Even before doing any research on Taipei and what we could do there, I had already asked my friend who lives there, if I could do a day hike. Taipei is surrounded with mountains, so he said that a day hike is definitely possible! Despite not having hiked in a while and feeling very unfit, I knew hiking had to be a part of my Taiwan itinerary.


Because my weekend was already full, we decided to do the hike on Monday. Perfect, too, because that meant lesser tourists (though I'm not sure the mountain we went to is often frequented by tourists). We went to Qixingshan or Qixing Mountain, which took us approximately an hour from Taipower Building Station in Daan District on a motorbike.

As I hadn't hiked in a year, I didn't want to rush it. We went on a relaxed pace, which I enjoyed because the scenery was amazing.


So after hounding Lennie with questions about Qixing on WhatsApp just now (LOL) instead of Googling it, I found out that Qixing is actually one of the peaks in Yangmingshan area. I think the highest one? The mountain has faults running across with volcanic landforms like hot springs and fumaroles. One of the kids said it smelled like eggs while we were hiking. LOL.


I don't know at which point I was already when I gave up, but I sat down at one of the stops with a view deck while waiting for my friend to conquer the peak. I thought I was going to freeze to death at that point, but we made it back down unscathed.


There are definitely a few places you can go to in Taiwan for hiking. From what I heard, Elephant Mountain is one of the popular ones as it is easily accessible via Xiangshan Station. You can find out all about the train lines and how to navigate your way through in my Taiwan Day 1 blog post (click!).

Bonus: Here are also some bad ass photos from the nearby abandoned facility that we saw. I just couldn't leave these out!


I hope you enjoyed going through this blog post even if it is quite photo heavy and does not contain much information about Qixing Mountain itself! If you have any questions, do comment below and I'll answer. :)