The four-hour train ride up the Alishan Forest Railway was entirely in a torrential downpour. It’s a slow, rough, precarious train ride on ancient narrow-guage tracks, originally put in at the turn of the last century by the Japanese. The train is short on amenities, but at least it has a toilet. (The first time I road this train, back in 1998, the toilets just dumped right onto the tracks. There was a general prohibition from using the toilet when passing through the small towns.)
In many ways, the train itself is part of the tourism draw of the area.
I’m going to cut corners and glean info from my previous trips’ narratives rather than repeat myself. In 1998:
From Chiayi we took the “world-famous†Forest Railway, an old, small gauge train built by the Japanese in 1912 that winds it’s way up the steep and beautiful mountains from 31 meters at Chiayi to over 2000 meters at the town of Alishan.
I was repeatedly told that the Forest Railway is world-famous, but have yet to meet a non-Taiwanese person who has heard of it. It’s quite impressive, nonetheless.
The entire journey begins in a tropical rain forest, and takes you through semi-tropical forests and then finally into a temperate forest where ancient pines grow.
Shrouded in clouds, the mountains around Alishan (including Alishan, which is also a mountain) are eerie. The small clouds crawl across the surface of the mountains like living creatures. At anytime, these roving amoebae-like monsters might swallow the ground you stand upon.
Nothing has changed except the toilets. Nine years later and I’ve still never met anyone who’s heard of it, unless they’ve been to Taiwan. I would think it would be more well-known among railroad buffs… and perhaps it is.
The railway is precarious, there’s no other word for it. At times, looking out the window it is impossible to see anything below you except a several hundred meter drop. It’s been hacked into the sides (and right through) the rugged mountains by brute force, without an inch of tolerance.
In 2003, the train slipped off the tracks killing 17 people. It’s easy to see how these sorts of things can happen.
The ground in Taiwan’s mountains is prone to liquefaction resulting in frightening mudslides. Several people are killed each year during heavy rains. That thought was passing through my mind the whole time we travelled up the rails in the downpour.
At one point on this journey, the train slammed suddenly to a stop, while the engineers got out and inspected the tracks ahead. It as impossible to see what was up there, but after a few minutes, we proceeded slowly without further incident.
The final stop, Alishan, is one of those landmark “highest in the world†railways stations, but I don’t remember what the disclaimer on that one is. Highest in southeast Asia, highest narrow gauge rail station, highest station built by the Japanese between 1900-1920… I just don’t remember. It’s not the highest in the world, but it is some sort of highest station.
The grade and terrain is so difficult that the engineers of the railway had to create a unique solution to get the train to the top. They were forced to build switch backs into the rail line, allowing the train to work back and forth up the last stretch of the mountain.
When we reached the halfway point, the town of Fenchihu, it was raining cats and dogs. The town is “famous†for its bian dan, the Taiwanese version of the Japanese bento lunch. At the stop, which is about 3 minutes, vendors rush onboard the train selling them. Considering our luck with food so far, we figured the rain was so hard they’d just stay home. Luck was with us and, rain or shine apparently, they brought us welcome salvation in the form of food. Of course, bian dans are frequently pork chops, but I didn’t care. (I believe in this part of the country, they’re made with wild pigs that run in the mountains rather than slopped by Taipei’s garbage.)
The meal also featured something that I think was sausage, a chunk of something I think was ham and something that Irene says was fish cake, but I’m inclined to believe it was another sausage made entirely of pork fat. I didn’t care, I was at the point of starvation.
When we arrived at Alishan, if anything, it was actually raining harder, and it was cold – something like 12ºC (54ºF), which was a far cry from the temperatures of 32º (90ºF) in Taipei. Once soaked, wearing clothes appropriate for Taipei, it was bitterly cold.
The first time I came there was a train station. The next time, which was 2 years ago, the train station was gone (possibly lost in the 921 earthquake) and a new one was under construction. Instead you disembarked at a “temporary†station, which is just a platform. You then have to pay to get into the Chaoping Park, which is what the area is actually called.
The new station still isn’t built. According to my father-in-law, it was finished and failed building inspection. It had to be torn down and started again. Sounds to me like somebody didn’t grease the inspector’s palm enough. Obviously, that story could be apocryphal, too.
So we disembarked at the “temporary†station, which they’d thoughtfully put up small canopies so you could hide under, but the choke point at the pay station was crowded and everyone got soaked. Then you have to walk down a steep hill with all your luggage to a bus which will take you to the hotel.
The rain never let up and we were stuck indoors for the rest of the evening. A check with the front desk revealed that, with the weather being what it was, no one had been seeing the sunrise or the sea of clouds, so we decided to sleep in and hope that the morning would be clear for getting out and hiking.
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