Victoria Peak

If you consult most guidebooks, visitors to Hong Kong will be prompted to a pair of must-see hiking trails needed to complete the full “Hong Kong experience”: Victoria Peak, closely followed by Dragon’s Back. These were the first two I visited. The former is as advertised, majestic, although one could avoid hiking altogether and reach the peak by any number of methods. The Hong Kong Tourism Board has made it possible to ascend the mount in mere hours from your baggage claim. The latter, while interesting, is not fit for a set piece of a Leonardo DiCaprio action movie, my beauty metric for all landscapes. After these two I decided to create a list of all the trails I could possibly visit. This entry is about the most secluded one.

Hong Kong is essentially a series of mountains, and because of that, it features perhaps the highest number of hiking trails accessible by public transportation. Throughout the territory, much of the trails are extremely well-maintained, with concrete steps, paved or stone walkways, and a fairly extensive signage system, allowing amateurs like myself easy access to nature. Like the above-mentioned, many are itinerary headliners, and tourists are bused or trained as close to the summits as possible.

As I made my list, and crossed items off it, I found that the most popular rarely aligned with the most beautiful, or even the most convenient. As with many things in Hong Kong, the most well-known trails are located on Hong Kong Island, the city’s financial and political center. When you go further afield into Kowloon or the New Territories, the trails remain popular, but increase in difficulty. These extend over longer distances, feature more numerous, and seemly angrier animals, hazards, pitfalls, and a long list of other perils that I learned through trial by ever more disconcerting error. More dangers were relayed by word of mouth. In one story a stranger confessed that he and his friends fought through a pack of feral dogs at sharpened stick point. Intervening friends also cautioned me not to hike due to a “pocket-universe” that floated around Hong Kong’s wild northeast. Supposedly, a man was lost for three days in some kind of Bermuda Triangle-esque alternate reality, luckily escaping to tell his tale to the local media. This would be my fate too if I didn’t heed their entreaties.

My dark imagination flourished, and I envisioned myself dragging my remaining entrails across the Hong Kong countryside, à la Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant. The number of trails on my list began to twindle. Most of the hiking routes on Hong Kong Island can be done solo, as you will rarely find yourself alone. In other areas, particularly far out in Hong Kong’s sparsely populated northeast, the buddy system should prevail, limiting where I could go on a whim for a photography outing. I tried a series of mountains at the edge of Kowloon, near Yau Tong and Lam Tin, but I stumbled across a giant turtle statue in the middle of the woods and was completely unnerved. Soon after fleeing the statue I was chased by a village guard dog, which completely dampered any further notions of adventurism. With Hong Kong’s heat and spotty weather, and a new limit on solo excursions, it became difficult to find convenient trails for which I could find hiking buddies. After scraping the bottom of the barrel for hiking routes from English language blogs, I began to query in Chinese.

Many were the same, but one turned out promising, Sam Chi Heung on Tsing Yi Island. The name translates to the three joss sticks, the incense burned in Chinese worship rituals, supposedly because the mountains are arranged in the same way. This contravenes a long-standing Hong Kong policy of naming mountains after British men, or animals. For many in Hong Kong, particularly expatriates, Tsing Yi, is a place hidden in plain sight. Traditionally, it remained outside the bustle of central Hong Kong until the airport moved to the city’s western edge, making it a necessary transit point for any international visitor. Although there are some residential developments on the island, much of it is still mountainside, or dedicated to a massive oil depot.

Fortunately, two other people I met on other hikes agreed to go with me. They suggested to go at night for a better view. I seized this opportunity because I definitely wouldn’t have gone up there by myself. If I did, I might’ve still been on that very mountaintop, scrawling out this blog on my phone in a fever dream, the diary of a lost madman.

One of my friends brought along a massive torchlight for night-hiking, which later turned out to be a very useful, almost necessary tool. After meeting at the train station, we disembarked and promptly got lost searching for the entrance to the trail. We groped around a community college parking lot flanking the mountain for a hour until we finally came upon the trail entrance. For the first quarter of the hike, the trail sported a leisurely incline upward, and we found our path from the light of the city below. It was even paved with concrete. After twenty minutes, however, the experience began to turn. Our route turned into a non-wooded patch, revealing graves all along our path. This was an unnerving discovery, but the phenomenon is completely typical in Hong Kong. Fengshui principles establish that the most auspicious location for a gravesite is the southward side of a mountain, and this rule is assiduously adhered to in the city. Many hiking routes double as a conveyance for family members to visit their ancestors or loved ones, at least yearly, explaining why this obscure route was so well maintained. What’s more disconcerting is to come upon a grave in disrepair, or as is the indigenous custom in some sections of Hong Kong, large glazed earthen jars that store the bones of ancestors, laid right along the trails. Potent reminders to tread lightly.

My partners were unperturbed, but I wanted to hurry forward. Past the graves was a pavilion, which marked the beginning of a completely different part of our journey. The trail quickly shifted into a heavily wooded forest. We caught glimpses of the oil depot beyond the mountains, as well as the bridge that leads to the airport before we descended into the canopy ensconced darkness. We had some preliminary planning, but it all unravelled when we met the pitch-blackness of the forest. There was still a concrete path, but we were forced to walk in single file as my friend led the way with a powerful night-lamp. At certain parts the foliage was so dense, we were forced to duck as we climbed the stone staircases, lest we run our face through spider webs draped across branches. Ascending and descending, descending and ascending, we travelled for an hour until we arrived at a small electrical substation and sensed we were nearing the summit. We contemplated going back after a while, but felt compelled forward as we hadn’t yet caught any hint of the scenic vista we assumed would eventually meet us, only darkness. Why else construct miles of concrete stairways in the middle of nowhere? Our intuition was right and the mountain leveled off and the the foliage dissipated after an hour long forced march. A curiously well preserved park bench at the top signaled we reached safety.

And there it was, one of the most uncommon views of Victoria’s Harbour. Unfortunately, as soon as we reached the summit, it began to drizzle. We lingered for about ten minutes, which is when I shot most of the photos from this outing. I didn’t have time to properly set up my tripod for a good night vista, but I still found the adventure worthwhile.

We (read me) worried that we would have to walk the near two hours back in the rain, and decided to promptly begin the return trip. From the vista, we could see dark clouds aligning in the horizon, but the rain held for most of the return leg of the trip. Even in the dark, it was obvious that the trail hadn’t been used in a while, something that can’t be said for most routes in Hong Kong. For this fact, I dubbed it the most secluded spot I been to in Hong Kong.