Bravely going where no guidebook has gone before

Many people believe Taiwan's greatest asset as a tourist destination is its mountains. Rising to very nearly 4,000 meters, and covering nine tenths of the island, they are among the most formidable assemblages of upland terrain anywhere in East Asia.

Nor can it be said that they are under-appreciated. Every Friday, organized parties scuttle off from major cities for a wide variety of trailheads, returning late on Sunday night to deliver their exhausted participants home just in time for Monday work morning. The call of the wild can't be said to go unheard.

As for guidebooks and maps, these too proliferate. Despite official discouragement not so long ago in the name of security, Taiwan's magnificent uplands are today well charted and readily accessible. The problem for foreigners, however, is that all this wealth of material is available only in Chinese.

What Taiwan desperately needs, if it to attract the foreign tourists it could so easily attract to its high hills, are maps of the main areas in English (as well as Chinese), plus a major new guidebook, or series of guidebooks, of the relevant terrain.

Lyndon Punt's A Hiking Guide to Taiwan at present appears to be the sole available attempt in English to cover the ground. At a mere 82 pages, it inevitably provides only the most sketchy of introductions. But beggars can't be choosers, and we must be grateful for the author's pioneering attempt.

It isn't actually the first work in its field, however. In 1978, a book was published in Taipei with not dissimilar aims, and, as it happens, an identical number of pages. Called Walking in Taiwan, it was put together by two writers, R.A.Warburton and F. Haas, who described themselves as "housewives," presumably the under-employed spouses of Taipei-based expatriates.

Whereas Warburton and Haas described 19 hikes (from Taipei's Tienmu Steps to Jade Mountain), Punt covers 34. Whereas they combined information about route-finding and estimated times with a frequently rapturous appreciation of the scenery, Punt limits himself to general descriptions of the routes and practical advice on accommodation, buses and so forth.

Inevitably, given the number of trails he deals with, Punt's descriptions are often perfunctory. On the famously dangerous ridge of Mt. Chilai (奇萊山), for instance, he writes "As the map shows there is another peak, Chilai ChuShan. This is about two hours away and has outstanding views of the Hualien County side of the range and the rugged trail south to Chilai South Peak and Tien Shyr." Warburton and Haas devote over three vivid pages to their exploration of this notorious route, ending with the terse sentence "We had been three days without seeing anybody." Nevertheless, Punt's handbook has some real advantages. His bus numbers and prices for things such as dormitory beds are naturally reasonably up-to-date. Such things are constantly changing, even so. The bus from Taipei's Mucha MRT station to Shih Ting, most people's starting point for the sharp ridge of Huang Ti Dien (皇帝殿), is now (slightly ominously) the 666, rather than the "tatty blue bus with no number" described by Punt. But changes between writing and printing are a guidebook writer's occupational hazard, and Punt loses no points on this score.

Nor can he be faulted for sending the innocent off unprepared into the wilderness. There are warnings about snakes, plus the need to carry food, water and flashlights, even when you expect to arrive at accommodation before dusk, and advice on proper clothing.