🇹🇼 Yangmingshan National Park

They've got meadows here?

Following my series of contingency plans, as I didn’t want to get hiking permits in Taiwan, I went to Yangmingshan National Park. The national park is easily accessible from Taipei by bus and has a bunch of hikes you can do, the trailheads of which are connected by buses. It was really convenient to get around there.

Lengshuikeng and Mount Qixing

This was the longest hike you can do in the park, so I started there. I did it on the weekend, and it was really busy, but nothing unlike routes in Europe. The route is on AllTrails (note that I got the bus at the end and didn’t walk along the road at the end).

The route mostly entailed hiking through long grass and some walking through forests. The views were great right away, with them mostly consisting of rolling hills (somewhat fondly reminding me of the British countryside).

It took some effort to get to the top in the heat, and it was well worth it. The peaks were super windy, but the swaying grass looked great in front of the vistas of Taipei.

On the way down, I walked through sulfuric volcanic craters. This looked really cool, with the rocks having an almost unnatural-looking light-yellow coating.

Qingtiangang Loop Trail

This was a pretty simple trail through a vast grassland (AllTrails link). There really wasn’t much to it, other than that it just looked nice. This reminded me even more of the British countryside, especially Burton Dassett Hills, which is one of my family’s favourite spots.

The grasslands were pretty busy, looking like a favourite of the locals. In fact, many of the locals from Taipei I’ve talked to seemed to have visited here. The Americans seem to love it, too, with most views here being accompanied by groups of American tourists screaming over each other, making me feel like I’m in a Disney Channel special. The Taiwanese seem to stoically tolerate it; they’re stronger than I am.