Hi there
We are two cyclists, spending two weeks in Taiwan this spring. We are rather interested in mountain areas and saw on the map an interesting crossing over the Nenggao Trail. It was mentioned, that one need’s a permit, but we don’t find a site, where to apply for the permit (we only found the sites for Yushan, Tarokko and Sheipa). Or can we get the permit on the spot?
Another question would be our transport from Taipei to Hualien, but I think the best option is bus to Luodong and then train to Hualien, as the Express Train from Taipei would not take our bicycles.
Thank you for your help.
You may want to try Mark Roche. You can contact him here:
http://www.blueskiesadventures.com.tw/
Or on Facebook, here:
Mark is an Irishman who’s been out here for 25years+. He knows the trails
(Not sure if he looks on here these days, but you may be lucky. I’ll suggest it…)
The Neng Gao crossing was due to open in January this year, but it has been postponed. In recent years very few cyclists have made the crossing due to major landslides on the east side of the island. It is possible to ride up from the west and back out the same way. You can get permits from the Nantou Gov. or from the police station at Wu She in Ren Ai Township.
According to the government’s rec forest/national park website:
http://recreation.forest.gov.tw/rt/RT_2_1.aspx?TR_ID=064
Trail is closed.
There’s specific trains in which you can bring your bike unbagged onto the train, you need tickets for those. However, every single express train, you can bring your BAGGED bike into the first (or last) compartment where there’s an area to leave your bikes.
No need to take the bus then transfer to train
Thank you all for the information, so we will skip Nenggao as our plan was to do the crossing (west-east). Alternatively we would like to do the approach over the central cross-island highway from the west. As the route planer doesn’t want to take this route, I did a short research and apparently this road is no longer open. On wikipedia it is stated, that non-residentials between Guguang and Lishan cannot take this road. What about bicycles, is there a possibility to pass anyway?
I’m not relatively sure if GuGuang to Lishan is open or not. Maybe @mad_masala can chime in since he tours a lot on his motorcycle.
An alternative is to start at the geographical center of Taiwan in Puli and go up the No.14. At a leisure pace it should take you up to 6-8 hours to get to He Huan Shan/Wuling Peak and probably another 40 mins or so to descend towards Lishan.
That sounds right. There are always rumours about it being finally opened to the public but it never happens. As for doing it in bicycle, I know that some people sneaked in on bicycle because it was posted years ago, pictures included. Don’t remember the forumosan who did it but he was a regular by that time at least. What you could try to do is to call the police station/visitor centre and ask them if they let you pass.
Now, beware of landslides, rockslides, etc…
We are now back of two weeks of cycling in Taiwan and it was great.
Effectively it seems not possible to get a box at the airport and as two weeks storage were at 5000 TWD, we just abandoned our boxes and continued with a bicycle bag for the trains.
The stretch between Guguang and Lishan was still closed, so that we had to go over Puli.
In Wushe at the police station they told us, that the Nenggao was still closed, so we didn’t try (they would not have given a permit). As a subsitute we applied for some permits to trek (Old Zhuilu, Yushan and Xueshan), this went all smooth.
For the return we got boxes at the Fuji Shop near main station for 300 TWD each and as we saw other cyclists with ultra light bags for the train packing, we got them at the Giant store (300 g!).
East coast sailing was great (that means tailwind when going south along the coast) and we could cycle more than expected. Only thing we were surprised, was that a lot of campings were not open (or no other campers on them) and we thought it would be high season.