Day 11 - Walking South From Toufen Zhunan To Miaoli, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Day 11 - Walking South From Toufen Zhunan To Miaoli, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
When we leave the city of Toufen tomorrow, we will have to walk around 25 km south to our next accommodation, carrying our backpacks.
But in the extreme heat we are having now, I am struggling to walk such long distances.
So instead of having a rest day today, we decided to walk south about half of the way, in order to make our walk tomorrow much easier.
Every day the high temperatures, the high humidity and the bright sun bring the heat index up to 95 degrees.
We have never walked a pilgrimage in these temperatures before.
The warmest weather we had ever walked in was almost ten years ago, when we walked the Shikoku pilgrimage in Japan.
It was pleasant weather when we started and it gradually warmed up during the two months of our pilgrimage.
It was fine until the very end, when we walked just a few days in 90 degree weather, which felt very difficult.
We decided that instead of bailing out on our walk and rebooking it for the month of November, we will do our best to make it work.
The main reason for not bailing out is because, like all our pilgrimages, it is a journey not really through Taiwan, but a journey through the inner landscape of our own being, discovering hidden limits and erroneous beliefs.
The way we experience the weather is very personal.
In Bali, when the temperature drops to the low eighties, the local Balinese girls wear their heavy coats.
The skinny young men wear ski hats. It is considered cold.
Masterful spiritual beings should be able to experience equanimity in all weather conditions.
The snowy cold should not bite at our skin and the extreme heat should not drive us to exhaustion.
We are doing this to gain mastery, so bailing out and rebooking the walk to a time when the weather is more pleasant is not the way to rise above the outer conditions and achieve mastery.
If we have to stop frequently for a drink or to rest, let it be so.
We shall continue on…
After a good and healthy breakfast of vegetables and rice in our hotel, we started walking south.
We arrived at a small village called Jianshan, that was known for its rice noodles.
Before 1951, people did everything by manual labor, following traditional methods of planting rice, harvesting it, grinding it and producing rice noodles.
At that time, there were 45 rice noodle producers in this one village.
Jianshan rice noodles were famous for their chewy yet smooth texture, compared to Hsinchu rice noodles, (Hsinchu is a neighboring province to the north of Miaoli province) which have a completely different flavor and texture.
Since then, modern food production techniques have become popular, and the food culture in recent years has moved away from traditional methods of production.
Most rice noodle makers in this village have gone out of business.
A new initiative, called Jianshan Rice Noodle Street Development and Construction, aims to bring visitors to the street in order to revive it and to preserve the historical memory of the once thriving food culture of the Jianshan community.
Currently, only in the evenings, there is an old grandmother who still cooks and sells the traditional noodles.
From there, we visited the Snake Kiln museum.
Once, many communities producing pottery fired their ceramics in one long, snake-shaped kiln.
Since it was always expensive and very labor intensive to fire ceramics in kilns, potters came together for a weekly or monthly firing which they took turns to attend during the nights and days that were required for the firing.
Unfortunately the museum was closed to visitors today.
The walk was mostly along a busy road, although we did have a very nice section of rural farmland, with lots of rice fields.
We reached our destination by 2pm, and returned by train to Toufen in Zhunan.
We walked to the Starbucks, since we had plenty of time to relax before dinner.
We spent some time reviewing our itinerary for October, to make sure that our average daily walking distance is not too long.
We did make a few minor changes to the walking plan, and rebooked different accommodations along the new route.
Instead of walking an extra 3 kilometers back to our hotel, we took an Uber back.
I was nursing the heat rash in my leg, while Jules did our laundry and we rested until dinner.
For dinner, we went to a very popular sushi restaurant with a huge line of people waiting, mostly because it was right in front of our hotel and didn’t require walking far.
Before bedtime, I thought about how so many people who passed by us were cheering us on.
Even though they spoke no English and had no idea what we were doing, they understood from the fact that we were climbing mountain passes by the side of the road, that we are walking around Taiwan, and they were all very encouraging.
Some stopped their cars or slowed down, and gave us the thumbs up.
People are kind and we are all connected.
And we share in one another’s victories and accomplishments.
We love to see others succeed, because it means that we all can do it…
With love,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 23,798
Daily Distance - 16 km.
Total Distance To Date - 163 km
