I’ve just finished doing the recon rides for our upcoming tours over at TAIWAN KOM TOURS, and what a great ride it was…

Perfect weather and good legs – bonus! – meant I didn’t want to stop. No matter how much I ride here, Taiwan continues to shock me with its natural beauty…

Over the three days Ie rode from Taipei to Yilan over Route 9 on Day 1, climbed from Taroko to Wuling, and dropped down through Aowanda towards Sun Moon Lake, all on Day 2, and then climbed from Sun Moon Lake to Alishan over the glorious 65km of Tataka (known as ‘the Small Big One’ here) and finished it all off with a very meandering 2400m descent that features the famous 36 Bends to Meishan in the west.

In total that came to 470km and 15,750m of climbing.

I do this for all my tours. Riding every kilometre ourselves is how I know where the best views, the toughest sections and the best food stops are, and it means wIknow the conditions we will face on the tour. Central to these tours are the relationships we build with our guests, and this is one of the ways that we can show then how much we care for them.

It’s a lot of work, but it comes from our love and passion of cycling, and days like we had on this trip are indescribably rewarding – if you know, you know sort of thing!

And we are sure you do…

Taiwan… the scenery is some of the most beautiful in Asia, and it startles us every time we get on the saddle. The man-made architecture here may not win many prizes, but the mountains, gorges and coastline more than make up for it – and soon we will be showing 25 guests around on these three upcoming tours.

Two of the tours are coming up you will foind on our Tours page:

• Taiwan KOM Challenge Tour, 28 October to 4 November: ride the legendary climb from the sea to Wuling. Tour details
• Mountain Goats Tour, 14 to 22 November: our first ever, made for climbers. Tour details

The other is a private custom tour, a 4 day adventure from Taipei to the east, then up Taroko to Wuling, finishing with an 80km descent from Wuling to Yilan.

Join us on the mountain, and sign up for our newsletter to hear about future tours first.

Thank you for reading!