Discover Eastern Taiwan

Eastern Taiwan is a strip of land between the Central Mountain Range and the Pacific, and it is the least populated and least developed part of the island by a wide margin. The mountains come almost to the water, so the coastal highway runs on ledges cut into cliffs for much of its length.

Taroko Gorge is the reason most people come: the Liwu river has cut nearly twenty kilometres of near-vertical gorge through solid marble, and the road and trails through it run in and out of tunnels above the water. Inland, the East Rift Valley runs the length of the region between two mountain ranges, on the join between the Philippine Sea and Eurasian plates, with rice terraces at Chishang, hot springs, and hot-air balloons over Luye in summer.

This is also the heart of Indigenous Taiwan. The Amis, Puyuma, Bunun and Truku peoples are concentrated here, their harvest festivals run through July and August, and their languages belong to the Austronesian family that spread from this island across the Pacific. Offshore, Green Island has hot springs that flow into the sea and Orchid Island is home to the Tao, who still build and launch plank canoes. Typhoons make landfall on this coast first, between July and October.