would greatly appreciate everyones thoughts on the route. the route is set out on this google map:
maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& … 5&t=p&z=10
Is this the best way to go? are there alternative routes anyone can suggest? any tipe of where to stay along the way?
thanks everyone![/quote]