Taiwan by rail in 14 days: the full island loop
There is a single continuous railway around the edge of Taiwan, and going all the way round it is one of the best two-week train journeys in Asia. It is also the only way to see how different the two halves of this island are: the west is cities, industry and rice on a flat coastal plain, and the ea
- Duration
- 14 days
- Pace
- Moderate
- Hotel changes
- 6
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Dec, Mar, Apr
- From
- $2,730 per person
This route does the whole loop anticlockwise, which puts the sea on your right for the good half. It uses fourteen rail legs, one narrow-gauge forest railway that climbs 6,500 feet (2,000 m) out of the plain, and a car only where a train genuinely cannot go.
Fourteen days, six hotel changes, no internal flights, and four days with nothing scheduled.
Who it suits: people who like trains and would rather look out of a window than at a road, travellers who want the whole island rather than a corner of it, and anyone building a slow two weeks.
Your specialist: Asaf Zamshtein, our Southeast Asia and China specialist, with our Taiwanese partner team on the ground.
Day by day
Taipei, days 1 to 3
Day 1: Arrive Taipei. Airport express, 40 minutes into Taipei Main Station, which is where this whole trip revolves around. Nothing scheduled. Dinner at Ningxia night market.
Day 2: Taipei. A guided morning through Dadaocheng and Dihua Street, the old merchant quarter, then the afternoon free. Longshan Temple at dusk. Evening at Raohe night market.
Day 3: The Pingxi line, and Jiufen. A day out on a single-track branch railway into the hills: Houtong, a former mining village now overrun with cats, and Shifen, where the train runs down the middle of the old street and there is a waterfall twenty minutes’ walk away.
Then Jiufen in the late afternoon, a hillside town of stepped lanes and tea houses above the sea. It is one of the most crowded places in Taiwan between eleven and four, and it is genuinely lovely at six when the coaches have gone and the lanterns come on. We go at six.
The east coast, days 4 to 8
Day 4: Taipei to Hualien. Two hours on the east coast line, through the Yilan plain and then along the Pacific. Sit on the seaward side. Three nights in Hualien.
Afternoon at Qixingtan, a long grey crescent of pebbles where the mountains come straight down to the water.
Day 5: The gorge day. Taroko if it is open, which we confirm at the time of quoting rather than assuming. The April 2024 earthquake caused severe rockfall damage through the gorge and the national park has been reopening in phases, with parts of the road and several of the best-known trails affected.
If access is limited we run the alternative on the same coast: Mugua River Gorge and the Sanzhan river south of Hualien, where you walk in a marble riverbed with cold green pools in it and almost nobody else there.
Day 6: The East Rift Valley. Inland by car for a day the railway parallels but does not serve properly: rice terraces at Chishang and the lane through them, a hot spring at Ruisui, and the Amis villages of the valley floor. Back to Hualien.
Day 7: Hualien to Taitung. Down the coast by train, about two and a half hours, or by car on Highway 11 with stops at Shitiping and Sanxiantai, which takes the whole day and is the better version. Two nights in Taitung, a small, low, unhurried city that most itineraries skip.
Day 8: Taitung, free. Nothing scheduled. Options: the Rift Valley by bicycle, the National Museum of Prehistory, which is the best explanation anywhere of who was on this island before anyone else arrived, a hot spring at Zhiben, or a boat to Green Island if the sea is behaving, which it often is not.
The south and west, days 9 to 13
Day 9: The south-link line to Kaohsiung. Around the bottom of the island, through the tunnels and along the strip between the mountains and the sea, about two and a half hours. It is the least-travelled section of the loop and the best window on it.
Afternoon in Kaohsiung: the Pier-2 art district in the old warehouses, the harbour, and the ferry across to Cijin for the seafood. Two nights.
Day 10: Kaohsiung, and Fo Guang Shan. The Buddhist monastery complex outside the city, which is enormous, modern and startling, and the Lotus Pond dragon and tiger pagodas. Or a day doing nothing in a city that is much more relaxed than Taipei.
Day 11: To Tainan. Thirty minutes by local train. Three nights in the old capital, which is the reason a lot of people come back to Taiwan.
Afternoon at Anping: Fort Zeelandia from 1624 and the banyan tree house. Evening on Guohua Street.
Day 12: Tainan, guided. A food walk that is also a history lesson: beef soup at six in the morning if you can face it, danzai noodles, milkfish congee, coffin bread, and between them the Confucius temple from 1665, the Grand Matsu Temple and Shennong Street.
Day 13: Tainan, free, or the salt flats. Nothing scheduled. The salt works and the black-faced spoonbill wetlands north of the city between October and March, a soy sauce brewery, or a second run at the food.
The forest railway, day 14 and the way home
Day 14: Chiayi, Alishan, and out. This is the one that needs explaining. The Alishan Forest Railway runs from Chiayi up into the mountains on a narrow gauge built for logging in 1912, climbing about 6,500 feet (2,000 m) through three vegetation zones, with spiral loops and switchbacks. It is one of the great mountain railways.
If your flight is in the evening, we run the lower section as a return trip from Chiayi and put you on the high speed line to the airport afterwards. If you have a fifteenth day, we send you all the way up, overnight at Alishan, and bring you down the next morning, which is much the better answer and which we will push you towards.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout, every rail leg in reserved seats including the east coast, south-link and forest railway services, a private air-conditioned car with English-speaking driver on three days, licensed local guides on four days, the Tainan food walk, the Pingxi branch line, all entrance fees on guided days, a stored-value transport card each, a day-by-day document with train numbers, platform notes and seat classes, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our partner team in Taiwan for the whole trip.
What we would change, and when
- Fifteen or sixteen days? Add the Alishan night, which turns the last day from a compromise into the best day on the trip. If we could only add one day to this route, it would be that one.
- Want the outer islands? Green Island from Taitung or Penghu from Kaohsiung, two nights each, both weather-dependent and both worth it in the right season. Boats cancel and we build a fallback.
- Prefer to go clockwise? It works and the light is worse. Going anticlockwise puts you on the Pacific side in the morning on the two legs where that matters.
- Travelling between July and October? Typhoon season, and this route has more exposure than any other in our Taiwan library because it depends on a single track around the coast. When the east coast line closes, it closes. We hold alternatives and we tell you which days carry the risk.
Honest notes
Reserved seats on the east coast and south-link lines are the hard part of this itinerary. The booking window opens a set number of days ahead, the good services fill within hours at weekends and around public holidays, and there is no premium that gets you past it. We book the morning the window opens and we tell you if we could not get what we wanted.
There is a lot of sitting on this trip. That is the point of it, and it will not suit someone who wants to be active every day. Bring a book.
Two things on this route are not reachable by train, and we use a car rather than pretending otherwise: the Rift Valley on day 6 and the gorge on day 5. Everything else is rail.
Jiufen is on this itinerary at six in the evening and not at noon. If you go at noon you will spend an hour in a queue on a staircase and wonder why anyone recommended it.
The Taroko question is unresolved and it will still be unresolved when you read this. We check the current position at the time we quote and we build the day around what is real.
Built by Asaf Zamshtein, our Southeast Asia and China specialist, and checked with our partner team in Taiwan before it goes out.
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