Adventure meets oolong on a 555km ride through Taiwan’s misty mountains and tea fields — with a side of sea snails and peanut & coriander ice cream.
One minute, we’re sipping tea in a considered tasting, discussing tannins and malty notes, trying hard not to fall victim to tea wankery. The next, we’re bombing the mountain trying not to fall victim to the Taiwan bitumen at 60km/h.
The verb “to bomb” is cycling speak for going downhill faster than your travel insurance will cover. But Taiwan’s roads are smooth and, after all that tea, our joie de vivre is up. We plunge down a narrow road; falling, falling, but the deep valley seems to go forever … until eventually, the tea plantations give way to palm trees, vegetable gardens and thick, tropical air.
Taiwan has been an exhilarating surprise from the outset. And after our adrenaline has subsided from this final bombing run, the group shares a warm glow of satisfaction and plates full of dumplings cooked before us at a roadside stall. We’ve earned every metre of downhill exhilaration with thigh-burning uphill slog. We’ve earned the couple of longnecks of beer.
In the 555km riding down the spine of the of this hotly contested green island over seven days, we’ve gained 11,338m of altitude. With no rest days.
Rest days don’t work on bike tours, says our guide, tea translator, and tour curator Mark Thirlwall. “You’ve already seen so many things, hidden villages and amazing drop offs, that you get to some tourist spot and everybody just finds it boring,” he says.
That might be true. But there were times, like after topping that 3,275m pass, high above the tree line, when a little boredom seemed attractive.
Thirlwall is the owner of Tea Journeys, an Australian company with one foot in the business of importing tea and another in the business of exporting tourists to the plantations where it is grown.
Thirlwall first went to China as a tour guide in 2001, and after stints as a yoga instructor and actor playing western villains on Chinese TV, found himself falling in love with the tea culture, taking his bicycle on long journeys across the east, exploring tea plantations and, with his fluent Mandarin, talking to the growers.
He turned himself into an expert and is now an international tea judge.
His businesses, the Australian-based Tea Journeys and Hong Kong-based, The Hutong, make a thing of explaining China to westerners.
And then he discovered Taiwan, with its excellent – expensive – teas, smooth, quiet roads and smooth, quiet drivers. He waxes lyrical about tea and tarmac – especially admiring the quality of the bitumen compared to the potholed regional roads of Australia.
We’re here on a small bespoke tour for a bunch of friends who, while mostly not trained cyclists, are all fit middle-aged types. But he designs the tours with all spectrums of fitness in mind. I’m the only one in our group to opt for an e-bike.
It seems that I, like the rest of our group of six, knew little of the island other than it made great computer chips and that China wants it. The west coast is like what I expected – a tangle of high-rise freeways and high-speed rails on a narrow strip of flat cultivation. But the east – where we rode – is mountainous and bucolic.
From the morning we ride out of the capital Taipei through the biggest, most beautiful cemetery I’ve seen, the surprises keep coming. On day two we ditch our bikes to go for a body-surf.
On day three we’re riding in the clouds, soaked, freezing, but strangely joyous.
Taiwan still has that stinky-tofu element. The strange salty fruits, chicken gizzard snacks, wizened laughing women hawking roadside, but none of the horn-tooting chaos of its neighbours. It has ice cream made with peanut brittle and coriander, served in something like a tortilla!
At the end of our hardest day’s ride, we have a few beers and a beautiful Japanese meal and head for bed early, only to learn the next day that Thirlwall, something of an Energiser bunny, had gone to a teahouse and was up till 11pm chatting with the old ladies about their brews.
Being with an enthusiast can be infectious. Along the way, we’ve tasted tea beers and tea eggs, bubble tea, red tea, black, green and Oolong.
And on that final day’s bombing of the mountain, while the adrenaline subsides with the altitude, Thirlwall chooses a roadside stall for lunch. We’re in danger of being hit by traffic while he laughs and chatters in Mandarin with the chirpy old woman behind the counter. He orders up six plates of dumplings.
Steaming sweet potatoes, salted plums and a bowlful of tiny conical sea snails (you suck on the skinny end before sucking on the fat end, she demonstrates hilariously) are soon foraged from nearby stalls and added to the feast with a couple of bottles of Taiwan Beer.
And yeah, rest days, who needs ’em.
