TAIWAN 台灣 Shocked me! 環島 Riding SOLO across the country I Rosie Gabrielle

Looking back I ask myself, how did I end up here? Was this all just a dream? My name is Rosie Gabriel and I'm here to show you Taiwan through my eyes. If you asked me before if I knew anything about Taiwan, I would have said no. All I knew is there was a big city called Taipei. Taiwan is a small island off the southeastern coast of China. From north to south it runs only 345 kilometers long and 160 wide. I thought, it's so small, this will be easy. But easy doesn't take you far. I wanted to see everything and for that I had to go deeper. I was invited to ride a motorcycle solo across the entire country to experience everything it had to offer. To have an adventure of a lifetime. I realized once I started traveling that its size was deceiving. I only had one month to complete my mission. It was going to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated. There were endless places to explore. So many beautiful people to meet. Unique cultures to learn about. And too many epic roads to the unknown. I wanted to see the Taiwan that people don't know about. To take you along on a journey across a new land. To witness beauty. On an adventure like you've never seen before. Adventure. What I'm doing? I don't know what I'm doing. I have a general idea where I'm going but I really have no idea what I'm doing. But that's kind of a theme of a typical road adventure and somehow or another my goodness is this place ever beautiful and I'm excited. Welcome to Toroko National Park. This is officially the highest road in Taiwan at 3,275 meters. All the way. I'm gonna be going. I'm gonna shoot a gun this morning. Leave trash, get out in nature. It takes 30 minutes to get to the hot spring. I'm concerned saying that it's dangerous to get to the hot spring right now because it's like 30 minutes off road and there's no light. It was a little steep but manageable. I've made it down to the river. Apparently there's an amazing hot spring here. It's a wild camp spot. It's not an actual campground but there's quite a few people camping here I guess to visit the hot springs and I don't need to say anything. Just a little adventure here. I'm just gonna see if I can access the hot springs over here. Liz here and she's going to take me to their family coffee farm. Oh wow. It's time to go explore the island. I'm not quite sure what to do but the current is not so big. The port where you catch the ferry to Taoyuan. Really excited to try the sea scrub. Oh wow. Great so this is my last day here in Taiwan on the bike. Today is actually my last day. I'm heading back to Taipei which was my starting point of this entire journey. It is coming full circle and today is the last day. Not quite sure how I feel about that just yet. It has been a crazy adventure. That was a difficult trip. Sorry that's not what I wanted to deal with this morning. It's really hot. I don't know how I can keep going. It sucks. Still got its lights on. I can still see it flashing. I can see it. It's just there. It's like 50 meters but I got this this in between and it's too high up to get it and I'm looking at it just like breathing. Breathing very very very hard right now. Not only do I not have any drone to film this part which was like the best part but it's also a lot of money. Something I guess I just want to let go. It's meant to happen. It's just money. Coming down here. I got here just over five weeks ago I guess. Almost six weeks ago and I've done this entire circle around the entire island. It's it's all so surreal. It doesn't feel like it's ending today and I think today is going to be a really emotional day because this has been a life-changing experience for me. It's not just a motorcycle trip. You know my journeys aren't just traveling. It's just so much more for me. I can't believe that I'm doing this at four o'clock in the morning. Filling the trenches in the mud. I was inspired by the Taiwanese people where I watched them engineer these amazing hot springs using the big rocks to divert the water and then the small sediment to fill in the gaps and every time there's rains they would come and rebuild the whole thing over again. So I actually inspired a bit by them. I've moved the tent up just a little bit. The rain's died down just a bit now but as difficult as it was and challenging because I had to face extreme weather conditions. I was so tired. I wasn't getting to sleep. I was camping a lot and the conditions were just not ideal. I guess the time of year and it's just hard when you try to pack in so much in such a little time and I didn't want to just blast through the country. I wanted to do experience as much as I could so it took a toll on my body. The minute I finished packing up everything it started to rain. I think it's time to go now. There's no way I can pick that up on my own. My back is actually very seriously damaged so it's not safe for me to do that. I can do some very permanent damage so there are some cars over here. I'm gonna try and see if I can get someone to help me. But then it was like every person I met along the way it's just so beautiful. I tried the google translate. I think he understood. He gave me some nice cold water. I'm backing up his fishing rod so I think he's gonna come help me now. It really made my experience here. Thank you guys. It felt like it would never end and now I just am sad. You know before I came to Taiwan I saw the distance from one end to the other. It's like 500 kilometers. Not even. I was like oh my goodness it's such a small country. I can see so much in a month. It will be a piece of cake. It will be really easy. Oh it's very deceiving but you can ride it in a day but you won't see anything. You won't have the experiences of meeting people which for me was like the best part. It's about the believing. If you believe in god then it means like you believe and you trust things will happen. That. It's those moments that make everything worthwhile. That is traveling. That is when you get these connections with people. It's these moments that I'm going to keep in mind. I'll be so grateful. It makes a good memory. I'll be welcomed even if we don't speak the same language or have the same traditions. We are all at the end of the day human. We are all a human tribe here. There's this connection between people to people. Like you have to look after your family. You have to look after your neighbors in order to survive in this entirely new place. But also people are helped by the mountain. So there's this connection between human and the mountain. So that's the beginning of the story of people entering this mountain. And I would like to show you this work in Chinese. Like as you know Chinese is developed by pictures. They're original drawings. The left character actually means man. And the character on the right means mountain. So man and mountain. And together they form a new word that means god.